"This picture is selected for mention
not because it may be said definitely to be in violation of one or more
principles of morality but rather because it represents a type that provokes
apprehension. It is a story concerned with the life and loves of circus
freaks and because of the human abnormalities involved its unwholesome
shockery creates morbid audience reactions. It is a skillfully presented
production but of a character which in consideration of the susceptibilities
of mass audiences should be avoided. represented in this picture and appearing
in some degree in many others is the horror element - this growing out
of the procedure of the melodramatic mystery play. This element may not
be considered as unreservedly objectionalbe but its use myust be governed
by reasonable judgment as to the character of the material, the degree
of detail and emphasis given to it and a commonsense understanding of mass
audience psychology."
My comments: Not violating princlipes of morality? How about Cleopatra's fairly obvious fornication with Hercules, not to mention the alluded-to adultery? How about their treachery? Their plot to betray a man's love and murder him for his money? Their contempt for their fellow human beings? Even Venus shacking up with Hercules (okay, so we only see her moving out, but clearly she's been living with him) is a violation of moral principles -- and she is presented in this film as a virtuous character. I find it appalling that with so much genuine moral outrage going on in this film, so many critics act as if the mere existence of Johnny, Daisy, Violet, Schlitzie, Randion, et cetera, constitutes a moral outrage. "Unwholesome shockery?" Watching human beings adapt ingeniously to handicaps is "unwholesome" and "shocking?" Words like "inspiring" and "clever" should come to mind. And how can a book about "Decency in Motion Pictures" overlook the glaring indecency in how Hercules and Cleopatra treat Hans and his associates? What's wrong with this picture?
"The production caused quite a stir
and a lot of opposition on the MGM lot during production, largely from
studio people who objected to sharing the commisary with the genuine freaks
that were imployed in the film. The film was completed in nine weeks and
then previewed. The film caused such a stir and sense of shock in the audience
that it was drastically trimmed and an additional 'happy ending' was tacked
to the end of the film.
(....)
Despite the film's reputation as a shocker, Browning constantly confounds
the audience's expectations. The first half of the film is not a horror
film at all, but a slice-of-life circus portrait with the addition of some
melodrama. Despite the sensationalistic opening, Browning films the freaks
matter-of-factly, deliberately inviting us to accept them as less fortunate
brothers or children playing in the sun, to be admired for how well they
cope with their handicpas and keep each other's spirits up. (This truly
is an ensemble film, though each performer is given a chance to shine.)
On the other hand, Cleopatra and her lover, the strong man Hercules (Henry
Victor), are clearly the 'monsters' of the piece. (As a tonic, there are
also two nice normal people, Phroso the Clown [Wallace Ford] and Venus
[Leila Hyams], who accept the freaks and are meant to help with the audience's
own acceptance of them.) From the start, Cleopatra seems to delight in
humiliating Hans, as when she lets her cape slip and he tries to place
it on her shoulders but cannot reach that far.
(....)
Next we are presented with a caretaker leading a landowner to where he
saw 'horrible, twisted things... crawling, whining, laughing,' but once
we come upon the freaks themselves, cavorting in the sun with Madame Tetrallini
(Rose Dione), they are far from menacing; rather they hide in fear from
the strangers behind Tetrallini, who pleads her 'children's' plight to
the landlord. The landlord relents.
Next we see the various freaks leading nearly normal lives, showing how
they have adjusted to their deformities. ... Prince Randian is both armless
and legless but can roll and light his own cigarette; Johnny Eck's body
cuts off below the rib cage, but he gets about quite handily on his hands
and is even amazingly agile....
(....)
Obviously jealous and upset, Frieda tries to confront Cleopatra over her
toying with Hans, who has bought her expensive gifts, including a platinum
necklace. Unfortunatly, she lets slip that Hans has inherited a fortune,
and so Cleopatra schemes to marry him, chillingly pointing out, 'Midgets
are not strong...they could grow sick....'
This is followed by the famous wedding feast scene in which the feaks gather
together to celebrate Hans' wedding and accept Cleopatra as one of them.
.... A dwarf (Angelo Rosstitto, who went on to appear in such films as
The Corpse Vanishes, Scared to Death,
Daughter of Horror, Dracula vs. Frankenstein and Mad Max - Beyond
Therderdome) fills up a large cup and passes it from one freak to the
next, each one taking a sip. When he presents it to Cleopatra, she loses
control, yelling 'Freaks! Freaks!' at the wedding guests, and then showering
them with the remaining contents of the goblet.
Hans grows weaker and weaker as Cleopatra starts poisoning him. We now
see the freaks from a different light as they emerge from various locations,
keeping an eye on the treacherous Cleopatra....
That night the carnival packs up and begins to move away to their next
destination. Browning makes the scene more interesting by now adopting
the freaks' point of view as Johnny hops along, looking for shelter from
the breaking storm. Inside Hans' wagon, Cleo is trying to give him more
medicine, but he insists on seeing the bottle she has poured from. She
turns and sees various little people holding weapons at her and flees into
the woods.
(....)
What follows is one of the most disturbing and memorable sequences in the
Browning canon. As Herclues slips in the mud, lightening flashes reveal
the little people squirming towards him, each with a waepon in hand or
mouth. .... Cleopatra has continued running but stops to look back. In
a lightening flash, she sees that crawling freaks are close beind, and
she screams.
This sequence is very brief but powerful. It marks the one time in the
film when the freaks do not seem human or sympathetic, when common fears
about creeping, manacing things in the dark seem to come true -- though
unquestionably Cleopatra and Hercules remain the villians of the piece.
The way the film is presently cut, we assume that the freaks murdered Hercules,
but the original cut of the film had a brief epilogue in 'Tetrallini's
Freaks and Music Hall" in which the mighty strong man now sings in
falsetto, indicating that the freaks emasculated him.
The present cut does take us back to the hall we saw at the beginning,
where the Barker now shows us his highly unusual atrraction -- Cleopatra,
now a quadruple amputee with only one good eye, in a feathered suit, playing
a 'chicken woman.' She cannot talk so much as squawk, indicating that her
tongue may have been cut out as well. Was the barker telling a true story?
Finally, there is a very brief coda in which Phroso and Venus come smiling
to visit Hans at his estate. They bring Frieda with them, and Hans and
Frieda hug each other with tears in their eyes and smile back at their
friends, a sentimental upshot that does nothing to diminish the power of
the previous scenes.
Modern prints run about 64 minutes, but the original film was longer. It
is doubtful that the missing scenes will ever be found or restored. The
film was rearely screened, and only recently shown on Ted Turner's TNT
cable channel, its first televised appearance.
Despite the strong horrific punch of the finale, Freaks stands more
as a touching and occasionally artfully humorous plea for understanding,
for the need to treat those different from ourselves with dignity and respect
and not to demean or underestimate them as Cleopatra and Hercules do. That
Browning succeeds in this intention with most audiences is inded a sincere
tribute to his artistry, though the negative reception the film received
may have discouraged filmmakers from using or exploiting deformities apart
from dwarves or a few made-up hunchbacks in horror films... for many years
to come. The Hilton sisters did prove adept enough at comedy that in 1950
they were starred in an exploitation film known as Chained For Life,
which supposedly had a sequel, Torn By The Knife."
"In light of the tradition of Lon Chaney,
the profits of Universal's Dracula, and the news of Universal's
plan to score again with Frankenstein, MGM wanted to make horror
movies, and Tod Browning seemed to be the man to make them.
'Give me something more horrifying than Frankenstein!' comanded
Thalberg.
Brownings's response: Freaks, the carnival shocker that the former
(and presumably pseudo) snake eater had long envisioned. The source was
the short story 'Spurs' (Munsey's magazine, February 1923), written
by Tom Robbins (author of The Unholy Three). Cedrick Gibbons, MGM's
famed, multi-Oscar-winning (and Oscar-designing) art director (and a childhood
friend of Robbins, who had supposedly typed some of his manuscripts), persuaded
his studio to pay $8,000 for the story. Browning saw Freaks as his
potential msterwork and sent word across the country that he was casting
the MGM horror show with real 'freaks.'
Frm carnivals and circuses all over the country, they came. Schlitzie,
the Pin-Head, whose true gender was a mystery (a dress was the usual attire),
had collected a fortune in jewelry and real estate from obsessed admirers.
Prince Randian, the Hindu Human Torso, sported an earring and could roll
his cigarettes sans arms or legs. Johnny Eck was the Half-Boy, whose body
ended at the waist (Eck died in 1991 in Baltimore, where he had achieved
recognition as a painter). Violet and Daisy Hilton, the famous Siamese
twins, had led their own jazz band.
Browning began shooting November 9, 1921, with a $290,468.82 budget, a
24-day schedule, and supervision via MGM studio manager Eddie Mannix.
The true star of Freaks was Olga Baclanova (1899-1974), the evil
blonde amazon transformed by the vengeful freaks from 'The Peacock of the
Air' into the squawking 'Chicken Woman' of the climax. Three decades later,
Baclanova (in her thick Russian tongue) remembered MGM's Freaks
in John Kobal's book, People Will Talk:
'Tod Browning. I loved him. He say, 'I
want to make a picture with you, Olga Baclanova. ...Now I show you with
whom you are going to play. But don't faint.' ...I wanted to faint. I wanted
to cry when I saw them. ...Now, after we start the picture, I like them
all so much.
Not everyone shared Miss Baclanova's compassion. 'People run out
of the commisary and throw up!' wailed Harry Rapf, a Metro production supervisor
(whose backgrouns had been incarnivals). It all proved too much for the
tummy of F. Scott Fitzgerald, then paying Zelda's sanatorium bills as a
$1200-per-week Metro writer. One noon he glimpsed the Siamese twins smiling
over the commisary menu, bolted outside, and threw up.
(....)
Following a disastrous Freaks preview, Thalberg made cautious cuts....Nevertheless,
Freaks went on to infamy. Final cost: $310,607.37. Shooting days:
36. Release date: February 20, 1932. Overall critical reaction: horror,
outrage, and a 30-year ban in England. Financial loss: $164,000.
Mayer apoplectically cut the MGM logo of his belived lion Leo fromthe
prints of Freaks. On August 7, 1932, only 30 days after Freaks
had braved New York's Rialto Theatre, MGM took a fast $50,000 from Dwain
Esper, an independent exhibitor, who got Freaks on a 25-year distribution
deal and milked the scandalous picture (under such titles as Nature's
Mistakes) for all of its sensationalism
In 1962, the Cannes Festival Repertory exhumed Freaks, and it made
a round of the revival houses. Vincent Canby of the New York Times
hailed it as 'one of the perhaps half-dozen great horror films of all time.'
By 1990 it was playing on the TNT Cable Network and had received (with
considerable fanfare) release on MGM/UA Home Video. While film critics
rapturously praise its 'compassion,' it is hard to find any compassion
in the climax. The sight of the Pinhead, the Human Torso, the Half-Boy,
and those other poor souls wriggling and crawling through the stormy climax
with knives and guns, hellbent on transforming Cleopatra into the Chicken
Woman, makes them truly monstrous as Browning crumbles under the temptation
to present his freaks as a nightmarish herd of goblins.
"... Because of its use of real freaks and its unfortunate early history - banned in Britain,
shelved by MGM after disastrous premeires and then snapped up for
exploitaion by Dwain Esper (of Maniac fame) - Freaks
acquired an unsavoury reputation which lingers on even though denied by
the film itself. If the last scenes are horrific enough to satisfy the
most ghoulish tastes, the revelation of the film is its warmth and humanity.
Browning manages to evoke the closed world of freaks, the intensely
human emotions contained within inhuman exteriors, in such a way that
fascinated revulsion turns into tender compassion. His first introduction to
the freaks comes as a local squire walks through a forest, his gamekeeper
babbles wildly about having seen grotesque creatures in the wood, and the
camera focuses on a clearing in which things crawl, dance and hop
obscenely. The squire angrily protestes, and Madame Petralini (sic), the
motherly body in charge of the freaks, explains that they are merely playing
in the sun on a day off from the circus. An instinctive huddling of the
terrified freaks against Dione, a gesture from a pin-headed woman who lovingly
touches her face, and the scene suddenly turns from a Walpurgisnacht
revel into a charming idyll. The brilliance of the film lies in the care with which
its sideshow context is evoked - on the one hand, the 'normal' circus folk,
with their cruel, unthinking mockery of the freaks; on the other hand, the
freaks themselves, joyous, eager to accept anybody who will meet them halfway.
Frozo the closn (Ford) and his girl Venus (Hyams), who take the freaks as
they are, link these worlds in two wholly charming scenes: teasing one of
the pin-headed women about her new dress, and joking with the bearded lady
about the birth of her baby. These scenes, and more particularly the
sequence of the wedding banquet, provide an emotional basis for the horrror of the
climax. The wedding banquet is a brillian piece of mise-en-scene,
with the freaks assembled around a long table in joyous celebration of the
marriage between Baclanova and Earles,culminating in teh wild progress of a dwarf down in the centre of
the table, clutching a loving-cup of wine and accompanied by a
mounting chant of 'We accept her, we accept her, one of us.' The intensity, the
laughter, the strange ritual of the chant, make Baclanova's revulsion
perfectly natural. But she is still unable to consider the freaks as
any other than unfeeling monsters.... The macabre finale, lit in chiaroscuro,
is even better. As Baclanova and Victor go about their business of
poisoning Earles, eyes watch constantly, peering in at windows and from
beneath caravans. The freaks gather their forces. A storm breaks, the rain
comes pouring down, knives appear and there is nothing on the soundtrack but
the storm, the caravans rolling, a melancholy tune played by a dwarf on
a pipe; the steaming rain, the thick mud full of crawling shapes in the
darkness, and Baclanova and Victor running screaming in terror.
"
