monkeysvsrobots.com » Freaks Movie Review

Three words describe this movie…

SQWARWK! SQWARWK!! SQWARWK!

Todd Browning’s Freaks is a beautifully filmed movie that isn’t intended to be funny, but trust me, you do not want to drink milk for a single second of this movie, especially if you have weak nasal membranes, could be somehow fatal. I loved this movie so much, I didn’t even clean up my puddle of comedic appreciation, I just let it sit there to commemorate the occasion so that should someone arrive and wonder what that spot (and smell) was, I can say, “Todd Browning made me piss my trousers when the angry midget whipped out his sinister switchblade!”

Our plot is simple, there’s a circus full of odd people that just arrives SOMEWHERE. It really doesn’t matter where, but we can assume it’s not ancient Egypt or the South Pole. It’s somewhere more rural and Californian, maybe. Two tiny people, who haven’t aged past the year of five, but are something like 30, have their love interrupted by some evil, full-sized chick who is just playing the little dude for his money. She has a slumpy, moronic foreign boyfriend who hides and gets drunk. This movie’s full of characters you can relate to.

Yes, there are tons of circus freaks, and no, I don’t enjoy making fun of people who look different than me… except babies, because they can’t defend themselves… but I love making fun of silly movies… and nothing you can tell me about political correctness can make me stop giggling when I see the man with no legs and arms crawling around with a switchblade in his mouth in the final action sequence. The movie is full of interesting characters, most with awful speech impediments and a failing degree from some community college theater arts program . The sound quality is simply dreadful, too, mostly ‘cause of that awful jumpy, jazzy car-chase music in the background of almost every scene…. Someone forgot to tell Browning that excessive music from a 12-cup-o’-coffee lounge act playing in fast-forward isn’t a necessity in a “Talky” since the actually “action” is “supposed” to be “spell-binding” enough… (boy, that’s a lot of sarcastic quotation marks in one sentence!) Really, though, it’s hard to hear this movie, so sit close to the TV.

And then be prepared to jump back, as they scream incoherent things and parade around in a circle and wonder why onlookers get annoyed. The circus has some fun subplots. It’s way more than “a look at the freaks” sort of movie, but you gotta see the bearded lady, people… that’s entertainment! It really treats these people with class and dignity, even in the scene where they flip out and turn into vigilante killers, and it’s not a bad story (Teen Wolf 2, that’s a bad story), filmed great, but something is off. I can’t tell what it is…

The movie starts with a long and pointless bit of text that scrolls by in a Star Wars manner, only none of this shit is interesting in anyway. However, it refers to “The Code of the Freaks” which is some kind of mystical order that involves odd chanting and banging of silverware. I’m still not certain where “goobah gobba ONE OF US goobah gobba ONE OF USE!” came from, but it’s in this movie from 1932. The circus folk chant it to the evil chick (not a womanizer… a migdetizer, maybe?) after she agrees to marry the little guy who’s money she’s trying to rip off. She’s freaked out and calls them all names… Couldn’t see that one coming…

Evil people have a natural relationship with freaks… They beat them up and in some cases make them do their dirty work. Skeletor is evil, for example, and has a whole army of hapless freaks to do his bidding. Of course, he doesn’t have to show a little leg or cram Beastman’s face into his boobs to get some service, but you get the idea. Evil people are the natural masters of the freaks. It’s an inevitable fact, and I don’t see why the freaks seems so upset about it.

There’s another woman who isn’t evil, and she starts romancing with a clown, who is actually hilarious… YOU MUST SEE THIS MOVIE, so I won’t give away any of his jokes. In between laughing at the bad acting of the two midget/child people and puzzling over how that one guy without arms or legs manages to slink into almost every scene, you’ll find this clown’s antics very amusing… that’s if you have a soul, so some of you might be in trouble, especially you bastards who aren’t planning to come back to the site after reading this article.

The evil girl, (Cleo, I think) realizes she can’t keep the kid with just lies and the occasional rubbing of his head. So, she decides to poison him and keep him bedridden. Eat your heart out William Faulkner, this is real dementia! So, the freaks band together and decide to take the bitch and her useless foreign boyfriend out of the picture…

The action scene that follows is ridiculous… absolute grade ‘A’ stupid went into this thing… from the badass midget with the switchblade to the armless legless man… with a switchblade. Let this be a lesson to you, don’t mess with the freaks. They will freak you up…

And at the end you see that by some means left ambiguous (but one might say because Browning is chode-bag) the evil woman is turned into a freakish, limbless creep-show that can only make a painfully audible squawking noise…. You guessed it:

You have to see this movie to believe it. If you’re at all interesting in anything weird and bizarre, you should watch this movie. Sure, I suppose you could laugh at the freaks, but I wouldn’t…. they’ll cut you… even if they don’t have hands to do it… when it comes to murderous revenge, all handicaps can be overcome… so, watch the movie and be nice… It’s cute… It’s clever… It’s silly… and the acting is below bad and somewhere around “fecal”… so run to the video store and get it… and wonder why people ran out of the theaters during the original release… too creepy? Or did they just run out to get hearing aids cause they couldn’t understand what those too small people were saying?

It’s a mystery…

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Reader comments:

I just watched tne movie a little while ago, and I must say I disagree with you on most points.

The action sequence was hardly laughable. What made it so scary back then (and just creepy now) was that they weren’t actors. They weren’t wearing special effects make up. All the deformities were real. Any zombie movie fan can tell you the zombie crawling aroudn ont he floor with it’s lower torso gone is much more frightening then the normal looking fully human one.

It was the idea that these were real people, that’s how they really looked.

Still what made the film brilliant was that they weren’t the monsters, the ‘normal’ people were. At times the scenes were genuinely heartbreaking. As when cleopatra doused the dwarf with liquid from the goblet he offered her. Call me a softie but I kinda felt that one.

What made the sequence scary was that they were misshapen, and supposedly crippled. However they were pissed off and nothing was going to stop them. The pinheads, dwarves, and legless people crawling through the mud were very frightening if only because they were real people and it’s hard to imagine them actually doing that.

As to the acting, two things must be said. First this movie was made in the thirties, standards weren’t then quite what they are now, the dialogue from most movies of that period were like that. Second, these weren’t real actors, they were real sideshow freaks. I would imagine it wouldn’t be easy to find someone missing their lower torso who can also masterfully recite Shakespeare.

As to the audio quality, again you have to take into account how old this film was, it wasn’t exactly preserved as a gem either. It was banned for 30 years in many countries, and was only recognized much later as a cult classic, of course under those circumstances the audio and video would have deteriorated a bit.

This is how Freaks and I collided (a few years before purchasing it from a video store where, by their records, it had NEVER been rented). It was late at night, and I’ve never been a huge fan of movies circa 1930s to ‘50s, but something about that scroll intrigued me. As far as the sound, I do recall moving close to the television as not to wake anyone. Here’s an odd thing that psychologists oughta delve into: Old black and white movies freak me out for some odd reason or another. Maybe it’s like watching ghosts because it’s very likely that one hundred percent of the cast and crew are DEAD, only existent in this nightmarish world of alternating dark and light. Too deep? Perhaps, but even comedies, dramas, etc. gave me soemthing of the willies. The subpar (to give it much credit) acting, poor sound, and shaky picture DID give it something of a dreamy nature. Within the first five minutes (actually, ten…Browning’s informative scroll was a bit much), I was terrified!Did I feel ashamed to be terrified, as it was quite obvious that these were no makeup effects? No. I was a young lad, half-asleep, and I was watching an exponentially more horrific version of The Elephant Man on late-night television. Because I couldn’t quite hear what was going on, I relied on my vision, and it was also fading…I was falling asleep. And when did I wake up? “GOO-BAH GA-BAH, ONE OF US!” This freaked me out of a somewhat peaceful slumber (watching a variety of circus freaks commit vigalante acts isn’t exactly as tranquil an experience as dozing off listening to Yanni or some damn body). I curled up in my blanket as tight as I could (perhaps so none of those extraterrestrial-looking girls with the odd-shaped heads could get a stroke of my exposed feet). Then I closed my eyes tightly, hoping that the crappy sound would come back and drown out the audible oddity that was filling my ears. Eventually, it cut to Cleo bitching about the horrid freaks, only to become one herself. I think I was more amazed than shocked that the human torso was able to successfully open, AND brandish a switch-blade. Freaks startled me, but it grew tamer as I grew older. It’s laughable as far as horror goes nowadays, but it’s timeless in its tolerance vs. ignorance message, and also in its brutal (for its time) depiction of vigalante justice. Moments like this were rare for early films like it. Browning definitely made a name for himself by tredding in unfamiliar water.

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Freaks Movie Review

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