Freaks (1932)

Tod Browning made Freaks for MGM in 1932, arriving off the back of Dracula (1931), which had been a significant commercial success for Universal. MGM's willingness to greenlight the project reflects the brief but intense pre-Code window when Hollywood studios could push boundaries that would soon be firmly shut by the Hays Office. Browning cast actual sideshow performers, including microcephalics, conjoined twins, and amputees, a decision that horrified preview audiences and prompted MGM to cut roughly thirty minutes from the film before release. It was pulled from distribution shortly after, banned outright in the United Kingdom for over thirty years, and is widely considered one of the most commercially catastrophic misfires in the studio's early history.

My stoner friend first showed me this. There’s no denying that Freaks is a disturbing film, not just for its content, but for the questions it raises about who it was made for and what it’s trying to achieve. Directed by Tod Browning, it features a cast of real performers with physical disabilities, drawn from circus sideshows, and places them at the heart of a dark morality tale about betrayal and revenge. On one level, it could be seen as an attempt to humanise those society marginalised. The film begins with a sense of community, warmth, and loyalty among the sideshow troupe. But it doesn’t take long for that empathy to curdle. The tone shifts uneasily, and the film starts to feel less like a plea for compassion and more like a voyeuristic spectacle. The able-bodied characters (particularly the villainous trapeze artist Cleopatra) are the ones who look and speak like “regular” people, while the disabled cast are framed through lingering close-ups that emphasise their differences. The infamous final act, with its grotesque, rain-soaked punishment, is meant to shock, but it crosses into exploitation, playing on fear and revulsion rather than delivering real justice or catharsis. It’s hard to watch without discomfort, and harder still to decide whether it’s progressive or prurient. At times it feels ahead of its time in giving space to voices rarely seen on screen; at others, it feels like it’s gawking at them. It’s not a film that aged well, nor one that feels truly respectful. Freaks is historically significant, yes, but it’s also deeply troubling, and its legacy is rightly complicated. More a curiosity than a classic.

Rating: ★★  | Year: 1932  | Watched: 2025-07-29

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Tod Browning: The Unknown (1927)
More from the 1930s: Earth (1930) · Monkey Business (1931) · Sabotage (1936) · People on Sunday (1930)
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