A startlingly brave film for the time it was made in, Freaks is a genuinely empathetic story that still retains its power today. Quite who the real monsters are becomes clearer the more we are taken into the world of these circus performers. The horror arrives not from those who appear different from the 'norm' but those who cannot accept them.

There are moments of course where Tod Browning verges on exploiting the very same people he is trying to humanise. Some scenes are clearly set up as a spectacle, such as the man without limbs lighting his own cigarette or the rush to the bearded lady's tent to see her newborn. Yet by not filming their performances in the…

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Film #1 of "Scavenger Hunt #4" Challenge!
Task #4 : Film featuring dwarf(s)
letterboxd.com/naughty/list/scavenger-hunt-4/
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I imagine this film must have shook the audiences to their very core back in the 1930's when this came out! Mankind was still reeling over the fact the earth is round not flat! They were still very much stuck in a quagmire of old wives tales, omens and superstitions!

Tricky business depicting deformity in the cinema! More times than not.. in the cinematic equivalent of the "Dark Ages" depicting deformity earned your film a good sound banning!

Thankfully I'm from a time and age where deformed and or handicapped fellow human beings are no longer looked upon with repulsion or disgust and treated…

"One of us, one of us, we accept her, we accept her" - The Freaks,

-Daily Horror Hunt #13 (July 2019): boxd.it/3uAuO
Day 23: A horror feel that takes place in the circus.

If I could light a cigarette like that I'd still be smoking.

In Freaks, we spend a short period of time in a traveling circus/freak show as used to exist at the time of this film. Much of the film is seeing the different characters interact with each other and soaking up the atmosphere. These were real people who were performing at the time. You see some of the "pinheads," a man missing the bottom half of his body, a little person with no limbs, the bearded…

Often mistakenly considered a horror film due to its director being associated predominately with the genre, particularly after helming Universal Pictures Dracula, Freaks is instead a unique film about a travelling carnival sideshow and the camaraderie of its extraordinary performers. 

Browning, who had a personal background as a vaudeville performer, assembled a remarkable cast with some genuine abnormalities, many of whom had primarily made their living in circuses and sideshows. The film obtained immediate notoriety where it was the victim of harsh censorship in the US as well as strangely being banned in the UK for almost thirty years. 

It's a bizarre and fascinating film which expends a large amount of its runtime exhibiting its cast of characters occupied in…

Geoff T's Hoop-Tober 4.0 Challenge
Freaks (1932)

And so I finally begin Hoop-Tober 4.0, maybe a little later than everyone else but better late than never I suppose. The first viewing is this controversial oddity from 1932, which has a bit of history behind it. It's taboo nature led to it being banned in the UK for a good 30 years, and being heavily scorned by critics even when MGM removed parts prior to release, who ended up disowning it all together.

Freaks looks into the happenings of a travelling circus trope, whose attractions include all kinds of people with bizarre defects, from dwarfism to conjoined twins, to people without limbs or torsos (!). The key story is about trapeze…

We accept you, one of us! Gooble Gobble!
-Freaks

A year after Tod Browning immortalized Bela Lugosi as Dracula he came out with the ever so controversial Freaks, a film that, all things considered, is better then the director's more famous earlier outing. It's also the film that supposedly brought on the demise of his career.

Looking at the poster you can see the studio trying to sell the picture as an exploitation flick with headlines like "Can a full grown woman truly love a midget?". MGM was basically acting like a carnival barker trying to get spectators to look at their "freakshow".

The film itself is much more then the poster suggests though. While it's cast mostly all have…