Freaks is a 1932 horror film in which the eponymous characters were played by people who worked as carnival sideshow performers and had real deformities. The original version was considered too shocking to be released, and no longer exists. Directed and produced by Tod Browning, whose career never recovered from it, Freaks has been described as standing alone in a sub-genre of one. Despite the extensive cuts, the film was still negatively received by audiences, recording a loss of $164,000, and remained an object of extreme controversy. Today, the parts that were removed are considered lost. Browning, famed at the time for his collaborations with Lon Chaney and for directing Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931), had trouble finding work afterward, and this effectively brought his career to an early close. Because its deformed cast was shocking to filmgoers of the time, the film was banned in the United Kingdom for 30 years. Beginning in the early 1960s, Freaks was rediscovered as a counterculture cult film, and throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the film was regularly shown at midnight movie screenings at several theaters in the United States. In 1994, Freaks was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. It was ranked 15th on Bravo TVs list of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 14:15:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015