#tod browning freaks

[sixty-silver-wishes]

thinking about the dichotomy between “freaks” (1932) and “the greatest showman”

greatest showman: “here’s an inspirational film about your differences are what make you beautiful! look how nice this sanitized version of pt barnum is to all the circus freaks!”

freaks: “ableists deserve to be fucking mutilated into abominations against nature and ridiculed for the rest of their miserable, pathetic lives. also hey look it’s johnny eck”

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[goryhorroor]

freaks (1932) directed by tod browning

"Why is it, we women always have stuff to worry." "Oh, it's always been that way. I guess it always will be."

[moratoirenoir]

[gothicbutcher666]

𝕱𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖐𝖘 (1932) 𝖉𝖎𝖗. 𝕿𝖔𝖉 𝕭𝖗𝖔𝖜𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌

[filmjunky-99]

f r e a k s, 1932 🎬 dir. tod browning

'We accept her, one of us. We accept her, one of us. Gooble-gobble, gooble-gobble.'

[creepynostalgy]

Olga Baclanova and Tod Browning on set of Freaks (1932)

[thewarmestplacetohide]

"To me, you're a man. But to her, you're only something to laugh at." Freaks (1932) dir. Tod Browning My Ko-fi

[brokehorrorfan]

Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on October 17 via The Criterion Collection. The set collects three films directed by Tod Browning: Freaks, The Unknown, and The Mystic.

Freaks (also known as The Monster Story, Forbidden Love, and Nature's Mistake) is a 1932 horror film written by Willis Goldbeck and Leon Gordon. Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, and Roscoe Ates star.

The Unknown is a 1927 silent horror film written by Waldemar Young. Lon Chaney, Norman Kerry, Joan Crawford, and Nick De Ruiz star.

The Mystic is a 1925 silent drama film written by Browning and Young. Aileen Pringle, Conway Tearle, and Mitchell Lewis star.

Freaks has been digitally restored in 2K with uncompressed monaural sound. The Unknown has been digitally reconstructed and restored in 2K with a new score by composer Philip Carli. The Mystic has been digitally restored in 2K with a new score by composer Dean Hurley.

Raphael Geroni designed the cover art. Special features are detailed below.

Special features:

Freaks audio commentary by film scholar David J. Skal

The Unknown audio commentary by film scholar David J. Skal

The Mystic introduction by film scholar David J. Skal

Interview with author Megan Abbott about director Tod Browning and pre-Code horror (new)

Freaks archival documentary

"Spurs" - Reading of Tod Robbins' short story on which Freaks is based

Freaks prolgue, added to the film in 1947

Freaks alternate endings featurette

Freaks portrait video glalery

Essay by film critic Farran Smith Nehme

The most transgressive film produced by a major American studio in the 1930s, Tod Browning’s crowning achievement has haunted the margins of cinema for nearly one hundred years. An unforgettable cast of real-life sideshow performers portray the entertainers in a traveling circus who, shunned by mainstream society, live according to their own code—one of radical acceptance for the fellow oppressed and, as the show’s beautiful but cruel trapeze artist learns, of terrifying retribution for those who cross them. Received with revulsion by viewers upon its initial release, Freaks effectively ended Browning’s career but can now be seen for what it is: an audacious cry for understanding and a singular experience of nightmarish, almost avant-garde power.

The most celebrated and exquisitely perverse of the many collaborations between Tod Browning and his legendary leading man Lon Chaney, The Unknown features a wrenchingly physical performance from “the Man of a Thousand Faces” as the armless Spanish knife thrower Alonzo (he flings daggers with his feet) whose dastardly infatuation with his beautiful assistant (Joan Crawford)—a woman, it just so happens, who cannot bear to be touched by the hands of any man—drives him to unspeakable extremes. Sadomasochistic obsession, deception, murder, disfigurement, and a spectacular Grand Guignol climax—Browning wrings every last frisson from the lurid premise.

A fantastically atmospheric but rarely seen missing link in the development of Tod Browning’s artistry, set amid his favored milieu of shadowy sideshows and clever criminals, The Mystic provides a striking showcase for silent-era diva Aileen Pringle, who sports a series of memorably outré looks (courtesy of art-deco designer Erté) as Zara, a phony psychic in a Hungarian carnival who, under the guidance of a Svengali-like con man (Conway Tearle), crashes—and proceeds to swindle—American high society. Browning’s fascination with the weird is on full display in the eerie séance sequences, while his subversive moral ambiguity extends surprising sympathy to even the most seemingly irredeemable of antiheroes.

[splatteronmywalls]

[mtonino]

Cinediario 2023 - gennaio

Freaks (1932) Tod Browning

[sixty-silver-wishes]

she gooble on my gobble til I turn her into a half-chicken half-human abomination

[fanofspooky]

365 horror movies day 350:

FREAKS (1932)

“We didn't lie to you folks. We told you we had living, breathing, monstrosities. You laughed at them, shuddered at them. And, yet, but for the accident of birth, you might be one as they are. They did not ask to be brought into the world. But, into the world they came. Their code is a law unto themselves: offend one and you offend them all.”

[schlock-luster-video]

On November 18, 2006, Freaks and Mark of the Vampire were screened as a double-feature on TCM Underground.

Here's some new art inspired by both horror classics!

[evilhorse]

Tod Browning reference? My man.

(NYX Volume 2 #2)

[filmjunky-99]

f r e a k s, 1932 🎬 dir. tod browning 'The Wedding Banquet'