Freaks

Freaks

Director: Tod Browning
Country: USA

1932 | 64 min. | English
Subtitles: German
FSK 16

Cast_ Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Roscoe Ates, Henry Victor Screenplay_ Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon Camera_ Merritt B. Gerstad Producer_ Irving Thalberg Rights_ Warner Bros. Pictures Germany

Of all the boundary-pushing films of the 1930s, this groundbreaking horror movie is one of the most notorious.

The money-hungry trapeze artist Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) marries the diminutive circus performer Hans (Harry Earles) in order to obtain his inheritance. Hans’s friends find out about this plan, however, and devise a terrible revenge.

›Freaks‹ is set in the world of sideshows, a form of fairground entertainment. People with physical deformities were often put on display there. Played by actual sideshow performers, it focuses on a community of marginalized people who cultivate radical acceptance. A scandal at its premiere, the film was celebrated as an avant-garde masterpiece from the 1960s onwards.

Director

Tod Browning (1889-1962) worked as a director and actor, and is today best known for his horror films of the 1920s and 30s. Alongside ›Freaks‹, his most famous works include ›The Unholy Three‹ (1925), ›The Unknown‹ (1927), ›Dracula‹ (1931) and ›Mark of the Vampire‹ (1935).

Trailer

Screenings