Freaks
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- For any of several albums with the title "Freaks", see Freaks (album).
The movie was adapted by Al Boasberg, Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon, and Edgar Allan Woolf from the short story Spurs by Tod Robbins. Browning, famed at the time for directing Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931), took the exceptional step of casting real people with deformities as the eponymous sideshow "freaks", rather than using costumes and makeup. Director Browning had been a member of a travelling circus in his early years, and much of the film was drawn from his personal experiences. He intended to portray the classic moral of how beauty on the outside does not necessarily equate to beauty on the inside. In the film, the physically deformed "freaks" are inherently trusting and honorable people, while the real monsters are two of the "normal" members of the circus who conspire to murder Hans in order to obtain his large inheritance.
Reaction to this film was so intense that Browning had trouble finding work afterwards, and this in effect brought his career to an early close. The movie was banned in the United Kingdom for thirty years.
The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Overview
Freaks tells the story of an average-sized trapeze artist named Cleopatra (played by Olga Baclanova) who marries a sideshow midget Hans, (played by Harry Earles) for money that he had inherited. She mocks the other members of the troupe during their wedding celebrations and faces their retribution when she, along with her accomplice and lover, the strongman (Henry Victor), attempt to poison Hans. The film also stars Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, and Earles' real-life sister Daisy Earles.
Among the characters featured as "freaks" were the Hilton twins, a pair of female conjoined twins, and the armless wonders, Frances O'Connor and Martha Morris. There were several microcephiles who were referred to in the film as "pinheads". The most notable of these was Schlitzie, who wore a dress mainly to make it easier to use the loo, but who was in fact a male named Simon Metz. Other microcephiles were Zip and Pip (Elvira and Jenny Lee Snow, the inspiration for Zippy the Pinhead). Also featured were the intersexual Josephine Joseph, with her left/right divided gender; Johnny Eck, the legless man; and the completely limbless Prince Randian (also known as The Human Torso, and mis-credited as "Rardion), who, in a notable scene lights a cigarette with his mouth. There was also Koo-Koo the Bird Girl (who suffered from Virchow-Seckel syndrome or bird-headed dwarfism) and is most remembered for the scene where she dances on the table, Elizabeth Green the Stork Woman, Pete Robinson the Living Skeleton and Olga Roderick the Bearded Lady.
Adaptations and influence
A comics adaptation of Freaks was published in four issues by Monster Comics in 1982, written by Jim Woodring and illustrated by F. Solano Lopez.
The movie was one of the inspirations for the television show Carnivàle on HBO, which is also set in the 1930s.
The famous quote
At one point in the film, the Freak crowd cry: "Gooble gobble, gooble gobble, we accept her, we accept her, one of us, one of us!" It is a phrase that has been used in homage numerous times since, including:
- In a season 1 episode of The Simpsons called "There's No Disgrace Like Home" and the South Park episode "Butters' Very Own Episode".
- In the [[Clerks:_The_Animated_Series|Clerks Animated Series]]. episode 6.
- It was the inspiration for the Ramones' song "Pinhead" (quoted as "Gabba Gabba").
- The quote also appears in Robert Altman's The Player (1992).
- And in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers with the accompanying clip playing after the characters say the line.
- And in the Marillion song "Separated Out", from the album Anoraknophobia.
- In an issue of the comic book Harley Quinn. Harley, a former psychiatrist, is herself sent to live in Arkham Asylum after repeatedly freeing The Joker. As she is being led to her cell, Dr. Arkham asks her "Why did you do it? You were one of us!" prompting her to chant "One of us! One of us!" and the other inmates to join in.
Other references
- In DVD commentary for the third season of The Kids in the Hall, Mark McKinney states that two of the show's recurring characters, Kevin McDonald's Bearded Lady and his own Chicken Lady, were inspired by the movie.
- Bill Griffith's comic strip character Zippy the Pinhead was inspired by Schlitzie the pinhead in the film
- David Bowie references Browning's film 'Freaks' within the first verse of Diamond Dogs:
- ''As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent,
- ''You ask for the latest party,
- ''With your silicone hump and your ten inch stump,
- ''Dressed like a freak you was,
- Todd Browning's freak you was.
- A screen capture of Hans has become an internet meme. It was apparently from the DVD, as there is a subtitle of "Never before did I think I should be so unlucky."
- Frank Zappa once called it one of his favourite films. Note that his debut album was called Freak Out! and he used to call himself and the fans of his music "freaks", a name with the same kind of "proud label" as "hippie", though as Zappa put it himself: "more original and creative".
External links
- [Information about the cast of "Freaks"]
- [Freaks critique from ClassicHorrorFilms.com]
- [Tod Robbins' Spurs (PDF format)]
- [DVD review of the film]
- http://www.paradiselost.org/freaks.html
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