The tyranist's thoughts
This one is sort of legendary in horror circles and so when Rish and I were together long enough to take in a couple movies we felt that we must see this one. You might wonder why we hadn't felt that way when selecting the 548 movies that we've reviewed previous to this one. The truth is that I think we'd only seen it once for rental before now.
So there's a circus sideshow making its way across unknown country. Behind the scenes one of the company midgets is falling in love with one of the regular circus lovelies, breaking the heart of his similarly sized girlfriend. Eventually, the lovely finds out that he is rich. Well, you can imagine what would happen.
The movie has the reputation for being shocking and was banned for a number of years, but I found it, instead, to be tragic. There really aren't any scares unless, of course, you find the sideshow freaks to be scary. The plot is a traditional tragic love/revenge story played out by some unusual actors.
Legend has it that the original cut of the movie was longer and I wish that we could see that today. In its current form, there seems to be little punch left to the movie and several plot holes that are never adequately answered.
I think that the cult status this film has maintained is really due to the same inate curiousity that keeps sideshows running even today, but really, it should probably be seen for the interesting story. Too bad we can't look past our preconceptions sometimes to appreciate a sad tale for what it is. In my opinion the movie is not truly horror, but we can't help but review it anyway.

Rish's Reviews
One of the most notorious films ever made, Freaks isn’t so much a horror film as it is a drama and morality play . . . more The Elephant Man than The Wolf Man. Director Tod Browning had recently come of the tremendous success of Dracula, and, it is said, ruined his career with the release of Freaks. It offended people's sensibilities, I guess. And the film is rather heartbreaking, but certainly it's because of the physical characteristics of the characters, rather than in spite of them.
The film is still pretty disturbing today, in the 21st Century, but only because of the oddities the film employs. I can't figure out why the British would've banned this film for thirty years (can they really be that intolerant?), unless they believed the unfortunates were being exploited by the film.
Look, deplorable or not, EVERYBODY gawks at car accidents. And this is the same thing, except that you get to know the people involved. And though these people can be physically grotesque, the film presents them as people, not mistakes, not creatures of the dark, not monsters. In fact, the most disturbing of the freaks, the man with no arms and legs, astounded tyranist and me with his impressive ingenuity. The story told in the film is a human one, with the moral being that the "normal" people were the true monsters.
As mentioned above, the film has been edited, and apparently the footage is forever lost. Kind of like my innocence.
Line To Remember: "Gooble gobble, gooble gobble, we accept you, we accept you!"
Note: I can't believe tyranist, who is even more uptight than than a priest getting a colonic agreed that "Bitch" was the Threat. Thank God his mother doesn't know this website exists.