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Black & White - B & W Freaks Remastered Rare LaserDisc Ford Baclanova Horror

Freaks Remastered Rare LaserDisc Ford Baclanova Horror

Real-Life Sideshow Performers Cast as Vengeful Freaks

Freaks Remastered Rare LaserDisc Ford Baclanova Horror

Real-Life Sideshow Performers Cast as Vengeful Freaks

Rare Remastered, LaserDisc Movie Near-Mint LaserDisc and Jacket Wallace Ford and...

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Freaks Remastered Rare LaserDisc Ford Baclanova Horror

Real-Life Sideshow Performers Cast as Vengeful Freaks

Rare Remastered, LaserDisc Movie Near-Mint LaserDisc and Jacket Wallace Ford and...

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Rare Remastered, LaserDisc Movie

Near-Mint LaserDisc and Jacket

Wallace Ford and Leila Hyams in... Tod Browning's...

Freaks

( Catalog Number ML104507 )
(1.33:1) (2 Sides) (CLV) (NTSC)

LaserDisc Special Features

Best Version on LaserDisc

Freaks
1932 - 66 min. - Black and White
Genre: Horror
Not Rated
Country: USA

LaserDisc Movie Storyline:
When released theatrically in 1932, FREAKS was met with near universal disgust by critics and audiences alike, lasting in theatres for only a short time in the states and banned in England. The film stars Harry Earles as Hans, a suave midget who belongs to the sideshow of a seedy circus and who makes the mistake of falling in love with the beautiful Cleopatra, one of the "normal" circus performers. Learning that Hans is about to inherit a fortune, Cleopatra agrees to marry Hans even though she abhors him, planning to steal his money and get rid of him. When the freaks of the circus, who keep a watchful eye on Cleopatra, discover her scheme, they plan to exact an unforgettable revenge. 

Far more unsettling than Browning's best known horror film, DRACULA, FREAKS has long been neglected due to its subject matter, even though it is a genuinely effective film. Gripping and often creepy, FREAKS manages to humanize its main performers, even looking at them with a sense of awe. By contrast, the "normal" performers in the film are largely hateful creatures who turn out to be much more repellant than their deformed colleagues. Both an excellent horror film and a unique look at the lives of sideshow performers, FREAKS is a chilling movie whose final ten minutes are some of the most harrowing in all of cinema.

LaserDisc Movie Review:
The genesis of MGM's Freaks was a magazine piece by Ted Robbins titled Spurs. The story involved a terrible revenge enacted by a mean-spirited circus midget upon his normal-sized wife. In adapting Spurs for the screen, writers Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon, Edgar Allen Wolf and Al Boasberg retained the circus setting and the little man-big woman wedding, all the while de-vilifying the midget and transforming the woman into the true "heavy" of the piece. German "little person" Harry Earles plays Hans, who falls in love with long-legged trapeze artist Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova). Discovering that Hans is heir to a fortune, Cleopatra inveigles him into a marriage, all the while planning to bump off her new husband and run away with brutish strongman Hercules (Henry Victor). What she doesn't reckon with is the code of honor among circus freaks: "offend one, offend them all." At the wedding reception, the freaks ritualistically accept Cleopatra as "one of us", but she drunkenly spurns this honor and goes out of her way to humiliate Hans. Things come to a head when it is discovered that Cleopatra is slowly poisoning Hans, and that Hercules has tried to rape "normal" seal trainer Venus (Leila Hyams), who has always treated the freaks with kindness. Banding together, the freaks drive Cleopatra and Hans into a blinding rainstorm. Cornering their prey, the freaks slowly advance toward the villains. What set this film apart from director Tod Browning's earlier efforts was the fact that genuine circus and carnival sideshow performers were cast as the freaks: Harry Earles and his equally diminutive sister Daisy, Siamese twins Violet and Daisy Hilton, torsoless Johnny Eck, armless-legless Randian (who rolls cigarettes with his teeth), androgynous Josephine-Joseph, "pinheads" Schlitzie, Elvira, Jennie Lee Snow, and so on. Upon its initial release, Freaks was greeted with such revulsion from moviehouse audiences that MGM spent the next thirty years distancing themselves as far from the project as possible. For many years available only in a truncated reissue version titled Nature's Mistakes, Freaks was eventually restored to its original release print. --- Hal Erickson

If you regard audacity as a quality to be admired in filmmaking, it's hard not to be a bit in awe of Tod Browning, who with Freaks made one of the grimmest and most offensive films of its era --- and managed this feat at MGM, the most glamorous studio in Hollywood. A pre-Code tale of love, deceit, and revenge at a carnival midway, with a frank-for-its-day approach to sexual gamesmanship and violent retribution among its characters, Freaks would have raised a few eyebrows under ideal circumstances. But Browning upped the ante by casting real-life human oddities in supporting roles, most of whom would never have appeared in a major studio film otherwise. You can't say that Schlitzie the Pinhead, Randian the Living Torso, or Daisy and Violet Hilton the Siamese Twins are great actors, but their flatness merely adds to the film's impact. Incapable of "acting" in the conventional sense, they are what they are, and the blunt realism of their flat onscreen affect takes this film to a place that no other film of the day would dare to go. And while Browning uses the freaks for their shock value, he also allows them to live offstage lives that aren't played for laughs; if their final revenge is ugly, it shows them seizing power in a way that would be denied them in nearly any other dramatic context. Freaks is generally considered to be the film that killed Tod Browning's career; but what's remarkable isn't that he would make only four more films after this one, but that he was allowed to make any more films at all. --- Mark D

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Cast for Freaks

Wallace Ford - Phroso
Leila Hyams - Venus
Olga Baclanova - Cleopatra
Roscoe Ates - Roscoe
Harry Earles - Hans
Henry Victor - Hercules
Daisy Earles - Frieda
Rose Dione - Mme. Tetrallini
Daisy Hilton - Siamese Twin
Violet Hilton - Siamese Twin
Matt McHugh - Rollo Brother
Randian - Himself
Michael Visaroff - Jean the Caretaker
Frank O'Connor - Herself
Olga Roderick - Bearded Lady
Angelo Rossitto - Angeleno
Jennie Lee Snow - Herself
Peter Robinson - Human Skeleton
Schlitzie - Herself
Zip - Themselves
Edward S. Brophy - Rollo Brother
Albert Conti - Landowner
Louise Beavers - Maid
Ernie S. Adams - Sideshow Patron
Martha Morris - Armless Girl
Josephine-Joseph - Him/Herself
Tom London
Johnny Eck - Johnny the Half Boy
Elizabeth Green - Bird Girl
Elvira Snow - Herself

Crew for Freaks

Tod Browning - Director / Producer
Al Boasberg - Screenwriter
Willis Goldbeck - Screenwriter
Leon Gordon - Screenwriter
Ted Robbins - Story Author
Edgar Allan Woolf - Screenwriter
Merritt B. Gerstad - Cinematographer
Basil Wrangell - Editor

Feature Details

Title: Freaks
Feature Release Date: 1932
Genre: Horror
Rating: Not Rated
Color: Black and White
Runtime: 66 Minutes
Chapters: 30
Picture: Academy Ratio
Ratio: 1.33:1
Playback Format: CLV

IMDB Info...

Technical Details

LD Release Date: 13 Oct 1993
Catalog Number: ML104507
UPC: 027616450760
ISBN: 0-7928-2047-9
Manufacturer: Pioneer USA
Publisher: MGM/UA Home Video

Diameter: 12"
Sides: 2
Cover: Jacket
Spoken Language: English
Country: USA
Video Format: NTSC

Model: ML104507
Shipping Weight: 1 lbs
0 in Stock

Rare Remastered, LaserDisc Movie

Near-Mint LaserDisc and Jacket

Wallace Ford and Leila Hyams in... Tod Browning's...

Freaks

( Catalog Number ML104507 )
(1.33:1) (2 Sides) (CLV) (NTSC)

LaserDisc Special Features

Best Version on LaserDisc

Freaks
1932 - 66 min. - Black and White
Genre: Horror
Not Rated
Country: USA

LaserDisc Movie Storyline:
When released theatrically in 1932, FREAKS was met with near universal disgust by critics and audiences alike, lasting in theatres for only a short time in the states and banned in England. The film stars Harry Earles as Hans, a suave midget who belongs to the sideshow of a seedy circus and who makes the mistake of falling in love with the beautiful Cleopatra, one of the "normal" circus performers. Learning that Hans is about to inherit a fortune, Cleopatra agrees to marry Hans even though she abhors him, planning to steal his money and get rid of him. When the freaks of the circus, who keep a watchful eye on Cleopatra, discover her scheme, they plan to exact an unforgettable revenge. 

Far more unsettling than Browning's best known horror film, DRACULA, FREAKS has long been neglected due to its subject matter, even though it is a genuinely effective film. Gripping and often creepy, FREAKS manages to humanize its main performers, even looking at them with a sense of awe. By contrast, the "normal" performers in the film are largely hateful creatures who turn out to be much more repellant than their deformed colleagues. Both an excellent horror film and a unique look at the lives of sideshow performers, FREAKS is a chilling movie whose final ten minutes are some of the most harrowing in all of cinema.

LaserDisc Movie Review:
The genesis of MGM's Freaks was a magazine piece by Ted Robbins titled Spurs. The story involved a terrible revenge enacted by a mean-spirited circus midget upon his normal-sized wife. In adapting Spurs for the screen, writers Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon, Edgar Allen Wolf and Al Boasberg retained the circus setting and the little man-big woman wedding, all the while de-vilifying the midget and transforming the woman into the true "heavy" of the piece. German "little person" Harry Earles plays Hans, who falls in love with long-legged trapeze artist Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova). Discovering that Hans is heir to a fortune, Cleopatra inveigles him into a marriage, all the while planning to bump off her new husband and run away with brutish strongman Hercules (Henry Victor). What she doesn't reckon with is the code of honor among circus freaks: "offend one, offend them all." At the wedding reception, the freaks ritualistically accept Cleopatra as "one of us", but she drunkenly spurns this honor and goes out of her way to humiliate Hans. Things come to a head when it is discovered that Cleopatra is slowly poisoning Hans, and that Hercules has tried to rape "normal" seal trainer Venus (Leila Hyams), who has always treated the freaks with kindness. Banding together, the freaks drive Cleopatra and Hans into a blinding rainstorm. Cornering their prey, the freaks slowly advance toward the villains. What set this film apart from director Tod Browning's earlier efforts was the fact that genuine circus and carnival sideshow performers were cast as the freaks: Harry Earles and his equally diminutive sister Daisy, Siamese twins Violet and Daisy Hilton, torsoless Johnny Eck, armless-legless Randian (who rolls cigarettes with his teeth), androgynous Josephine-Joseph, "pinheads" Schlitzie, Elvira, Jennie Lee Snow, and so on. Upon its initial release, Freaks was greeted with such revulsion from moviehouse audiences that MGM spent the next thirty years distancing themselves as far from the project as possible. For many years available only in a truncated reissue version titled Nature's Mistakes, Freaks was eventually restored to its original release print. --- Hal Erickson

If you regard audacity as a quality to be admired in filmmaking, it's hard not to be a bit in awe of Tod Browning, who with Freaks made one of the grimmest and most offensive films of its era --- and managed this feat at MGM, the most glamorous studio in Hollywood. A pre-Code tale of love, deceit, and revenge at a carnival midway, with a frank-for-its-day approach to sexual gamesmanship and violent retribution among its characters, Freaks would have raised a few eyebrows under ideal circumstances. But Browning upped the ante by casting real-life human oddities in supporting roles, most of whom would never have appeared in a major studio film otherwise. You can't say that Schlitzie the Pinhead, Randian the Living Torso, or Daisy and Violet Hilton the Siamese Twins are great actors, but their flatness merely adds to the film's impact. Incapable of "acting" in the conventional sense, they are what they are, and the blunt realism of their flat onscreen affect takes this film to a place that no other film of the day would dare to go. And while Browning uses the freaks for their shock value, he also allows them to live offstage lives that aren't played for laughs; if their final revenge is ugly, it shows them seizing power in a way that would be denied them in nearly any other dramatic context. Freaks is generally considered to be the film that killed Tod Browning's career; but what's remarkable isn't that he would make only four more films after this one, but that he was allowed to make any more films at all. --- Mark D

Thanks for Visiting DaDon's !

Reviews, Articles, Newsletter and Information for Movies on LaserDisc LD Laser Disc, LazerDisc.

Cast for Freaks

Wallace Ford - Phroso
Leila Hyams - Venus
Olga Baclanova - Cleopatra
Roscoe Ates - Roscoe
Harry Earles - Hans
Henry Victor - Hercules
Daisy Earles - Frieda
Rose Dione - Mme. Tetrallini
Daisy Hilton - Siamese Twin
Violet Hilton - Siamese Twin
Matt McHugh - Rollo Brother
Randian - Himself
Michael Visaroff - Jean the Caretaker
Frank O'Connor - Herself
Olga Roderick - Bearded Lady
Angelo Rossitto - Angeleno
Jennie Lee Snow - Herself
Peter Robinson - Human Skeleton
Schlitzie - Herself
Zip - Themselves
Edward S. Brophy - Rollo Brother
Albert Conti - Landowner
Louise Beavers - Maid
Ernie S. Adams - Sideshow Patron
Martha Morris - Armless Girl
Josephine-Joseph - Him/Herself
Tom London
Johnny Eck - Johnny the Half Boy
Elizabeth Green - Bird Girl
Elvira Snow - Herself

Crew for Freaks

Tod Browning - Director / Producer
Al Boasberg - Screenwriter
Willis Goldbeck - Screenwriter
Leon Gordon - Screenwriter
Ted Robbins - Story Author
Edgar Allan Woolf - Screenwriter
Merritt B. Gerstad - Cinematographer
Basil Wrangell - Editor

Feature Details

Technical Details

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