Search - Freaks on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Violence, Adult Situations, Not For Children Movie Release: 1932 DVD Release: 08/10/2004 Format: DVD - Black and White Edition: Dual Layered Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: English, French, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 2 mins Studio: Warner Home Video Members Wishing: 37 Genres: Drama, Thriller, Melodrama, Psychological Thriller

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 Allan 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." 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, legless 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 movie-house audiences that MGM spent the next 30 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, All Movie Guide

Wallace Ford - Phroso
Leila Hyams - Venus
Olga Baclanova - Cleopatra
Roscoe Ates - Roscoe
Harry Earles - Hans
Henry Victor - Hercules

Without question one of the most shocking and controversial features in cinema history, director Tod Browning's Freaks arrives on DVD with some revealing extras. Presented in 1.33:1 full-frame, the image is crisp and clean -- free of debris or digital artifacting. Blacks are universally solid, and whites remain vivid without becoming too bright or washed-out. One notable exception is the film's brief coda, which appears much more washed-out and overblown than the majority of the film. Audio is rendered in closed-captioned English Dolby Digital Mono with optional English subtitles (a welcome addition even to English-speaking audiences, as a few key lines of dialogue are virtually indecipherable) and is likewise bold and clean. Though fans who have been eagerly anticipating a DVD release for Freaks may lament the loss of key footage mentioned in both the commentary and featurette (the film originally ran at approximately 90 minutes before terrifying unsuspecting audiences and subsequently being trimmed down to just over 60), the generous extras as presented here may soften the blow of knowing that nearly a half-hour of Browning's masterpiece is likely lost forever. Commentary by Browning biographer David J. Skal explodes out of the gates by christening the film one of "the strangest and most controversial films ever produced by a major studio" before the title card is even displayed, and remains an informative and exciting feature before losing some steam toward the end of the film. Clocking in at just over an hour, the supplemental documentary "Freaks: Sideshow Cinema" offers an absorbing look into the lives of Browning and his unusual cast through interviews with such figures as Skal, sideshow performer/historians Todd Robbins and Johnny Meah, and actors Mark Povinelli and Jerry Maren. A special scrolling prologue will help to prepare unsuspecting viewers for the physical anomalies they are about to witness, and after giving a tantalizing look at the long-lost original ending, commentator Skal walks viewers through three alternate endings that are little more than slight variations of the ending viewers have grown accustomed to over the years. One could only hope that some day Browning's "lost" footage will emerge and pave the way for a more definitive cut of his original vision, but until then, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's fantastic release will likely stand as the definitive version of this one-of-a-kind film. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide