Freaks (1932)
Directed By: Tod Browning
Written By: Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon
Starring: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Roscoe Ates
Length: 62 min.
Genre: Drama, Horror
The movie is a tale of the personal relationships among the carnies of a circus act, mostly on the 'freaks'. One of the little people, Hans, is engaged to another little person, Frieda, but once a pretty trapeze artist starts flirting with him, he starts to fall for her. She is Cleopatra and is in a relationship with a circus strongman, Hercules. She toys with Hans and Hans pulls more and more away from Frieda.
Cleopatra learns that Hans is actually very wealthy, so she gets Hans to leave Frieda for her and they get married. She starts poisoning him at their wedding reception but ends up lashing out at the rest of the 'freaks' when they start singing "Google gobble, google gobble, we accept you, one of us".
The freaks, and eventually Hans, realize she's up to no good, catch her in the act of continuing to poison Hans, and chase her down as she tries to flee. That last part is when the "horror" shows up.
At first, I was disappointed in the movie. I had thought it was going to be much more of a horror movie than it was. I built the movie up in my head over the years to something it probably wasn't going to live up to. But after thinking about it for awhile, I think it was a really good movie. The pace was really good, the directing was good. An overall good movie.
Fun fact: The actor who played Hans was a member of the lollipop guild in the Wizard of Oz. Frieda was a villager of Munchkinland as well.
My Rating: 7/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.2/10 (1k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A, 67% of Audience (3.7 / 5 ; 167 votes)