Twitch

Friend Micah Harris, together with artist Michael Gaydos is the author of Image Comics recent graphic novel, Heaven's War, which pits self proclaimed "Wickedest man" Alistair Crowley against the Christian Writers group The Inklings. It's a great tale combining time travel, historical occult overview, Charles Williams Romantic Theology, and the lives of participants Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams and Crowley.

He's also a lifelong fan of this classic film and when I asked him to review the recent excellent Warner DVD Special Edition he laid into it with a hefy "Gooble-Gobble!" If you don't know what that phrase means then get thee to a video store. Freaks is alternately chilling, moving, cheesy, and absolutely disturbing. What is normal? What is it that really makes someone a freak?

FREAKS
Warner Home Entertainment

Politically incorrect though it may be, I proudly acknowledge Tod Browning's 1932 cult horror film Freaks as one of my top five favorite movies. Happily, Warner Bros. has released Freaks on DVD in an edition which can be truly be described, as the PC vernacular of today would describe most of its cast, as "special."

The first half of Freaks plays like a series of loosely connected vignettes revealing glimpses into the back stage life of sideshow attractions such as dwarves, conjoined twins, pinheads, various limbless performers, and midgets. By the halfway point, the story line focuses on the marriage of the femme fatale trapeze artist Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) and the love smitten --and rich -- midget Hans (Harry Earles), whom Cleopatra intends to slowly poison and thus become his wealthy widow.

Warner Bros.'s DVD is to be recommended for the care they have put into both the movie's restoration and the disc's extras. Regarding the restoration, author and film scholar David Skal (who co-wrote the book Dark Carnival, the story of Freaks' director Tod Browning) told me in an email interview that "Freaks has never looked so good."

Indeed, as many times as I have watched this movie on home video, there are details that I've never noticed before now rendered plainly on the screen, such as the freckles in the clown Phroso's white make-up, or the full expressiveness of actress Leila Hyams' face. I could clearly identify the midgets Hans and Freida (Hans' soon-to-be jilted fiance) seated at a table in the background of a dinner scene between the Stork Woman and the armless Frances O'Connor (a bit of continuity that perhaps indicates that a scene with these two midgets having coffee directly proceeded this one, though that's not how it was edited in the cut that we have today).

Unfortunately, the restoration of Freaks does not include any lost footage (nearly a half hours' worth), most significantly that of a tree, struck by lightning, pinning the evil Cleopatra to the ground so the pursuing, enraged freaks can swarm over her. Nor does it include the implied castration of her aiding and abetting lover, the circus strong man, who is heard singing soprano for his living at the film's conclusion, or an extended version of the freak frolic in the woods that, according to David Skal, was "the original scripted opening" and which was initially conceived as "a longer sequence (that) included midgets Hans and Frieda."

It is David Skal who is primarily responsible for the informative movie supplements which will increase the viewer's appreciation of Freaks' place in Hollywood's golden age, its eccentric director, and its extraordinary cast. Skal is a long time fan of the movie, whose interest in it goes back to the late 1960s, when he was part of the counterculture movement "that embraced the film as a badge of 'otherness'." He added, "I'm not sure the film would be the classic it's considered today had it not been resurrected on the midnight movie circuit during that socially tumultuous time."

I've been a fan of the movie myself since viewing it for the first time in the late 1980s (renting it from a combination furniture / video rental store). I was able to obtain my first copy when the Turner Network broadcast Freaks as a late night movie shortly thereafter (to my knowledge this was Freaks' TV network premiere, arriving almost 60 years after the movie's theatrical debut -- and even then, it was cautiously programmed after 11:00 PM. Later, after this apparent testing of the waters, it was put into Turner Classic Movies' daytime schedule)

In the subsequent years, I have researched what, as I mentioned above, has became one of my favorite films. I'm pleased to say, however, that Skal, on his commentary track and in the thorough, hour-long documentary "Freaks: Sideshow Cinema," reveals trivia that was new to me. He is joined in the documentary with others who provide additional insights and anecdotes, including little person performer Jerry Maren ( who was a representative of the Lollipop Guild along side Freaks' midget star Harry Earles in The Wizard of Oz) and sideshow performer and historian Todd Robbins. The documentary also presents a treasure trove of rare photos.

Freaks has never been a film for every taste, neither at the time of its original release or in our Politically Correct charged era of the early 21st century. One bit of mise-en-scene is refreshingly nonchalantly anti-PC, and, ironically, it is part of the epilogue added to "soften" the offensive nature of the movie. During the reconciliation of Hans and Freida, Freida wears a fox fur stole, which plainly includes the dead fox's head! Again, this is a scene intended to play upon the audience's sympathies, but if someone in PETA ever notices the costuming here, Freaks may find itself once more branded for transgressing new taboos that have arisen since it was made.

Regardless of the potentially offensive nature of the film, this DVD, as no presentation ever has before, rightly frees Freaks from the cinematic cellar to which MGM banished its odd progeny, and, as the circus owner Madame Tetrallini does in the film for her malformed charges, brings it out into the sunshine. Until those missing thirty minutes are recovered, this Warner Bros. DVD of Freaks will stand as the definitive edition.

Micah Harris