Freaks (1932) vs. Freakshow (2007)

 

Name: Freaks (1932) vs. Freakshow (2007)

Directed By: Tod Browning (1932) and Drew Bell (2007)

Subgenre: Body Horror, Gore 

Series: Spooktober 2021 entry #07; Remake Rampage entry #2; From the Vault #1; review #100

Review: It's my 100th review! I realize that's not exactly a lot when looking at the entirety of the horror corpus, but it's a nice round number and it gives me the good chemicals seeing it. I figured that, for such a momentous occasion, I'd finally break into the Council of the Chads vault and shine a light on a series of films that many horror fans might only have a passing awareness of, if at all. In the From the Vault series, I'll be looking at films from my own collection over the years, some rare films, some eclectic entries, and some well-meaning schlock for good measure. You never know what you might find...in the Vault!

You might know Freaks, and it's later remake, due to its influence on American Horror Story: Freak Show. Detailing all of the inspirations and genre nods in AHS Freak Show would take way more time than anyone would (rightly) give to my little blog, but the season owes a large swathe of its plot to Freaks (albeit less so to its 2007 remake), including everyone's favorite microcephalic characters Pepper and Salty. She, and the other "pinheads" (rude), are based around the characters suffering from the previously-mentioned disorder, the most famous of whom was Schlitzie. Schlitzie, interestingly enough, was (likely--it's apparently hard to verify) born one Simon Mets, though often took on female roles, including the eponymous one in Freaks. Schlitzie was but one of the many "freaks" employed in Hans' carnival and sideshow. Much to the chagrin of the "normal" actors and actresses on set, Browning employed many people suffering from a variety of birth defects and medical conditions for, well, the roles you'd expect them to play. While Browning's message about them being just as human as the rest of us (and more on that in a bit) might sound fairly progressive for 1932, he still segregated them from the rest of the cast. So, don't give him too much credit, at least for his role in activism.

But as a director, well that's a different story. Browning's Freaks is a charming movie, which is admittedly a weird sentence given how it's about a carnival of people with birth defects who butcher someone after they harm one of their own. Browning gives each character a taste of the limelight and establishes them as people, not just the "freaks" they're perceived to be. Even the tale's villains, as melodramatic as they can be, are given talent and depth before the film's disturbing climax. Oh, did I mention that bit of controversy yet? Well, apparently the original 90ish minute cut of the film was so disturbing to some viewers that it got the film banned and nearly sued for supposedly causing a viewer to have a miscarriage. Jinkies. So, at the behest of Lion's Gate, Browning chopped the film down to little over an hour in length and removed some of the reportedly graphic scenes. I say reportedly because the original cut is now lost to time, but their uncut scripts are available. Evidently, much of the cut content was scene bloat, some additional comedy that didn't add much, but the climactic chase sequence at the end was cut down fairly dramatically, and the fate of Hercules is revealed. By our standards, it's fairly tame stuff. There are a few endings that were shot, but the most common is a happy ending that feels tacked on--because it was per Lion's Gate after audiences detested seeing a horror film end in such a bummer. But hey, it's better than the ending in the book the film is based on: Hans, a little person who happens to be carnival's obscenely wealthy owner, takes his revenge against the woman who scorned him by forcing him to give him a piggyback ride across the entirety of France. This does show up, albeit briefly, in Browning's iteration of the story, but the ending we're left with is an unfortunate example of studio meddling. Assume the scene prior was the film's true ending. Spoilers if you don't want to bother with the film: Cleo, the beautiful trapeze artist, and her partner, Hercules, scheme together to rob Hans of his considerable wealth. Hans, is madly infatuated with Cleo, and so she convinces him to marry her...until she can't stomach being initiated into their family. Seeing the pain this caused Hans, the "freaks" team up to teach the couple a lesson in empathy. Off screen, they butcher Cleo, carving off her legs and tarring and feathering her, until she becomes a horrible, quacking chicken woman. What we don't see--at least in the edited cut--is what happens to Hercules. He's butchered, again off screen, and the last scene we see of him, he's singing in a lovely falsetto voice, implying that he was forcefully castrated. Apparently that implication alone was enough to fuck up some test audiences.

Does Freaks live up to its disturbing fame? Not particularly, no. Like many films of the era, the idea is certainly unsettling--vastly so compared to some of the other horror films in its cohort--but the actual terror is left offscreen (and in the imagination, which can often be worse). There's some genuinely eerie shots leading to the end, especially in light of how caring and sweet the "freaks" were prior to being trifled with. That said, you'll definitely root for them, and no one could blame you. But, given the notoriety of Freaks, and its supposed graphic lost content in particular, Drew Bell decided to reboot the story as Freakshow in 2007 with a singular goal: make it as disturbing as possible. Freakshow has two things going for it, and only those two things (unless you count using a fair amount of nudity as a bonus, in which case: good on ya): Freakshow employs a phenomenal soundtrack of old-timey songs to add some level of immersion and ramp up the creep factor, and the entirety of Freakshow is a (feeble) build-up to its immensely graphic conclusion. As an homage to Cleo's fate in Freaks, Freakshow's deceptive dame is subjected to some of the most elaborate disfiguring in horror cinema outside of the intentionally extreme stuff. If the rest of the film had that level of gore, I'd consider putting it on that list, in fact. Problem is, after a certain point, the gore goes from shocking to gratuitous to numbing as your mind catches up to the fact that it's a chick in a rubber suit. It's not the brain-scrambling Hell from The Burning Moon, and it's not the high concept torture porn that is Martyrs, but it's middling effective, more so if you're not expecting that level of mutilation.

However, beyond the brutality of Freakshow's climax, the film is kind of a stinker. Even as a direct remake of Freaks, it replaces many of the original "freaks" with characters with less depth and charisma. The misguided, if not sympathetic, Hans is replaced by the perpetually slimy Lon, who's deformity is a series of boils over most of his body (but still out of the foreground), and his sleazy personality is more obscene than his medical condition. Frieda, the wife of Hans and fellow little person in Freaks, is replaced by Sherri, Lon's step-sister with no visible medical condition besides being kin, of a sort, to Lon. Oh, and she's incredibly attractive, which defeats a huge plot point in the story. But yeah, while Freakshow utilizes a host of people with medical conditions, they don't get enough screen time to really give the audience a reason to care about them, and some shots of the "freaks" are done in a way to make the audience leer back in disgust...which, you know, totally goes against the original film's purpose. Alright, I'm going on too long now. Point is, Freaks is a pivotal film in the development of the horror genre; it was do disturbing at its inception that it nearly destroyed Browning's career. Freaks makes you care for its cast and shows them as people, people with the whole range of feelings that will dip into the dark recesses to protect one of their own. But, it's not particularly shocking anymore. Interesting, and a good story, but not shocking. Freakshow, on the other hand, rests on the laurels of its namesake and exists purely to fill in the disturbing missing links from the original film. In that regard, it's achieves a modicum of success; but as an independent film in its own right, it fails to reel you in and sympathize with really any of the characters. The best way to watch Freakshow is immediately following Freaks, but that will likely make the failures of the film that more evident. But hey, a pretty lady gets turned into a sideshow attraction by way of the knife--so, there's that. Here's to the next hundred reviews, folks! Glad you're here with me.

Overall Score: 3.5 (1932) / 1.5 (2007) out of 5 Chads trying not to, gooba gobble gooba gobble, become the newest attraction. Did either version of Freaks / Freakshow scare you? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

IMDB: Here and Here

How to Watch: Freaks (1932) is available on these platforms; and Freakshow (2007) is available on these platforms.

Official Trailer