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Freaks is a american film of genre Drama directed by Tod Browning released in USA on 20 february 1932 with Wallace Ford
Freaks (1932)
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Add to a movie listFreaks is a 1932 American Pre-Code horror film in which the eponymous characters were played by people who worked as carnival sideshow performers and had real deformities. The original version was considered too shocking to be released and no longer exists. Directed and produced by Tod Browning, whose career never recovered from it, Freaks has been described as standing alone in a subgenre of one.
At 16, Browning had left his well-to-do family to join a traveling circus: he drew on his personal experiences for Freaks. Because of his success as the director of Dracula, he was given a considerable leeway for a major studio's first horror film: this and the fact he was working in Pre-Code Hollywood enabled a unique production. In the film, the physically deformed "freaks" are inherently trusting and honorable people, while the real monsters are two of the "normal" members of the circus who conspire to murder one of the performers to obtain his large inheritance.
Synopsis
The film opens with a sideshow barker drawing customers to visit the sideshow. A woman looks into a box to view a hidden occupant and screams. The barker explains that the horror in the box was once a beautiful and talented trapeze artist. The central story is of this conniving trapeze artist Cleopatra, who seduces and marries sideshow midget Hans after learning of his large inheritance. Cleopatra conspires with circus strongman Hercules to kill Hans and inherit his wealth. At their wedding reception, Cleopatra begins poisoning Hans' wine. Oblivious, the other "freaks" announce that they accept Cleopatra in spite of her being a "normal" outsider: they hold an initiation ceremony in which they pass a massive goblet of wine around the table while chanting, "We accept her, we accept her. One of us, one of us. Gooba-gobble, gooba-gobble". The ceremony frightens the drunken Cleopatra, who accidentally reveals that she has been having an affair with Hercules. She mocks the freaks, tosses the wine in their faces and drives them away. The humiliated Hans realizes that he's been played for a fool and rejects Cleopatra's attempts to apologize, but then he falls ill from the poison.Actors
Wallace Ford
(Phroso)
Edgar Allan Woolf
(Phroso)
Leila Hyams
(Venus)
Olga Baclanova
(Cleopatra)
Roscoe Ates
(Roscoe)
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Suggestions of similar film to Freaks
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, 1h15Directed by Tod Browning, Karl Freund
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