goreledger
Sign in
canon
Director
Tod Browning
Year
1932
Country
USA
Runtime
64 min

Also released as

  • Fenómenos
  • Freaks
  • Zrudy
  • Freaks - Missgestaltete
  • Freaks (La parada de los monstruos)
  • Sirkusseurue
  • Sirkussällskapet
  • Barnum
  • Freaks - La monstrueuse parade
  • La Parade des monstres
  • Monstres
  • Τα Τέρατα
  • A Parada dos Monstros
  • Nakaze
  • Уродцы
  • Forbidden Love
  • Nature's Mistakes
  • The Freaks
  • The Monster Show
  • Изроди
  • L'amour chez les monstres
  • Freaks - kummajaiset
  • Szörnyszülöttek
  • Ajibolkhelgheha
  • 怪物団 フリークス
  • Dziwolągi
  • La parada de los monstruos
  • 怪胎
  • Потвори
  • Hilkat Garibeleri

Filed under

Freaks

Tod Browning cast real sideshow performers, MGM cut a third of it, and it ended his career.

A trapeze artist marries a sideshow performer for his inheritance and is discovered plotting to poison him. The community deals with it.

Browning had worked in circuses and cast performers who worked in them, and for most of the running time the film is a workplace drama in which the leads are simply people with jobs, relationships and grievances. That is the part that unsettled 1932 audiences, not the ending.

The wedding banquet, and the chant of one of us, is the most famous sequence in pre-Code horror.

MGM cut it from 90 minutes to 64 after a test screening at which a woman reportedly threatened to sue. The excised footage is lost.

It was banned in Britain for thirty years. Browning directed only a few more films and none of consequence.

The numbers

Nobody has rated this yet. Be the first to make a claim you will have to defend.

Your call

Trailer

The sleeves

The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.

poster
EN · poster
EN · poster
FR · poster
EN · poster
EN · poster
EN · poster

Where to watch

Discuss with AI

Open a chatbot with a question about this already typed out. Useful for a second opinion, a plot detail, or working out which cut you are holding.

Adjacent

Sleeve art for Blood RitesWATCHobscure

Blood Rites

1968 · USA

Andy Milligan shooting in Staten Island with a hand-held Auricon. An acquired taste nobody acquires.

Sleeve art for PossumWATCHobscure

Possum

2018 · UK

A disgraced puppeteer returns to his childhood home carrying a bag he cannot get rid of.

Sleeve art for Huesera: The Bone WomanWATCHcult

Huesera: The Bone Woman

2022 · Mexico/PE · 93m

Mexican, and the best pregnancy horror since Rosemary's Baby. The joint-cracking sound design is the thing.

Sleeve art for Tigers Are Not AfraidWATCHcult

Tigers Are Not Afraid

2017 · Mexico · 83m

Children orphaned by the Mexican drug war, three wishes, and the dead following them through the streets.

Sleeve art for The Front RoomWATCHcult

The Front Room

2024 · USA · 94m

A pregnant woman is forced to care for her husband's monstrous, dying, evangelical stepmother.