Bizarre horror movie released in
1932. Directed by
Tod Browning and written by
Al Boasberg and
Willis Goldbeck. Starred, for the most part, a bunch of real
carnival freaks -- not
actors in
makeup -- including
midget siblings
Harry Earles and
Daisy Earles,
trumpet-playing
Siamese twins Violet and Daisy Hilton,
pinhead Schlitze, "
Half-Woman, Half-Man"
Josephine Joseph,
human torso Johnny Eck,
Frances O'Connor (the
Turtle Girl), and
Peter Robinson (the
Living Human Skeleton). The primary non-freak stars were
Wallace Ford,
Leila Hyams,
Olga Baclanova,
Roscoe Ates, and
Henry Victor.
Basically, it's about a
scheming beauty and her
strongman beau who hatch a
plot in which the beauty will
marry a
wealthy midget at the
carnival where they all work, kill him, and steal his
money. The
villains put on a good act, but at the
wedding dinner, when the other freaks of the
circus chant, "
Gabba gabba, we accept you, we accept you, one of us," the beauty loses her cool and rants about how
disgusted she is by the freaks. Wise to her ploy, the freaks eventually
hunt down the "
normals" and get their
revenge. The climax takes place in a
nighttime downpour as the freaks
hop and
slither their way through the
mud to get to the villains -- it's an
astounding,
horrifying image that hasn't been duplicated in
cinema since.
When it was released, the
film caused a major
controversy and was met with almost-
universal horror and
derision. It was
banned in many parts of the
United States and in
England. It is still supposed to be banned in
Sweden. Browning, who had previously won great acclaim as the director of "
Dracula," had
trouble finding work in
Hollywood again, and some of the
movie's
stars later
denounced the film as
exploitative. Nowadays, it's more of a
curiosity than anything else, although the
story is plenty
creepy.
Some research from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com)