Freaks

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Freaks
Review added by
David Beckett

The Strangest... The Most Startling Human Story Ever Screened... Are You Afraid To Believe What Your Eyes See?
Certificate: NR
Running Time: 62
Retail Price: $19.97
Release Date: 10/08/2004
Content Type: Movie

Synopsis:
"Gooble-gobble... we accept her... one of us," goes the haunting chant of Freaks. Yet it would be decades before this widely banned morality play gained acceptance as a cult masterpiece.

Tod Browning (1931's Dracula) directs this landmark movie in which the true freaks are not the story's sideshow performers, but "normals" who mock and abuse them. Browning, a former circus contortionist, cast real-life sideshow professionals. A living torso who nimbly lights his own cigarette despite having no arms or legs, microcephalics (whom the film calls "pinheads") - they and others play the big-top troupers who inflict a terrible revenge on a trapeze artist who treats them as subhumans. In 1994, Freaks was selected for the National Film Registry's archive of cinematic treasures.

Special Features:
- Commentary with film historian and author David Kalat
- Special Message Prologue
- Freaks: The Sideshow Cinema