Audio By Carbonatix
Tod Browning’s Freaks, a bizarre glimpse into the world of the sideshow, has been the ultimate cult movie for more than seventy years. Talk about impeccable outlaw credentials: At a San Diego preview, a woman ran screaming from the theater; upon the film’s release, in 1932, many American exhibitors refused to show it; and it was banned in Great Britain for three decades. As compassionate as it is daring, Freaks is a fictional melodrama that employs actual carnival performers in its cast — the Siamese twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, Johnny Ecks (aka “the boy with half a torso”), Angelo the Midget and assorted bearded ladies, sword-swallowers and fire-eaters. When the freaks of the title discover a murder plot in their midst, they take terrible revenge. Even now, the work remains fascinating and authentically macabre; it puts to shame most of the synthetic movie horror of our own day. And for a film made in 1932, when talkies were still something new, the sound recording is amazingly vivid.
Freaks screens Saturday, May 21, in the Midnight Madness series at the Esquire Theater, 590 Downing Street. For information, call 303-352-1992.
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