Freaks Re-release Review

Oh horror. Horror, horror, horror. It’s a conflicted genre. Many of the scariest films of all time aren’t really horror films at all. The Exorcist is a mystery/thriller, Psycho too, Alien a sci-fi, The Blair Witch Project a mock-doc and as for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, well, that’s a family indie dramedy isn’t it? Ok so maybe the horror machine does produce some effective horror labels. And yes I do admit that films can grow up in a family of genres.

So then, what is Freaks? Tod Browning’s deformed dystopia of a particular family of sideshow acts travels back into cinemas this week, and still shocks with its insidious direction, eighty-three years after its initial release. Freaks is a sexually charged love story, a fantasy that weeps in its nightmarish reality and above all else, a genuinely horrifying experience. On my inaugural viewing of it (I was twelve and malleable to an extreme reaction), the infamous dénouement resulted in a face spasm, which left me looking like Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’. On what must be my seventh or eighth viewing of it now, I perceive it as an uneasy watch, hauntingly authentic, and an unmistakable masterpiece.

The film is gleeful in its aesthetic of the macabre. It bathes in its odd, darkly comic presentation of fear and loathing in a carnival space. Browning paints his picture from a personal palette. He spent a period of his teenage years attached to a travelling carnival. Perhaps the memorable outbreak of ‘one of us, one of us’ around the half-way mark, is an ode to the director, even if it is also a precursor to a rather unfortunate ending.

Browning does nudge the audience with his dalliance in exploitation; he wants his voyeurs to respect the “freaks”, but he hardly makes them look respectable. This has often been aired as a criticism, yet it is almost certain that some sideshow acts of the period were mistreated, thus, the plot’s vengeance tale is understandable.

Freaks captured the horror beat. The film’s writer, Clarence Aaron Robbins knew when to tread carefully, and when to inject trauma. He was a harbinger of great horror story-telling, and he managed to pour the correct dosage of fear and fright into the narrative. The film offered and continues to offer a profound influence to film-makers emblazoned with the horror crest. David Lynch, a distinctive and stylised director, owes more credit to Freaks as an inspiration than any other film committed to celluloid.

Freaks left an indelible mark on me, one that cannot be removed. It confidently stomps into the horror paddock and it is truly, one of the most iconic films of the genre, ever made.