Dean's World

Tonight at 8:30pm CST/9:30pm EST Turner Classic Movies will be showing Tod Browning's Freaks. If you get TCM and haven't already seen the picture (and aren't watching Heroes), it's well worth your time.

Although sometimes characterized as a horror movie, Browning's 1932 parable of humanity and inhumanity is much, much more than that. It's the story of a beautiful trapeze artist who marries a man who's a sideshow attraction, infidelity, and revenge. I won't give away more than that—you'll have to watch it yourself to learn more. When it premiered three quarters of a century ago, it was considered so shocking it virtually ended Browning's career.

But there's another reason to check this movie out. Many of the performers in it were actual sideshow performers more than 75 years ago. And some of those people have conditions which simply aren't seen any more in America or Western Europe: they're routinely corrected at birth or very early in life. My wife, a teacher of special needs kids, was fascinated to see what might have happened to some of her students without today's remarkable medical interventions.

We've come a long way both in technology and attitudes and Freaks will bring those points home to you.

Thanks to the wondrous thing known as the DVR (and a timely tip from Dave Schuler), I finally caught Tod Browning's Freaks. It aired earlier this week on Turner Classic Movies, so I set a recording for it and finally got to it this morning.

I have been reading about this movie, seeing footage stills from it, and hearing about it for years.

It's not what I'd call a good movie, per se. That it was made in 1932 is obvious. That most of the actors were not professional actors but are rather in the movie because of their physical oddness is also obvious. The dialogue is often wooden and, because some of the actors are German, sometimes hard to understand.

Nevertheless I can see why it's considered a classic by film students.

I think it's a bit of a shame that it was banned so many places and so thoroughly condemned that it all but destroyed the director's career. While the film is obviously somewhat exploitive, it's got a clearly humanist message that's hard not to respect. All the really awful people in the film are the "non-Freaks." I find myself wondering if that's what really disturbed 1930s audiences so much.