1930s Horror is generally tame and safe compared to today’s films. If you’re told about a terrible act in an old Horror film, your modern imagination will come up with something more disturbing than what filmmakers could actually get away with. Freaks is a major exception because it cast actual sideshow performers as the title ensemble. The realism made for a better movie than makeup techniques could deliver, and it also made audiences very uncomfortable. Still does today.
Mercifully, the film is only an hour long. It is also firmly on the side of little man Hans and his sideshow family. The villains are a strongman and a manipulative trapeze artist, physically beautiful specimens with poisoned souls. The back section of the film contains all the iconic moments that you might know about even if you’ve never seen the movie. The wedding party chant “One of us! One of us!”, the scene in the rain when the heroes crawl through the mud to take revenge, and the final image showing us what happened to the trapeze artist.
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