Tag Archives: Tod Browning

Freaks (1932): We’re All Sideshow Attractions

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One of the personal details of Tod Browning’s life was his adolescence spent working in the circus. This gives him an accessibility to the material that some other less-attuned director might have lacked. And yet there’s little denying Freaks is a genuine showpiece when it comes to turning heads. It still bristles with controversy and outlandishness 90 years later.

The movie itself is presented as such to the audience. If you are familiar with any of these carnival entries from Browning’s own The Unknown or later works like Nightmare Alley or The Greatest Show on Earth, you have an immediate comprehension of the milieu.

The people we are about to witness are presented as “living, breathing monstrosities” and “accidents of birth” to the audience. If not outright reviled, they should be reeled at with horror and maybe a dash of pity. These opening moments make it evident the whole movie is quite literally a sideshow exhibition.

But somehow as the movie builds, it both feels exploitative and strangely sympathetic. This seemingly conflicting observation deserves to be broken down. And for this, we must start with the characters and their world.

One of them is the gorgeous trapeze artist, Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), who is obviously aware of her own attractiveness and uses it to woo those around her. Because perceived ugliness or otherness has a habit of making the vein feel that they themselves are even more superior. Never once does she have a genuine ounce of care for the other performers. They are more like playthings than real people.

Front and center is the dwarf Hans (Harry Earles). Although he already has a girl, he becomes increasingly smitten with the gorgeous blonde and she gladly strokes his ego — fawning over him — she thinks she’s giving him the thrill of his life. When she finds out he’s come into a decent sum of money, that’s even better, and one day they are wed. The fact she is colluding with the local strong man remains to be brought to light.

But this is only one facet — one individual storyline in the world — since Freaks intersperses a lot of narratives throughout highlighting numerous real-life people who existed as sideshow attractions.

A single line of dialogue that might resonate with others goes like this, “God looks after all his children.” The implication is that there are no exceptions or omissions. These people are ostracized simply for the way they look or act, and while they might be different than the norms of their contemporary society, it in no way makes them sub-human. They are worthy and deserving of the same human dignity as everyone else.

Even as Freaks has been hailed as a horror film of the macabre — and there is some truth in this given the way Browning presents the material — he also normalizes the experience of these outcasts. Mind you, this is back in the 1930s. People were more than prepared to gawk at conjoined twins, bearded ladies, a human caterpillar, etc. But we’re not totally enlightened people now by any means. I admit my own shortcomings; some of these characters unnerve me but that is only based on outward appearance. We supposedly learn this in childhood, but how wrong it is to judge people by outward appearance alone.

We need to know their character before we dare to make such rash judgments. In many ways, while Leila Hyams and Wallace Ford are “normal” able-bodied folks, they are also allies and open our own eyes to these characters.

The production was turbulent with footage being heavily cut and talents like Victor McLaglen and Myrna Loy balking at the material. We cannot fully know their reasoning, whether it involved subject matter, money, or costars. Hopefully, we have the opportunity to appreciate Freaks more now because whatever the underlying reasons, Hollywood gave performers on the fringes the spotlight.

As we sink deeper into the bowels of the movie, we are privy to a wedding feast. All the outcasts sitting there, and Hans feels so ashamed as his new wife berates him and his “deformed” friends. It’s so pernicious and ghoulish all at the same time.

My mind could only drift off to what a wedding feast is meant to be. It’s a celebration, it’s a community, it’s a reminder of all the blessings we have been afforded in our lives; it points to a hopeful future of what is yet to come, and it is a capstone of mutual commitment. It’s open to all and everyone who is willing to accept it and be made new. Alas, we live in a broken, befouled world.

Given its shared setting and tortured themes, Freaks plays as a fine companion piece with Browning’s earlier silent feature The Unknown. In fact, it features a finale, equally evocative and terrifying, if not more so. Because a plot to kill Hans is enacted, but he catches wind of it, and they strike in the dead of night as their carnival show moves on amid a downpour.

In some alternative universe, this might be some misshapen, ill-formed hell as Cleopatra is chased off into the darkness by the “Freaks,” who take vengeance upon her. In a moment of self-reflection, the horror is not so much about our own ugliness; maybe it’s more so about how we belittle and dismiss other people. Are we also deserving of such a grisly fate?

Tarred and feathered and paraded in front of everyone as a sideshow attraction to stew in our ignominy for a lifetime. It’s a hellacious image but also a striking warning call. Judge lest you be judged. But enough with the moralizing. If you let it, Freaks still has the power to shock your sensibilities.

4/5 Stars

Dracula (1931): Starring Bela Lugosi

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As the story behind Universal’s Dracula unfolds, it’s a joy to pinpoint all the elements helping to intensify the dread and solidify it among the studio’s emerging array of horror classics.

There has to be a kind of mythology and lore that the scares can be built out of. The protection of the cross is that of a powerful talisman capable of warding off evil.  Superstition and religion intermingle seamlessly like many of the horror films of the day.

Likewise, there must be a visual palette to help the world manifest Bram Stoker’s famed character. He already received a dose of notoriety in F.W. Murnau’s unauthorized adaptation, but now Nosferatu returns in the guise of Bela Lugosi’s now-paradigmatic Dracula. He definitively ate up and defined all future tropes for years to come.

The tale opens in a carriage when a callow young man named Renfield (Dwight Frye) disregards the warnings of the local population and ventures to the castle of Count Dracula on some proposed business. I watch Dracula and I’m immediately taken by the gaunt Transylvanian atmosphere.

Far from feeling corny, there’s an eerie spareness that’s to the credit of the picture introduced in the bleakness of night. The count’s ominous castle proves itself to be both a foreboding space and one falling apart with decay. Working with director Tod Browning, the incomparable Karl Freund translates his cinematography from Europe to become the epitome of Hollywood genre filmmaking at its finest.

The second portion of the story is born when a schooner, the Vesta, is found drifting into Whitby harbor with all the crew having perished aside from one raving madman. He’s put under lock in key in Seward Sanitarium, all but prepared to do his master’s bidding. Because of course, Renfield is now beholden to his master Dracula — by his blood.

In this new locale, Dracula borrows liberally not only from the traditions of Bram Stoker but the menacing Jack the Ripper, Jekyll & Hyde-type atmosphere of foggy London streets weighed down with gloom. It’s in this milieu one evening that Count Dracula makes the acquaintance of Doctor Seward (Herbert Bunston) as well as his daughter Mina. They are perfectly oblivious to who he really is. But, of course, he’s hardly looking for a romantic partner. Rather, he’s on the prowl for another unsuspecting human to provide him their life’s blood.

Meanwhile, a Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) takes a particular interest in Renfield’s peculiar tendencies. When he starts making claims about the undead, Nosferatu, and vampires, this is yet another dose of necessary logos to explain the movie’s scares. Wolfbane is another tried and true vanguard against this unknowable evil.

As such, even as others remain skeptical, Professor Van Helsing becomes the film’s main advocate and certainly fits the mantle of a detective, prepared to deduce the answers and go head-to-head with Count Dracula. The man has no reflection and when he’s found out, he gets desperate like a caged beast.

The Professor and The Count have a standoff in the study — a literal crossing of wills — although Dracula manages to get to Mina and fuse with her blood. It remains to be seen if she (or Renfield) can be saved from their sorrowful fate.

Most of the movie’s horrific power is born in the face of Lugosi — how he is lit, the fire in his eyes — it’s indelible imagery. The rest is illusion borne in the space between what we see on the screen and the cut away. This is what makes it quite effective even generations later. Because it’s not about hokey gore or any such dated method of special effects.

It relies on us and the frights we can conjure up within our own imaginations. The movie supplies the building blocks of terror, but we must put them together for ourselves. Even 90 years later there’s something deeply powerful in this cumulative effect.

This might be an unpopular observation, but somehow, having a movie unaccompanied by music somehow augments this sense of piercing dread. There’s something direct and unembellished about it — it’s starkly beautiful — and yet it pierces like a stake through the heart.

The story is expeditious, but these quick strokes are so heartily effective until the very last heartbeat. Dracula does everything we should require from a horror movie, and it remains a timelessly perturbing experience.

Like so many of the horror greats, Bela Lugosi would forever be typecast by the part. It’s the curse of an actor but the glory of a screen icon. He’s unforgettable and people never have forgotten him even those who have never seen the movie. He lives on purely through our cultural consciousness.

4/5 Stars

The Unknown (1927): Silent Cinema Out on The Big Top

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As someone always trying to steep myself in more and more silent cinema, I still have much to contend with when it comes to the careers of Tod Browning and Lon Chaney. However, from everything I can gather, The Unknown is a wonderful melding of their talents, Browning drawing on his penchant for the outcasts of humanity and his own past on the carnival circuit.

Meanwhile, though he would die in 1930, up until that point, Chaney really was a standout in the fledgling movie industry for how he approached the acting profession. He was the “Man of a Thousand Faces” because he went against the prevailing current — the desire to promote an image — and he succeeded by promoting many. He was the era’s beloved chameleon. The Unknown is little different.

It’s a story of old Madrid. The tale is set in a gypsy circus and involves an armless knife thrower (Chaney) and the love of his life: his boss’s daughter Nanon (Joan Crawford). At first, it seems like an immediate oxymoron. Sure enough, we see Alonzo the Armless doing his art with the dexterity of his feet. It’s the marvel of the movies watching it play out in front of us as the ringmaster’s daughter plays his daring assistant.

But once the crowds are gone and after hours we come to understand some of the other dynamics behind the Big Top. Nanon is a young woman with an almost obsessive fear of men. She trembles when the male performers in the company try to lay their hands on her. She’s left with this lingering fear and an aversion to their very touch.

It goes beyond a mere sense of harassment, verging on an elemental level at the very core of her being. It becomes the film’s primary metaphor and sadly this metaphor maintains its relevance almost a full century later. In one summative line, she cries out: “Men. The beasts! God would show wisdom if he took the hands of all of them.” Her distaste is stated quite plainly.  

That’s part of the reason she has a special place in her heart for Alonzo, being vulnerable and kind to him because, with his physical disability, he cannot take advantage of her.

Chaney does so much to make the reality of his character’s disability supremely evident. There’s actually some sense of the suspension of disbelief. It’s a habit of movie magic and the subsequently projected illusions, we want to see how they do it.

Is it possible to see true signs of Lon Chaney’s able body? And yet The Unknown shocks us by stripping away everything. Behind closed doors, he loses his normal attire and gains a pair of arms because you see, he’s not actually armless. 

It’s not just part of his act. He’s pulling it over on everyone in the troupe aside from his closest confidante Cojo (John George). He discloses to him, “There’s is nothing I will not do to own her!” Because he too secretly has his sights on Nanon, wanting to have her for his own through this act of sophistry. 

Like the best silent cinema, The Unknown feels so emphatically poetic, where the characters represent more than themselves. They shed the mere realms of reality to speak to something far more, at times, both terrifying and tender. Suddenly, the movie morphs, building into a wicked tale of irony. I wouldn’t think of divulging all of it here, although such sordid things like murder, amputation, and blackmail abound.

Also, be prepared for the finale. The world is literally being ripped apart at the seams, and it becomes the film’s gloriously chaotic crescendo back out on the circus Big Top. The carnival strong man, Malabar the Mighty ( Norman Kerry), Nanon’s suitor, looks to show off his feats of strength; they are rapturously in love. Joan Crawford snaps a whip from the platform up above as she rallies the horses galloping on their giant treadmills. Alonzo looks on poised for revenge against his romantic rival. 

It conjures up indelible images of performed chaos leaving a starling impression even after all these years. If nothing else, it proves silent cinema is far from rote, often brimming with all sorts of memorable even perverse bits of storytelling. The Unknown’s overall impact is not to be taken lightly. 

Viewers would do well to seek it out if only as an act of appreciation of Browning, Chaney, or Crawford. The picture, in its current form, is missing some of its original exposition, but what a fantastic relic it is. However, it’s far from a museum piece. It feels fiercely alive even after all these years. I did take some issue with the cut I’ve seen if only because of the typically off-putting soundtrack that feels too modern and incongruous to make me truly appreciate what is on-screen. 

But the title cards have a pleasant lyricism to them accentuating the story’s dramatic situation so we can fully appreciate its implications. Likewise, Joan Crawford, as a recognizable entity, isn’t fully flourished into her full-bodied image of stardom even as glimpses of her emerging persona flash upon the screen. However, it’s absolutely a testament to why Lon Chaney was a revered talent of the silent generation right up until the end of his life. 

4/5 Stars