Freaks [videorecording] / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presents Tod Browning's production.
Material type:
FilmPublisher number: 65191 | Warner Home VideoSpoken language: English Original language: English Subtitle language: French, Spanish Publication details: [United States] : Turner Entertainment Co. ; Burbank, CA : Distributed by Warner Home Video, ©2004.Description: 1 videodisc (62 min.) : sd., b&w ; 4 3/4 inISBN: - 0790746549
- 9780790746548
- Title on container: Tod Browning's amazing production of Freaks
- Freaks (Motion picture).
- Produced by Tod Browning, Irving Thalberg ; directed by Tod Browning ; screenplay by Willis Goldbeck and Leon Gordon ; additional writing by Al Boasberg, Edgar Allan Woolf ; cinematography, Merritt B. Gerstad ; editing, Basil Wrangell.
- Named to the National Film Registry in 1994 by the Library of Congress.
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult DVD
|
Main Library | DVD | DRAMA Freaks | Available | 33111008268837 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
The genesis of MGM's Freaks was a magazine piece by Ted Robbins titled Spurs. The story involved a terrible revenge enacted by a mean-spirited circus midget upon his normal-sized wife. In adapting Spurs for the screen, writers Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon, Edgar Allan Wolf, and Al Boasberg retained the circus setting and the little man-big woman wedding, all the while de-vilifying the midget and transforming the woman into the true "heavy" of the piece. German "little person" Harry Earles plays Hans, who falls in love with long-legged trapeze artist Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova). Discovering that Hans is heir to a fortune, Cleopatra inveigles him into a marriage, all the while planning to bump off her new husband and run away with brutish strongman Hercules (Henry Victor). What she doesn't reckon with is the code of honor among circus freaks: "offend one, offend them all." What set this film apart from director Tod Browning's earlier efforts was the fact that genuine circus and carnival sideshow performers were cast as the freaks: Harry Earles and his equally diminutive sister Daisy, Siamese twins Violet and Daisy Hilton, legless Johnny Eck, armless-legless Randian (who rolls cigarettes with his teeth), androgynous Josephine-Joseph, "pinheads" Schlitzie, Elvira, Jennie Lee Snow, and so on. Upon its initial release, Freaks was greeted with such revulsion from movie-house audiences that MGM spent the next 30 years distancing themselves as far from the project as possible. For many years available only in a truncated reissue version titled Nature's Mistakes, Freaks was eventually restored to its original release print. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Originally produced as a motion picture in 1932.
Suggested by Tod Robbins' story, 'Spurs.'"
Special features: Special message prologue; Commentary by author David J. Skal; "Freaks: the sideshow cinema" documentary; 3 alternate endings.
Produced by Tod Browning, Irving Thalberg ; directed by Tod Browning ; screenplay by Willis Goldbeck and Leon Gordon ; additional writing by Al Boasberg, Edgar Allan Woolf ; cinematography, Merritt B. Gerstad ; editing, Basil Wrangell.
Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Rosco Ates, Henry Victor, Harry Earles, Daisy Earles, Rose Dione, Daisy Hilton, Violet Hilton, Schlitze, Josephine Joseph, Johnny Eck, Frances O'Connor, Peter Robinson, Olga Roderick, Rardion, Martha Morris, Elizabeth Green, Angelo Rossitto, Edward Brophy, Mat McHugh.
A group of freaks take revenge on a trapeze artist and her boyfriend after years of abuse. Filmed using real circus performers.
Not rated by MPAA.
DVD; region 1, NTSC; full screen presentation; Dolby Digital mono ; dual-layer disc.
In English with optional subtitles in English, French or Spanish ; closed-captioned in English.
Named to the National Film Registry in 1994 by the Library of Congress.