Rent Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers (1932)

Fascinating cinema history - Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers review by KW

This 3 film collection gives you famous 'Freaks' from 1930, a tale of the hard and dangerous lives of 'freakshow' performers which could be read as a film championing the equality of disabled people but the memorably shocking ending does undermine that to an extent. Also in the collection is a very entertaining silent film 'The Unknown', in which a circus performer who is considered harmless because he is armless, turns out to be anything but harmless or armless. Thrilling melodrama ensues in a way that could only possibly make sense in a silent movie. Finally, the least of the three films is 'The Mystic,' which is still an interesting story about a seancing scam gone wrong. In this edition, it has an imaginative and moody soundtrack added that mixes music and effects well.

All the films in the box set look magnificent so if you are a fan of this era, this is well worth seeing.

on Freaks. - Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers review by Steve

This is such a groundbreaking horror picture mainly because it emerged from an existing community; the human exhibits exploited by travelling carnivals. Many of the actors actually made a living out of displaying their deformity. And also because what is on the screen is so subversive. Sometimes, it's hard to believe your eyes.

There is a love triangle between two ‘midgets’ played by Harry and Daisy Earles (actually brother and sister) and a 'big person’, a normal bodied trapeze artist (Olga Baclanova as Cleopatra). She wants his inheritance and so marries the much smaller man with the intention of ending his life.

This is an exploitation film. There’s a framing story which explains how Cleopatra  became a sideshow curiosity after the revenge of the 'freaks' which puts us in among the interested by-standers. We've bought a ticket, and we are voyeurs. And as the events are told by a carny barker, maybe the whole story is a fantasy and we are also mugs.

And perhaps the freaks aren't those with genetic mutations, but the normal woman and her accomplice, who seek to murder out of greed. The famous scene where the 'freaks' accept the bride, by chanting ‘one of us' is spellbinding. It’s an extraordinary experience, and not always easy to watch. There’s nothing else like this.