When I was six I used to stay at a babysitter while my parents were both at work. My babysitter was a little tiny lady in her early 70’s so we spent the majority of the time in her apartment. She was not the kind of babysitter where she had a set pattern of activities except for our daily visit to the park. So I spent most of the time watching TV. She was not a stickler in what I watch so I basically watched anything I wanted.

One day while I was there I was flipping through the channels I saw something my six year old mind have never seen before:

I saw a man with no limbs and I immediately stop clicking through the channels and I settled to watch whatever this interesting man was a part of. I watched the whole entire movie with such interest. I saw many interesting people that I never saw before and was completely fascinated by it!

Freaks was made in 1932 by Tod Browning:

Yes the same person that also directed Dracula (1931):

And The Unknown (1927):

Tod Browning took an interesting turn in 1932 with the movie Freaks. This is also my favorite movie of his. This is also one of his shorter movies, the run time is only 64 minutes. Tod Browning originally had the movie total time to be 90 minutes however considering the plot to be too risqué at the time a lot of the scenes were removed.

Although Tod Browning directed the film it is actually based from a short story by Tod Robbins that was written in a magazine called Munsey’s in their February 1923 edition.

This movie has taught me a valuable lesson from an early age on physical appearances are nothing to be scare of. Everyone has a special quality and feature that makes them unique and special. This movie also sparked my curiosity of knowing that the world has a lot more to offer than what is on the surface on people and things.

Some fun facts about this movie. Prince Randian ( aka the “Human Caterpillar”) used to hide in dark sections of the movie production during down time and would intentionally scare people by randomly screaming at them.

This movie is still banned in some states in the United States.

Louis B. Mayer was not aware that his studio was making this movie until he saw the actors on the lot one day and he wanted to halt production.

This movie was also banned in Australia and in the UK it was banned until 1962.

Until next time!

Source: Wikipedia