Freaks
Freaks is a 1932 film from the USA, directed by Tod Browning, running 64 minutes. reelscum files it under classical exploitation.
- Year
- 1932
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 64 min
- Director
- Tod Browning
- Updated
- 10 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- canon (10/100)
- Also known as
- Forbidden Love · Nature's Mistakes · The Freaks · The Monster Show · L'amour chez les monstres · Freaks
- Banned in
- UK
Defined in the glossary: Classical exploitation
Banned by the BBFC from 1932 until 1963, one of the longest bans in British censorship history.
Killed Browning's career, banned in Britain for thirty years. Still unclassifiable.
Tod Browning followed Dracula with this, and it destroyed his career and was banned in Britain for thirty years. Set among the real sideshow performers of a travelling circus, it tells of a scheming trapeze artist who marries a wealthy little person for his money, and the community's terrible revenge. Browning cast actual sideshow performers, which is what appalled 1932 audiences.
Its reputation has inverted completely: the film's sympathy is entirely with its performers, and its real monsters are the beautiful, cruel able-bodied schemers. The wedding-feast chant is unforgettable.
A genuine landmark, humane and unsettling, decades ahead of its time.
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Written about
- Exploitation film examples, cycle by cycle
Exploitation film examples grouped cycle by cycle, from Freaks in 1932 to the video nasties, with the real dates, cut durations and censorship rulings.
The cycle in depth
- The grindhouse and where the word came from
What a grindhouse is: a continuous-performance theatre, the 1925 trade term behind the word, and how the programming got its reputation.
- The B movie and the double bill it was made for
A B movie is what an exhibitor took to get the A picture, a flat-rate second feature, and the 1948 Paramount ruling ended the arrangement.
Filed alongside
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Maniac
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Scum of the Earth
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