Its main attraction is that all the freaks in the movie are real freaks. There is a very famous sequence where a guy with no arms and no legs in lying under a cart or wagon, and he gets a cigarette out and lights it and begins to smoke. It's about a traveling sideshow with, you guessed it, freaks. There are some women in it with severely limited cranial development, and they look like they were the models for Homer Simpson's head. They're called "pinheads."
I learned about it from your Uncle Tom, who admired and recommended it. I looked it up a few minutes ago, and saw that the complete movie is available on Youtube, but I don't think I'd watch it that way. It's on our Netflix streaming queue and I've built it up a little bit with Cin, who's afraid of what it might be like.
In fact, it isn't a horror movie, or really very scary. The owner/manager of the touring show is good to his freaks, because, after all, they make him money. What could be wrong with that?
"Freaks" is pretty great. I think Dan got me a DVD copy for Christmas recently, or I bought it somewhere...all I know is that the DVD is in my collection. The collection of freaks is likely larger than you'd ever see in a contemporary side show, and I hear it was pretty shocking to see it on the screen.
ReplyDeleteThe key, of course, is that the freaks are normal, everyday folks, while the "normals" are cruel bastards.