A beautiful and able-bodied trapeze artist plans to marry the leader of a sideshow to steal his fortune, but when his fellow performers discover her ruse she becomes the target for their horrifying vengeance.
Freaks was inspired by Tod Robbin’s short story Spurs and Browning’s own experience of growing up as a part of a travelling circus. Wanting to pay tribute to the disabled people working in what were then called “freak shows” in an attempt to destigmatise them, Browning’s film was instead viciously cut by its studio in order to create a horror film for able-bodied audiences, who in 1932 were not ready to confront differences and accept human variability.
A box office flop, Freaks effectively ended Browning’s career, and was banned by the BBFC for 32 years on the grounds that it “exploited for commercial reasons the deformed people that it claimed to dignify”.
A remarkable yet divisive classic that still speaks volumes today, it remains one of the only features to feature a predominately disabled cast.