A landmark pre-Code shocker that’s as much a plea for empathy as it is a horror film. Its power comes from the way it turns the gaze back on cruelty, vanity, and greed, while still landing as a genuinely unsettling revenge tale.
82% ★★★★☆ (160,978)
Freaks
Where to watch: Bloodstream
Movie · Drama · Horror · NR
1932 · 1h 4m · ★ 82% (161K)
Can a full grown woman truly love a midget?
Director: Tod Browning
Starring: Harry Earles, Olga Baclanova, Daisy Earles
Overview
A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.
Director
Tod Browning
Production
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Cast
Harry Earles, Olga Baclanova, Daisy Earles, Henry Victor, Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Roscoe Ates, Angelo Rossitto, Jerry Austin, Daisy Hilton, Violet Hilton, Schlitzie, Josephine Joseph, Johnny Eck, Frances O'Connor, Peter Robinson, Olga Roderick, Koo Koo, Prince Randian, Martha Morris
Where to watch
Bloodstream
Curator Review
Verdict
A landmark pre-Code shocker that’s as much a plea for empathy as it is a horror film. Its power comes from the way it turns the gaze back on cruelty, vanity, and greed, while still landing as a genuinely unsettling revenge tale.
Best for
viewers interested in early horror history
fans of morally pointed pre-Code cinema
people drawn to outsider stories and social satire
audiences who appreciate cult classics with real emotional bite
Skip if
you want polished modern pacing
you’re sensitive to depictions of disability and bodily difference
you prefer horror built on jump scares or elaborate effects
you need a purely feel-good underdog story
Overview
Freaks is one of those films that feels impossible for its era and still bracing now. What begins as a lurid circus melodrama becomes something stranger and more humane: a story about community, dignity, and the violence of being treated as spectacle. The movie’s reputation as a horror landmark is deserved, but its real sting comes from its compassion.
Worth noting
Tod Browning stages the sideshow world with a mix of fascination and sincerity, and that tension is part of what makes the film endure. It can be uncomfortable in ways that are historically unavoidable, yet it keeps returning to the same moral idea: the “normal” people are often the most monstrous. That reversal gives the film its lasting force.
Bottom line
The ending is famous for a reason. It’s savage, cathartic, and weirdly triumphant, the kind of finale that can reframe the whole movie in a single burst. Even now, Freaks feels less like a curiosity than a provocation that still has teeth.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Eli Hayes (4★) · 1638 likes
Now that's what I call an ending.
Steven Sheehan (4★) · 1377 likes
A brave film for the time it was made in, Freaks is a genuinely empathetic story that still retains its power today. Quite who the real monsters are becomes clearer the more we are taken into the world of these circus performers. The horror arrives not from those who appear different from the 'norm' but those who cannot accept them. There are moments of course where Tod Browning verges on exploiting the very same people he is trying to humanise.… more
Matt! (4.5★) · 1202 likes
Unfairly labeled a horror film by audiences at the time (because pre-Code movies were just a different breed), as well as being extremely progressive even by today’s standards, the only real freaks in Tod Browning’s Freaks are the ones who are horrifying on the inside—not the outside. Straightforward, lovable, heartbreaking, and with one of the most satisfying endings in film history. I would literally take a storm of bullets for Hans and Freida.
H (4★) · 1072 likes
"To me, you're a man. But to her, you're only something to laugh at." So sad. :(
1974 · Horror · 1h 23m · R · ★ 72% (937.5K) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, Peacock Premium, Philo, Shudder, Amazon Prime Video with Ads, Peacock Premium Plus
For its raw, confrontational energy and its fascination with the line between spectacle and horror.