Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers

Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers

Director ~ Tod Browning

 

The Unknown

Writers ~ Tod Browning, Waldemar Young, Joseph Farnham

1927, US

Stars ~ Lon Chaney, Norman Kerry, Joan Crawford

 

The Mystic

Writers ~ Tod Brownin, Waldemar Young

1925, US

Stars ~ Aileen Pringle, Conway Tearle, Mitchell Lewis

 

Freaks

Writers ~  Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon

from the short story ‘Spurs’ by Clarence Aaron 'Tod' Robbins

1932, US

Stars ~ Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova

 

 

These three Tod Browning classics are crime narratives set in the circus world, but there is the definite feel of perversion, of something transgressive: a prelude to extreme horror by inference alone. Packaged together, their vibrancy and edge remain and it is easy to see how they influence still.

 

‘The Mystic’ is the least twisted of the three films, leaning more on the con job and crime element that underpins all three films. The behind-the-scenes tell-all story demonstrating how the séance fraud is carried out proves the central hook. Themes of deception go hand-in-hand with slight-of-hand and a twinge of class conflict. Browning foregrounds outsiders, dresses up Aileen Pringle in splendid dresses by uncredited Erté and André-ani, sets up unforgettable séance sequences and delighting in their artifice and deconstruction. The conflict is ethical rather than romantic, although admittedly Nash (Conway Tearle) has an existential crisis because he has feelings for his scam victim, Doris (Gladys Hulette). Zara (a livewire Pringle) represents a cultural and lifestyle rather than a romantic opposition.

  

But what makes this release distinctive is the foley work that accentuates some of the action throughout – doors closing, laughter, paper rustling. Droney, industrial and throbbing with organ, this 2023 score is the work of Dean Hurley, and it comes as no surprise that he was a David Lynch collaborator.

 

 

 

‘The Unknown’ especially, is full of trauma, manipulations, castration anxieties, and sheer oddness that you wonder if the somewhat crazed ending may well trip over into Grand Guignol gore: it certainly feels bold enough. The broader strokes are totally simpatico with the sideshow melodrama: a crook on the run is posing as an armless knife-throwing performer but falls for a woman that can’t tolerate being touched. And that’s a young Joan Crawford! As Alonzo, seemingly armless and having learnt to do all with his feet, Lon Chaney exhibits wonderfully full-blooded silent movie reactions, especially when he learns he has made a great sacrifice for the object of his desire to no reward. Chaney’s reaction shots and a melodramatic story positively bursting with trauma and perversity is another example of how the reputation of silent films as a repressed and quaint product is misplaced. It may not be explicit, but it’s all there.

 

 

 

‘Freaks’ is the one you probably bought the set for, although for me it was ‘The Unknown’ that proved the revelation. There’s a lot of misreading and ambiguity in the horror of Browning’s most notorious film. With the famous “One of Us!” sequence plainly being an initiation of Cleopatra as one of their own via her marriage to Hans. Yet the chant is often recited and misremembered in popular culture as sinister: the full chant is, “We accept her! One of us!”, but viewed through Cleopatra’s disgust, it takes on a horrified and horror sheen. The circus folk don’t look down on the pairing or disparage them in any way, it’s a celebration, an open declaration of acceptance from a closed, disparaged community. The ending would seem like a justified revenge narrative but as it’s filtered through storms and shadowy malevolence, it feels more a horror set piece: anyone would be malevolent when filmed this way. As follows, Browning has only himself to blame for misinterpretation and that the final reveal somehow makes Cleopatra feel a bit of a victim.

 

It’s Cleopatra’s cruelty that seals her fate via actions that are a bit more eye-for-an-eye than audiences were ready for at the time. Arguably, Freaks is not a horror show, despite its form of justice; rather, it’s a drama about acceptance and love and what happens when someone tries to take advantage of a group they see as inferior.”

  https://elementsofmadness.com/2023/10/17/sideshowshockers-hv/

 

There is no doubt that Browning has a lot of empathy and affection for the carnival folk, but in each film it is the “other” that is not to be trusted, are predatory and/or dangerous: the swindlers in ‘The Mystic’ are gypsies; Alonzo in ‘The Unknown’ has the mutation of an extra thumb; the folk of ‘Freaks’ are not physically typical. You can grow in sympathy as Browning allows these particular people agencies, but their otherness and your discomfort at them is also validated. There is definitely some of the murky morality and sideshow exploitation at work here, and yet Browning manages to avoid outright crudity. The film’s success is in showing the normalcy of the lives of the circus folk: there are no scenes that subject them to condescension or ridicule, and in that way it is not exploitational and definitely ahead of its time in representation.

 

 

 

The year before ‘Freaks’, Browning had made ‘Dracula’ with Legosi, securing a one-two punch for his status in the Horror legends list. Or, as IMBD trivia has it, “He has directed two films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Dracula (1931) and Freaks (1932).” ‘Freaks’ even has the distinction of being banned in the UK for thirty-plus years, giving it additional horror bona fides. There’s the legend that a woman miscarried whilst watching it, which is also the kind of thing a horror’s reputation enjoys. It is also associated with lost footage, studio interference and credited with destroying Browning’s subsequent career, even with ‘Dracula’ to his name. All of this gives it considerable notoriety but, unlike Browning’s lost ‘London After Midnight’, we can see that ‘Freaks’ still maintains a raw power and unique milieu that secures its place in cinematic and genre history.

 "Daring! Beautiful! Sensational!", indeed.