Freaks (lost deleted scenes from horror film; 1932)
cut portions of the movie
Status: Lost
Tod Browning's Freaks (based on his earlier short story "spurs") is a 1932 horror film that used real carnival sideshow performers with real deformities.
At first, the movie gained a lot of controversies and extremely negative feedback from test audiences. Even after the film had extensive cuts (roughly a whole half hour was cut) which are now lost due most movie companies at the time either not saving the cut parts of the film or taking poor care of it, all that may be left is the original script in the MGM vaults that include the original ending. The controversy was so bad that one of the test audiences, quote "threatened to sue MGM for giving her a miscarriage". After Tom Browning made "Freaks" he soon found it hard to find any kind of work and it eventually brought his career to an early end.
According to test audiences some cuts include:
- Scenes cut short.
- Small comedy bits.
- Many of the cuts included the relationship between the character Venus and Phroso.
- Many cuts of the growing hatred between Venus and Hercules (which leads to near the end of the film where he attacks her with the intention to kill and fights Phroso).
- A very shocking and different ending compared to the "happy" one MGM included where the chase scene of Cleo is longer and includes the freaks chasing Hercules. which leads to the infamous chicken scene but states that she is now senseless and also shows a castrated Hercules.
References
- Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freaks
- info on the cut content: http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2014/10/03/the-unseen-freaks
- Tod Brownings original story "spurs":http://www.olgabaclanova.com/spurs.htm