[Film Review] Freaks (1932) and The Devil-Doll (1936)
A double-bill of Tod Browning's cinematic menagerie of grotesqueries and bizarreries. FREAKS, whose original uncensored version no longer exists, is left to posterity with a bastardized and truncated 64-minute version.
Scandalizing the world with the never-seen-before display of sideshow performers with disabilities, FREAKS challenges audience to look straight at those unfortunate, malformed human beings, and hopefully our involuntary uneasiness or even disgust to their physiognomical otherness can be desensitized when we look at them longer (for one thing, baby-faced adult dwarves are lodestone to observe because of their contradictions in display) and get to know their characters better, empathizing with their full emotional gamut. It is intrinsic that FREAKS is ordained to be niggled for exploitation, but there is no other right way to introduce those "freaks" to the world audience without simply setting them up in the epicenter, showing them as they are without concession. If you feel revolted by that, you shall go under some introspection of your own jaundiced prejudice.
The story goes like this, among a carnival circus, Cleopatra (Baclanova, deliciously conniving), an able-boded trapeze artist, schemes to first, seduce and then, after their matrimony, murder dwarf Hans (Harry Earles) for the latter's handsome inheritance. While Hans is hopelessly swept off feet by Cleopatra's charm offensive, he even breaks off the engagement with his dwarf fiancée Frieda (Daisy, Harry own sister in real life), his other "freak" friends will not sit and do nothing. After Cleopatra openly humiliates their disability and her sinister plan is disclosed, the freaks are taking the matter into their own hands, punishment awaits both Cleopatra and her lover Hercules (Victor, a hulking bully).
When you see vengeance flickering in the knife held by those freaks (a pinhead, a half-boy, a human torso, etc.), it is a cathartic moment because you can vicariously feel their suppressed pain, for all the suffering and maltreatment inflicted by able-bodied folks, they finally can fight back to expunge human vice once and for all, Cleopatra will have a taste of her own medicine, but more importantly, they are humanized to be a full-blown human, like those normal ones. What they get is not just camaraderie, which binds them together to survive in a hostile land, but also an outlet to express and justify their rage, and for this purpose, Browning's film is incredibly ahead of its time and its legacy is here to stay.
Penny dreadful is cranked up to a more beggar-belief degree in THE DEVIL-DOLL, the penultimate film of Browning's career. The plot's novelty stems from a magical formula which can reduce people to one-sixth of their original size, to make the Earth's limited resources last longer for an ever-growing population, that is very promising scientific progress, but it is only applied for one's self-seeking purpose, namely, to execute a "best served cold" revenge for Paul Lavond (Barrymore), a former banker who has been wronged by his three business associates and spent 17 years in the joint.
The wow factor is Browning's innovative ways to create a striking illusion that a person is shrunken and can move freely in a normal-sized surroundings. Some of the footage are visible superimpositions and others are shot among the scaled-up props, but the final effect is overall quite satisfactory for a film of its time.
In the leading part, Barrymore has the task of impersonating an elder woman to evade police's suspicion and avails himself of his prowess to carry off the trick, only his slightly rusty high-pitch voice sounds a shade grating for its unnatural exertion. Maureen O'Sullivan is ably eloquent as Paul's embittered and misunderstood daughter, but our amazement cannot be diverted from Rafaela Ottiano's Malita, a mad scientist type gussied up like the daughter borne out of the bride of Frankenstein and count Dracula, maxing out her deranged expressions like nobody's business. Only if her final attempt to shrink Paul were viable, the film would've been more divertingly twist and unconventionally brilliant, unlike the mushy ending we are stuck with, a father's unconditional but paternalistic love for his daughter is a self-important sacrifice of the highest water.
Labeled as horror fare, both Browning's films are less disturbing than one's preconception, FREAKS is blessed with a Teflon repute of being the first of its kind and its positive moral integrity, whereas THE DEVIL-DOLL, often engrossing and unwittingly funny (like the 3 candidates dreading in jeopardy), somehow squanders an ingenious idea to play to the gallery. An early pathfinder of horror cinema, Browning is a force to be reckoned with, and his predilection for the abnormal and the eldritch is a true eye-opener.
referential entries: Edmund Goulding's NIGHTMARE ALLEY (1947, 7.9/10); James Whale's THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933, 7.5/10); Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's KING KONG (1933, 7.8/10).
Title: Freaks
Year: 1932
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Language: English, German, French
Director: Tod Browning
Screenwriters: Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon
suggested by Tod Robbins's story "Spurs"
Cinematography: Merritt B. Gerstad
Editor: Basil Wrangell
Cast:
Olga Baclanova
Wallace Ford
Leila Hyams
Harry Earles
Daisy Earles
Henry Victor
Roscoe Ates
Angelo Rossitto
Johnny Eck
Rose Dione
Josephine Joseph
Violet Hilton
Daisy Hilton
Rating: 7.6/10
Title: The Devil-Doll
Year: 1936
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi
Country: USA
Language: English, French
Director: Tod Browning
Screenwriters: Garrett Fort, Guy Endore, Erich von Stroheim
adapted from Abraham Merritt's novel "Burn Witch Burn!"
Music: Franz Waxman
Cinematography: Leonard Smith
Editor: Fredrick Y. Smith
Cast:
Lionel Barrymore
Maureen O'Sullivan
Frank Lawton
Rafaela Ottiano
Robert Greig
Lucy Beaumont
Henry B. Walthall
Grace Ford
Pedro de Cordoba
Arthur Hohl
Claire De Brey
Juanita Quigley
Rating: 6.9/10
