Premise: A trapeze artist at a carnival tries to marry then murder a dwarf working there who recently came into a lot of money.
This is a really fascinating movie to track historically. Over the 90 years since it was made, it's been reassessed many times, but people continue to struggle with how to talk about it. It is a horror movie. The horror is motivated by the physical appearance of the "freaks". Even the kindest view of the movie has to note the freakshow aspect of the movie. Yet, the movie has been noted for its kind treatment of the characters. Even though the theatrical poster had the insulting tagline "Can a full-grown woman truly love a midget?", the content of the movie is very sympathetic to the variously disabled people. I'd love to come to this talking about how evolved I am or whatever, but I'll admit that I paused the movie to watch something else while I was eating. I suck too.
I wasn't prepared to see this much nuance in a movie so old. It really does treat all the characters like people, even while the film openly gawks at aspects of them physically. It looks most negatively at the "regular" people who try to take advantage of the others. Apparently, there is a lost 90-minute version of this that pushes the limits more. That would be interesting to see as well. All that matters now is this 64-minute cut that was deemed "less shocking".
This is a movie that's more interesting to watch academically than for entertainment. Even at a hair over an hour the story feels padded. Entire sequences only exist to show off what makes one of the people weird. I worry about seeing any unofficial remakes of this, because I suspect they'll feel even more exploitative.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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