Freaks

Tod Browning’s subversive but tender fable of exploitation, trickery and revenge in a travelling carnival.

Dracula (1931) director Tod Browning cast actors with disabilities for his extraordinary fable of exploitation and revenge among the members of a travelling carnival show (a milieu the director himself knew well). When one of their number is tricked and threatened by the trapeze artist and her strongman lover, the performers – regarded and depicted with sensitivity by the director – band together to take action.