Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers - The Criterion Collection

The world is a carnival of criminality, corruption, and psychosexual strangeness in the twisted pre-Code shockers of Tod Browning. Early Hollywood's edgiest auteur, Browning drew on his experiences as a circus performer to create subversive pulp entertainments set amid the world of traveling sideshows, which, with their air of the exotic and the disreputable, provided a pungent backdrop for his sordid tales of outcasts, cons, villains, and vagabonds. Bringing together two of his defining works (The Unknown and Freaks) and a long-unavailable rarity (The Mystic), this cabinet of pre-Code curiosities reveals a master of the morbid whose ability to unsettle is matched only by his daring compassion for society's most downtrodden.

Special Features

Commentary: 'Freaks'/'The Unknown': David J. Skal (film scholar), Documentaries: 'Freaks' archival documentary, Interviews: Megan Abbott (author), Introduction to 'The Mystic' by David J. Skal; Episode of podcast 'Ticklish Business' about disability representation in 'Freaks'; David J. Skal reading of 'Spurs' by Tod Robbins, the short story on which 'Freaks' is based; Prologue to 'Freaks' (added 1947); Program on the alternate endings to 'Freaks'; Video gallery of portraits from 'Freaks'; Essay by Farran Smith Nehme (critic)

Actors: Joan Crawford, Wallace Ford, Lon Chaney, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Mitchell Lewis, Nick De Ruiz, John George, Frank Lanning, Aileen Pringle, Conway Tearle, Henry Victor, Roscoe Ates, Harry Earles, Robert Ober, Norman Kerry

Audio Languages: English

Duration: 62 minutes

Number of Discs: 2

Subtitle Languages: English

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