"Freaks" (1932) on Warner Archive Instant

"You laugh at them, shudder at them, and yet, but for the accident of birth, you might be even as they are."

     Tod Browning never left the carnival behind. He spent the early part of his life travelling with different shows, doing various jobs, including a "Living Corpse" routine, where he would be buried in a coffin (fitted with an air tube) for day's with only pocketful's of malted milk ball's for sustenance. That kind of experience, gained from having led a life outside cinema before stepping behind the camera, is something that has been increasingly rare in the post film brat generations. Tod Browning the carny informed Tod Browning the director; the live's of those who work the midway is an element in many of his work's including "The Unknown", "The Unholy Three" and, most famously,"Freaks", a morality tale set in the world of sideshow performers.

     Browning's interest in the physically malformed had been apparent in many of his works with Lon Chaney such as the aforementioned "The Unknown", as well as "Where East Is East" and "The Blackbird". He wastes no time in "Freaks" portraying the ugly scorn with which the world treats the performer's that populate the picture. In a series of short scene's he shows the "freaks" to be happy, caring people who are patronized, mocked and treated cruelly by the "normal" world. Few films take aim at hypocrisy so effectively in such a short time.

     We are thrown into into a fully realized, living, breathing world with an ensemble of characters. The viewer is immersed in the everyday backstage life of the carnival performer. Hans (Harry Earles), a dwarf, is smitten with beautiful trapeze girl Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova). She exploits his feelings for money and gift's, while making a fool of him behind his back with her domestic abuse loving boyfriend Hercules (Henry Victor), the Strong Man.

     The movie has a rapid fire pace, and Browning never stops bombarding the viewer with unique and unsettling situations and image's still unparalleled eighty year's later. Whether it be the charming chronicle of the relationship issues of Siamese twins (Daisy and Violet Hilton) or the upsetting moment when Hercules punches the Half Woman-Half Man (Josephine Joseph) square in the face, we are constantly forced to react to things we have never seen before. In a poignant scene of profound kindness, the freaks gather around the bed of the Bearded Lady (Olga Roderick) and her newborn child. The Pinheads (Schlitzie, Elvira Snow, Jenny Lee Snow), Koo-koo the Bird Girl, Johnny the Half Boy (Johnny Eck), Angeleno the dwarf (Angelo Rossitto), the Bird Girl (Elizabeth Green) and the Half Woman-Half Man are framed by Browning's camera as if they were in a classic painting, not displayed as grotesque's, but as loving friend's. Director's such as John Waters and Werner Herzog, who force their audience to acknowledge the existence of society's outliers, are very much the children of Browning.

     At the center of this environment, a romance blossoms between Phroso the clown (Wallace Ford) and Venus (Leila Hyams), who walked out on Hercules due to his abuse of her. Theirs is an innocent, enthusiastic love, especially when juxtaposed with the cynical manipulations of Cleopatra. Frieda the dwarf, who was once the object of Hans' affection, goes to Cleopatra, and in a scene of brave humility, begs her to leave Hans alone. During the course of this, she lets slip that Hans possesses a fortune and with this his fate is sealed. Daisy Earles, the actress who plays Frieda gives an incredible, heartbreaking performance embodying pure selfless love.

     We cut forward to the wedding feast, a sideshow bacchanalia. Cleopatra openly cavorts with Hercules, too dumb and drunk to hide the transparency of her motives. There at the wedding table a chant breaks out, "We accept her, one of us...gooble gobble...". The freaks pass a goblet, each drinking from it. When it comes time for Cleopatra to drink, she tosses it at them, vanity making her unable to even pretend to be "one of them". Afterwards she mockingly gives Hans a piggyback ride, while Hercules accompanies on trumpet. It's an operatic moment of cruelty.

     As the day's pass, the freak's watch as Cleopatra pretends to nurse Hans back from a poisoning for which she is responsible. In these scene's Browning conveys the message that in this world it is Cleopatra who doesn't belong. She has made the fatal mistake of confusing being different with being stupid. The final sequence on the caravan during a thunderstorm where the undercaste assert themselves against those who would hurt them is a vicious, primal tour de force. It's the thematic inversion of torch wielding villagers chasing the monster; a society of the unusual seeking to purge the corrupting influence of the normal world from it's midst. At it's core this is a story of community.

          One senses Browning's own sweat and passion in every frame, and it's what sets him apart from many of his contemporaries. James Whale, for instance, directed his films with the remove and humor of a technically gifted intellectual, but Browning inhabited his pictures, dwelling within their dark world's. With "Freaks", his role as sympathetic chronicler of the marginalized reached it's apex. He created a vehicle for these people to be viewed as humans, and it remains a shockingly unique and compassionate achievement.

"Mark of the Vampire" (1935) on Warner Archive Instant

"Forget your absurd old superstitions. This is nineteen hundred and thirty-four."

   

     By the time Tod Browning made "Dracula" in 1931, he had already established himself as a talented silent filmmaker, mainly through his collaborations with the legendary Lon Chaney. In fact, it was Chaney who was originally slated to star in the production before lung cancer ended his life. Browning's "Dracula" is an essential adaptation of the story, although much criticism has been made of the picture. Some feel the film is a creaky relic of the silent era. This has never been something I've agreed with. Browning was indeed a pre-talkie director, but I find the arcane and beautiful visual language of that bygone time perfect for the subject matter. Lugosi and Frye, under the direction of Browning, both etch the iconography of their characters in stone, forever defining them. What hurts the film most in the eyes of many is the total lack of musical score. While I'm not saying it wouldn't be better with a soundtrack, the absence of one creates a unique mood, as if the film is inhabited by the silence of the past. I apologize for this introductory digression, but it was important to briefly discuss "Dracula" since it informs so much of the picture we are reviewing today. The two era's of Browning's career would meet four years later when Lugosi stepped into Chaney's shoe's in "Mark of the Vampire", a remake of the Browning/Chaney legendary lost silent "London After Midnight".

     Peasants singing in the town square, a foggy graveyard, whispered warnings of vampire's preying in the night- "Mark of the Vampire" immediately immerses the viewer in 1930s horror trope heaven. Night falls and in the morning Sir Karrell Borotyn (Holmes Herbert) is found dead. Inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwill) arrives in town to investigate. He doesn't buy the claims of Dr. Doskil (Donald Meek), who has ruled it death by vampire.

     As Borotyn's daughter, Irena's (Elizabeth Allen), wedding day approaches, her fiance, Fedor (Henry Wadsworth), arrives unexpectedly at Baron Otto's (Jean Hersholt), where she has been staying. Dishevelled, he says he blacked out near the castle and doesn't know what happened. Upon his neck he bears the mark of the vampire.

     Browning directly quotes "Dracula" with Lugosi's entrance into the picture. Count Mora walks down the stairs of his castle, flanked by his daughter Luna (Carol Borland), a ghostly, sepulchral beauty. This sequence mirrors that earlier film, and both exhibit Browning's penchant for cutaways to bugs and rodents.

     Mora and Luna appear outside Irena's room, and fall upon her in the mist shrouded night. Professor Zelin (Lionel Barrymore) is brought in to inspect Irena. He zealously believes, as do the villagers, that blood suckers have been feasting in the night. Barrymore acted for Browning a number of times, and he portrays Professor Zelin as a wonderfully crotchety version of Van Helsing. Zelin sets to hanging "bat thorn" all over the damn place, because I guess wolf's bane isn't indigenous to the region.

 

      Browning worked with noted expressionist cinematographer Karl Freund on "Dracula", and "Mark of the Vampire" sees him teaming with another legendary lensman, James Wong Howe. The scene in which Neumann and Otto visit Sir Borotyn's tomb is a work of gloomy, gorgeous unease. Later, during the film's most famous sequence, the Count stands within his castle and the undead Borotyn plays the organ. Luna descends from above, a spectral, winged night thing; an angel of Hell come to Earth. The Count and Luna haunt the film with their phantom presence, and their scenes pierce the veil to reach a place beyond the tangible, living world in the same way "Carnival of Souls" and many of Jean Rollin's work's would do decade's later.

     The Professor decides the only course of action is to enter the castle and destroy the vampire's before sunrise. Otto joins him and they become trapped in the vaults as daytime ends. Drawn by a vampiric influence, Irena makes her way to the Count's abode, as well. And then...a plot twist awakens the film from it's Gothic slumber and the intruding light of rationality overcomes the narrative. If you're like me and don't wish to be shaken from the gloomy fugue of the film up to that point, then I suggest starting the film over when the scene of Zelin hypnotizing Otto occurs, thereby creating a hypnagogic Mobius strip.

 

       It's worth noting that there is no score to this picture. In "Dracula" the lack of score is often attributed to early talkie technical limitations, but with "Mark of the Vampire", made year's later, it has to be viewed as a deliberate directorial choice. As with the earlier picture, I find it adds an element of strangeness to the overall effect.

     "Mark of the Vampire" is another example of Browning's command of mood and atmosphere, and highlights his ability to interweave the beautiful and unsettling. The ending does detract a bit from the impact of the film, but it also provides a delightfully humorous self reflexive moment for Lugosi that almost makes the whole thing worth it.