Freaks: How Tod Browning’s Controversial Classic Got An Unofficial Remake

Tod Browning’s pre-Code horror movie Freaks is incredibly controversial and has been since it released in 1932. Regardless of this fact, The Asylum produced an unofficial remake of it. Here’s how Freaks was able to be remade in 2007 despite all of its controversy.

Freaks follows the story of a budding trapeze artist with a nefarious plan that involves joining a carnival sideshow. Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) intends on seducing a wealthy man with dwarfism named Hans, portrayed by Harry Earles of The Doll Family quartet, and murder him in order to take his money. Once his fellow performers discover her ill-intent, they create their own plan involving her bodily dismemberment. Freaks is regarded as one of the most controversial horror movies of all time due to the exploitation of people they’ve deemed the titular “freaks.” While some sentiments are harsher than others, scholars of the Great Depression as well as eugenics have posited that Browning’s work unpacks the classism of the United States while actively promoting an anti-eugenics ideology. Regardless of the debate on Freaks’ controversial contents, its depiction of differently abled people murdering Cleopatra – an able-bodied white woman – inarguably demonizes them in an unjust manner.

Despite all of the controversy that comes with Browning’s movie, somehow The Asylum chose to take on its unofficial remake. They are the production company responsible for movies such as Sharknado, Z Nation, and Mega Shark vs. Kolossus. The Asylum is known for their relatively low-budget features that tend to premiere exclusively on the SyFy channel. This studio is quite familiar with controversy, as their remakes of well-known movies – which are sometimes considered to be direct rip-offs – which makes their version of Freaks unsurprising, but still entirely unnecessary. Even so, here’s how the studio managed to bring Freaks to a modern audience.

Freakshow released straight to DVD in January of 2007 with cover art that proudly proclaimed that it was banned in 43 countries. This would be quite the feat, but they’ve never reported which places banned the movie, nor have there been any general exclamations of its ban from outside sources. They likely capitalized off of the original horror movie’s ban in the United Kingdom and Canada. As of this writing, Freakshow holds a 15% approval rating from Rotten Tomatoes. It wasn’t well received in general, which is due in part to its DVD distribution.

Overall, Freakshow is enjoyed by a very small audience and disliked by an even bigger one. Freakshow isn’t the only contemporary work of horror that’s taken influence from Tod Browning’s movie, however. Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story season 4 was largely inspired by Freaks and features several plot lines familiar to the original. It is also the preferred 21st century take on the movie, as critics regarded The Asylum’s Freakshow as bland, with major discrepancies between the written dialogue and the director’s vision.

Freakshow isn’t considered controversial like its original source. Rather than evoking a visceral reaction from audiences or provoking important discourses, it instead relies heavily on the fact that Freaks had an incredible amount of controversy surrounding its 1932 release. To this day, Tod Browning’s pre-Code horror movie stands as a reminder of why Hollywood set out to establish the “Hays Code”, which came into being in 1934. There was no real reason as to why The Asylum chose to take on the project, but it’s likely they were the only company that even entertained the idea of remaking a movie such as Freaks.

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