"The difficulty is in telling whether it should be shown at the Rialto... or in, say, the Medical Centre... Its first audience apparently could not decide, although there was a good bit of applause."
The New York Times

"It is either too horrible or not horrible enough, according to the viewpoint."
Variety

"It is my impression that Freaks is, in its quite repulsive fashion, a dramatic and powerful motion picture. It is obviously an unhealthy and generally disagreeable work, not only in its story and characterization, but also in its gay directorial touches. Mr. Browning can make even freaks more unpleasant than they would be ordinarily. Yet, in some strange way, the picture is not only exciting, but even occasionally touching... Mr. Browning has always been an expert in pathological morbidity, but after seeing Freaks, his other pictures seem but whimsical nursery tales."
Richard Watts, Jr., New York Herald Tribune

"It is a most unusual production, made at the time when the horror cycle appeared to be in full sway, and as a picture of this type it was produced with expert hands. But the nature of its theme makes its chances problematical. First, the fact that the ugly human monstrosities in this picture are that way in reality, whereas in other films the audience knew it was all make-believe seems to induce a different and not pleasant reaction."
The Film Daily

"What can be the purpose of a film of this sort is beyond guessing, for it is the sort of thing that, once seen, lurks in the dark places of the mind, cropping up every so often with a direful persistence... The main theme of the sadistically cruel plot savors nearly of perversion, certainly of abnormality."
Boston Herald

"Strong men and strong women can't stand this one and a child won't sleep for a week after an eyeful of this chamber of horrors."
The Chicago Daily News

"It is quite unfair to the production to brand it as gruesome. If the picture has met adverse comment in any community that reaction can be traced back to the type of exploitation used ahead of its showing."
Motion Picture Herald

"It is only fair to state before writing my opinion of Freaks, that it is the only film in four years of reviewing that I have seen under protest... I cannot believe such a show will entertain any but the morbidly curious, or those poor souls with jaded appetites who are even looking for a new thrill... expectant mothers should be expressly warned not to see it if they value their peace of mind."
Louisville Times

"Moving, harsh, poetic and genuinely tender. It triumphs at once over your nausea; it also triumphs very quickly over your sense of what is curious. To enable people to look at grossly deformed human beings without feeling either sickened or even intrigued is the sort of thing that can be done only by art."
Penelope Gilliatt, London Observer (1962, after the 30-year ban on the film was lifted)

"I was not prepared for the raucous horror, the splendid ambiguities, and the safely distanced but very real cruelties of Freaks."
Vincent Canby, The New York Times (1970)

Compiled by Bret Wood