Awards and Honors

Freaks was voted a place on the National Film Registry in 1994.

THE CRITICS' CORNER - FREAKS

"Freaks is sumptuously produced, admirably directed, and no cost was spared. But Metro failed to realize that even with a different sort of offering the story still is important. Here it is not sufficiently strong to get and hold the interest, partly because interest cannot easily be gained for a too fantastic romance."
- Variety

"There is no excuse for this picture. It took a weak mind to produce it and it takes a strong stomach to look at it. The reason it was made was to make money....In Freaks the movies make their great step toward national censorship. If they get it, they will have no one to blame but themselves."
- John C. Moffitt, Kansas City Star

"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 even make freaks more unpleasant than they would be ordinarily. Yet, in some strange way, the picture is not only exciting, but even occasionally touching."
- Richard Watts, Jr., New York Herald Tribune

"It is the sort of thing that, once seen, lurks in the dark places of the mind, cropping up every so often with a dourful persistence."
- The Boston Herald

"...it's still a shocker. Though this circus story, directed by Tod Browning, is superficially sympathetic to the maimed and the mindless that it features, it uses images of physical deformity for their enormous potential of horror, and at the end, when the pinheads and the armless and legless creatures scurry about to revenge themselves on a normal woman (Olga Baclanova), the film becomes a true nightmare. If this film were a silent it might be harder to shake off, but the naive, sentimental talk helps us keep our distance."
- Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies

"It is a story concerned with the life and loves of circus freaks and because of the human abnormalities involved its unwholesome shockery creates morbid audience reactions. It is a skillfully presented production but of a character which in consideration of the susceptibilities of mass audiences should be avoided."
- Martin Quigley, Decency in Motion Pictures

"There is little to be said about Freaks, Tod Browning's celebrated film, except that it does not merit the reputation for cruelty accorded it by the litany of belated surrealists. On the contrary, what I found touching was the human being's prodigious capacity for adaptation. Seeing the armless man light a cigarette by using only his mouth leaves us breathless with admiration. This story shows the infinite ingenuity and the greatness of man. But enough moralizing. Freaks is a very honest film that can be seen with more pleasure than horror."
- Jean Douchet, Cahiers du Cinema

"....bizarre and fascinating..."
- Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide

"...enjoyed a greater reputation than it deserved because it was unseen for thirty years owing to a censor's ban. Now it seems interesting but unsatisfactory, a curious aberration of the Irving Thalberg regime at MGM.
- Leslie Halliwell, The Filmgoer's Companion

"...While watching the freaks, viewers will feel not only fear, curiosity, and pity but also warmth, respect, and amazement....Browning's point is that people needn't pay to see them just because they're different - with the exception of the pinheads, they are talented show people. They can "act" in front of the camera, and some, like the Hilton Siamese Twins, even display a quirky sense of humor....It is because of the freaks that the film has had so much trouble with censors, but there is no film from the period that has more sexual innuendo."
- Danny Peary, Guide for the Film Fanatic

"Although using real freaks, Browning's treatment is never voyeuristic or condescending, but sympathetic in such a way that after a few minutes we almost cease to perceive them as in any way abnormal. There is a strong, black humour that, remarkably, lacks cruelty, and a real sense of terror in the awful revenge the wronged freaks exact."
- Geoff Andrews, Time Out

"Who are the 'freaks' of the film's title then? It's anyone who fails to recognize the humanity in the film's deformed lot."
- Ed Gonzales, Slant Magazine

Compiled by Frank Miller