Freaks and The Devil-Doll: two great Tod Browning classics

By Doug Gibson

We love Tod Browning's films at Plan9Crunch blog, and we thought we'd spare some paragraphs on a couple of his better MGM films of the 1930s: Freaks, 1932, (see news clipping ad above) and  The Devil-Doll, from 1936. Also, thanks to David Grudt, of Long Beach, Calif., we go back in time and see classic newspaper clips about the films.

FREAKS

Besides “Dracula,” the film Browning may be best known for is the 1932 "Freaks." It is a masterpiece of surreal horror. The plot involves a selfish, beautiful trapeze artist (Cleopatra) who marries a little man (Hans) for his money. With her strongman lover (Hercules), she plots to kill Hans. Their big mistake is that they assume the circus “freaks” are little children, rather than adults capable of retribution. What they learn too late is that the “freaks” — and the actors really were such — act like children as a defense mechanism. They want to be left alone. But threatened in their environment, they draw strength from numbers.

For 40-plus minutes of this slightly longer than an hour film, we are not scared. Instead, we learn about life in a circus, and we view the “freaks” as human beings. The last 20 or so minutes are horrifying as the “freaks” gain revenge on two who would falsely request their trust and then try to kill one of them. The scenes of the “freaks” with knives and guns, peering through windows and under wagons, slithering, hopping, sliding and pursuing Hercules and Cleopatra through a dark rainy night are frightening. For years, the fim ended with a brief, jarring shot of what the “freaks” had done to Cleopatra. It’s one of the most shocking finales in film. But now “Freaks” when seen on Turner Classic Movies, adds the epilogue with Hans and other characters that diminishes the impact a little.

“Freaks” was ahead of its time. The suits at MGM hated the film and barely distributed it. More than any other film, it damaged Browning’s career. In fact, it was banned in Britain for 40 years. See it for yourself: it’s a masterpiece that draws on Browning’s love and respect for carnival life. In fact, before his film career Browning worked in a carnival. He allowed himself in these Grand-Guignol-like events to be "buried alive." More newspaper clips of Freaks below:

THE DEVIL-DOLL

One more Browning film worth seeing is the 1936 “The Devil-Doll.” (See newspaper clipping above)  It stars Lionel Barrymore as Paul Lavond, a framed banker who breaks out of France’s Devil’s Island prison with a mad scientist who can turn people into doll-sized humans who can be manipulated by human masters’ thoughts. It’s a wild plot. Outside Paris the mad scientist dies. Lavond’s and the scientist’s widow — who is as crazy as her husband — continue the experiments. She wants to turn the whole world little; Lavond just wants to gain revenge on his ex-partners who framed him and also help his blind mother and daughter, who were impoverished by his imprisonment. He uses the “devil dolls” to get his revenge on his ex-partners and clear his name.

Watch this film for the special effects and Barrymore’s performance. He’s great as a mostly decent man who can’t control his thirst for revenge and knows it. As an actor, Barrymore could be very kindly, as in Frank Capra's "You Can't Take It With You," and also quit evil, as in Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" and an earlier Browning film, "West of Zanzibar."

More newspaper clippings for The Devil Doll below, including a mid 1930s review.:

Hitler's Madman a film that rallied Allied audiences in 1943

 

I love old newspaper clippings, and again kudos to my friend, David Grudt, of Long Beach, Calif., for locating several clips for the John Carradine-starring "Hitler's Madman," 1943, which detailed the assassination of Nazi sadist/mass murderer Reinhard Heydrich, and the subsequent mass retaliation murder within the Czech town of Lidice. The above review was penned by The New York Daily News Wanda Hale, who was a founder of the New York Film Critics Association. Hale spent roughly 40 years reviewing films for the Daily News, retiring in the early 1970s.

"Hitler's Madman" (see a newspaper-published still below) was filmed as a poverty-row effort by Producers Releasing Corporation, but had enough mojo to garner a planned release by a bigger poverty-row producer, Republic Pictures. However, its fortunes leaped when the head honchos at major-studio MGM were impressed enough to take over final production. MGM also added a few scenes, one where Carradine's Heydrich is inspecting young Czech teen girls for use in a forced brothel. One of the teens in that scene is a very young, just-under-contract Ava Gardner.

Carradine is great in this role. You really hate him in a role in which he is playing the personifaction of pure evil. The details within the tale of Heydrich's assassination and the massacre of Lidice are liberally fictionalized, but it's excellent patriotic somber entertainment for wartime morale. Two lovers are reunited, one working as an agent against the Nazis. He recruits his lover and tries to persuade others to rebel. Townspeople are split between secret rebels, those who loathe the Nazis but discourage rebellion and a few Nazi-favoring quislings who include the mayor. The Nazis' main use for Lidice is to harvest male soldiers to die at the front and force women into brothels for Nazi soldiers. After Heydrich casually murders townspeople blocking his roadwayway during a town event, a plot develops against his life. He is ambushed and badly wounded.

Heydrich dies a slow agonizing death. Before he dies, he is visited by Heinrich Himmler, who clearly is more or less unconcerned, and offers bland platitudes about dying for Germany. Before his death, Heydrich, unable to deal with his mortality and in agony, refuses to die for Hitler and says that the war is probably lost for the Nazis. In his report to Hitler, Himmler assures the fuhrer that Heydrich died praising the Third Reich. It's a very strong scene, underscoring the banality of death and its ultimate insignificance for the evil.

Himmler orders the town destroyed and many of its males killed. The famous poem, The Murder of Lidice, bookends the film. It is recited at the beginning and the end. The film ends very strongly with the ghosts of the Lidice massacre walking through the streets, murdered in body but not conquered in spirit.

I imagine this film inspired a lot of audiences during World War II. It is very well made. Besides Carradine, stars include Alan Curtis and Patricia Morison, and Ralph Morgan. It is directed by future A-director Douglas Sirk. It was Sirk's first film after he escaped from Nazi Germany.

Before are a couple of more newspaper ads from 1943. I confess I was amused that the very serious, somber "Hitler's Madman" was paired in a double-feature with the Red Skelton comedy, "I Dood It." I guess audiences came to laugh and cry.

-- Doug Gibson