Freaks - 1932

Freaks (also re-released as The Monster Story, Forbidden Love, and Nature's Mistakes) is a 1932 American pre-Code drama horror film produced and directed by Tod Browning, starring Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, and Roscoe Ates. Freaks, originally intended as a vehicle for Lon Chaney, is set amongst the backdrop of a travelling French circus and follows a conniving trapeze artist who joins a group of carnival sideshow performers with a plan to seduce and murder a dwarf in the troupe to gain his inheritance. However, her plot proves to have dangerous consequences. The film is based on elements from the short story "Spurs" by Tod Robbins, Filmed in Los Angeles in the fall of 1931, some employees at MGM were discomforted by the presence of the actors portraying the "freaks" on set, and, other than the so-called more normal looking "freaks", the conjoined twins and the Earles, the performers were not allowed to be on the studio lot, relegated instead to a specially-built tent.