Starring: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova

Spurred on by MGM following the success of James Whale’s Frankenstein and Tod Browning’s Dracula, Freaks would wind up being the controversial film of the century that pushed the boundaries of horror and the avant-garde. The jarring imagery of severely disabled actors seeking revenge upon a beautiful trapeze artist whose intentions of marrying the leader of the side-show performers are horribly cruel caused Freaks to be banned for decades, only seeing a release in the 1960s. Harsh yet beautiful, the film’s social commentary on how deformities on the inside can be far more grotesque than any physical defect is still potent today.