From Wikipedia Freaks is a 1932 American pre-Code horror film produced and directed by Tod Browning, and starring Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova and Roscoe Ates. It follows a 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, but 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, Freaks was given test screenings in January 1932 that received harsh reaction from audiences, who found the film too grotesque. In response to this, the 90-minute feature was significantly cut, and additional alternate footage was incorporated to help increase the running time. The final abridged cut of the film, released in February 1932, runs only 64 minutes; the original version no longer exists. Despite the cuts made to the film, Freaks still garnered notice due to the fact that its eponymous characters were portrayed by people who worked as sideshow performers and had real disabilities. These cast members included dwarf siblings Harry and Daisy Earles; Johnny Eck, who had sacral agenenis; the conjoined twin sisters Daisy and Violet Hilton; and Schlitzie, a man with microcephaly. Because of its controversial content, the film was banned in the United Kingdom for over 30 years and was labelled as "brutal and grotesque" in Canada.[6] Though it received critical backlash and was a box-office failure upon initial release, Freaks was subject to public and critical reappraisal in the 1960s, particularly in Europe, and was screened at the 1962 Venice Film Festival. In retrospect, numerous film critics have suggested that the film presents a starkly sympathetic portrait of its sideshow characters rather than an exploitative one, with Andrew Sarris declaring Freaks one of the "most compassionate" films ever made.[7] Nonetheless, critics have continued to take note of the film'