Freaks / The Unknown / The Mystic - Tod Brownings Sideshow Shockers - Criterion Collection Blu-Ray

A trio of twisted pre-Code shockers by Tod Browning, a master of the morbid and early Hollywood's sharpest auteur

The world is a carnival of crime, corruption, and strangeness in Tod Browning's twisted pre-Code shockers. Browning, who was early Hollywood's sharpest auteur, used his experiences as a circus performer to create subversive entertainmentset in the world of traveling sideshows, which, with their atmosphere of the exotic and the disgraceful, provided a sharp backdrop for his sordid tales of outcasts, prisoners, villains, and vagabonds. This cabinet of curiosities from the pre-Code era brings together two of his most important works (The Unknown and Freaks) and a long-unavailable rarity (The Mystic), revealing a master of the morbid whose ability to disturb is matched only by his fierce compassion for society's most oppressed.

Freaks (1932)

Tod Browning's most transgressive film produced by a major American studio in the 1930s has haunted the margins of cinema for almost a hundred years. An unforgettable group of real sideshow performers portray the entertainers in a traveling circus who, shunned by mainstream society, live by their own code—a code that means radical acceptance of other oppressed people and, as the show's beautiful but cruel trapeze artist learns, terrifying retribution for those who oppose them. Freaks was met with disgust by viewers when it was first released and effectively ended Browning's career, but can now be seen for what it is: a bold cry for understanding and a unique experience of nightmarish, almost avant-garde power.

The Unknown (1927)

The most famous and exquisitely perverse of the many collaborations between Tod Browning and his legendary leading man Lon Chaney, The Unknown, features a stunning physical performance from "The Man of a Thousand Faces" as the armless Spanish knife thrower Alonzo (he throws daggers with his feet) whose scandalous love for his beautiful assistant (Joan Crawford) - a woman who, incidentally, cannot bear to be touched by any man's hands - drives him to indescribable extremes. Sadomasochistic obsession, deception, murder, perversion, and a spectacular Grand Guignol climax—Browning wrings every last frisson from this twisted premise.

The Mystic (1925)

A fantastically atmospheric but rarely seen missing link in the development of Tod Browning's artistry, set in his favorite milieu of shady side shows and clever criminals, The Mystic provides a striking showcase for silent film diva Aileen Pringle, who has a series of memorable outrageous looks (courtesy of art deco designer Erté) as Zara, a fake medium at a Hungarian carnival who, under the guidance of a Svengali-like con man (Conway Tearle), crashes—and continues to swindle—American high society. Browning's fascination with the bizarre comes into its own in the eerie séance sequences, while his subversive moral ambiguity lends surprising sympathy even to the seemingly most irredeemable antiheroes.SPECIAL EDITION New 2K digital restoration of Freaks, with uncompressed mono audio on Blu-ray New 2K digital reconstruction and restoration of The Unknown by the George Eastman Museum, with a new soundtrack by composer Philip Carlip>

New 2K digital restoration of The Mystic, with new music by composer Dean Hurley

Audio commentary on Freaks and The Unknown, as well as an introduction to The Mystic by film scholar David J. Skal

New interview with author Megan Abbott about director Tod Browning and pre-Code horror

Archival documentary about Freaks

Episode from 2019 of critic Kristen Lopez's podcast Ticklish Business about the representation of disability in Freaks

Skal reads "Spurs," the novella by Tod Robbins on which Freaks is based

Prologue to Freaks, added to the film in 1947

Program about the alternative endings to Freaks

Video gallery with portraits from Freaks

English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

PLUS: An essay by film critic Farran Smith Nehme New cover by Raphael Geroni