Original Vintage Sci Fi Horror Movie Memorabilia Collectibles Posters For Sale
Freaks, 1932 
Original Vintage Half Sheet Movie Poster (22x28")

 

Once in a lifetime find!   -  You wont see this anywhere else!!

One of our most requested and desirable classic Sci-Fi/Horror classic movie posters is the almost too shocking to watch , "FREAKS".  And of all the posters created to promote this film, I have always searched for the most spectacular half sheet for the 1949 re-release, which in my opinion is the best !  The graphics as you can see from the above are stunning, better than any other poster style. The bright colors are equally breath taking..   

If you're a fan and/or collector of the most bizarre, the most shocking cinematic innovations, this 1949 re-release half sheet is the gem to own!   And based on our research, only two have ever surfaced on the market in the past 20 years...   And if that's not enough it is in amazing Excellent 100% Un-Restored condition,  NEVER folded!  (as most all half sheets were). 

* See enlargeable image above 

Note:  The original 1932 one sheet for this film has (as far as we know in over 30 years collecting) never appeared on the market. The insert sold at auction in 2009  for about $110,000.  A 1932 lobby card sold in 2010 for $15,500. 

NOTE:   None of the 1932 posters and lobby cards showed the "Freaks".  One 1932 lobby card shows them at the dinner table, but the "Freaks" are mostly hidden from view.   Only the 1949 Posters like this half sheet in particular really explicitly shows most all the "Freaks", with actually photo images (Not animation).  
This is most likely because in 1932 the film was considered taboo and too extreme for the early 1930s culture.    The film  was actually banned at the time in Britain.    This 1949 (First and Only theatrical re-release) half sheet is one of the best posters ever released for this semi-Horror film and there are only a handful in existence  (only 3 or 4 from our 40 years collecting).

BIO:

Freaks is a 1932 American horror film about sideshow performers, directed and produced by Tod Browning and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with a cast mostly composed of actual carnival performers. The film was based on Tod Robbins' short story "Spurs". Director Browning took the exceptional step of casting real people with deformities as the eponymous sideshow "freaks," rather than using costumes and makeup.

Browning had been a member of a traveling circus in his early years, and much of the film was drawn from his personal experiences. In the film, the physically deformed "freaks" are inherently trusting and honorable people, while the real monsters are two of the "normal" members of the circus who conspire to murder one of the performers to obtain his large inheritance..

Freaks (Excelsior, R-1949). Half Sheet (22" X 28").
For horror fans who like their films to be on the more bizarre end of human depravity, this film has to rank as one of the most unusual and enticing. Set in the cruel world of traveling carnival shows, Harry and Daisy Earles, Johnny Eck, and Roscoe Ates star as performers who seek the ultimate revenge on Hercules and Cleopatra (Henry Victor and Olga Baclanova) after they discover their murder plot. Shortly after the film's release in 1932, it was pulled from distribution and not seen again for years. Exploitation film distributor Dwain Esper bought the rights, and traveled the country showing the film in the late 1940s. The poster has corner bumps, a small tear in the right border, and a few thin dust shadows. 

Reaction:

Journeyman screenwriter F. Scott Fitzgerald was nursing a hangover in the studio commissary and looked up from his meal to behold the Siamese twin sisters walking in to order lunch. "What shall we have today?" one asked the other. Fitzgerald ran to the bathroom and vomited.

Despite the extensive cuts, the film was still negatively received by audiences, and remained an object of extreme controversy. Today, the parts that were removed from it are considered lost. Browning, famed at the time for his collaborations with Lon Chaney and for directing Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931) had trouble finding work afterward, and this in effect brought his career to an early close. Because its deformed cast was shocking to moviegoers of the time, the film was banned in the United Kingdom for 30 years. Beginning in the early 1960s, Freaks was rediscovered as a counterculture cult film; throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the film was regularly shown at midnight movie screenings at several movie theaters in the United States. In 1994, Freaks was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It was ranked 15th on Bravo TV's list of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

Among the characters featured as "freaks" were Peter Robinson ("the human skeleton"); Olga Roderick ("the bearded lady"); Frances O'Connor and Martha Morris ("armless wonders"); and the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton. Among the microcephalics who appear in the film (and are referred to as "pinheads") were Zip and Pip (Elvira and Jenny Lee Snow) and Schlitzie, a male named Simon Metz who wore a dress mainly due to incontinence, a disputed claim. Also featured were the intersexual Josephine Joseph, with her left/right divided gender; Johnny Eck, the legless man; the completely limbless Prince Randian (also known as The Human Torso, and mis-credited as "Rardion"); Elizabeth Green the Stork Woman; and Koo-Koo the Bird Girl, who suffered from Virchow-Seckel syndrome or bird-headed dwarfism, and is most remembered for the scene where she dances on the table.

Cult reaction:

Owing to its cult status in the late-20th century, Freaks has been referenced explicitly in popular culture expressions from 1970s onward, from songs by other self-proclaimed "freaks", such as the Ramones ("Pinhead" "Gabba, gabba, we accept you, one of us."), Marillion ("Freaks", "Separated Out") and David Bowie ("Diamond Dogs"), to "cult" comic strips like Zippy the Pinhead (a reference to the aforementioned microcephalic), and episodes of many TV series, including South Park, Clerks: The Animated Series, Futurama ("Bendin' in the Wind") and The Big Bang Theory . The chant of "One of us!" is commonly used as a reference to the film. Clips from the movie were included in the entrance video of former World Wrestling Federation faction Oddities.