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Problem-solving Processes in Humans and Computers: Theory and Research in Psychology and Artificial Intelligence

Morton Wagman

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Book

Wagman gives a broad, structured, and detailed account of advancing intellectual developments in...

Awix (3310 KP) rated Freaks (1932) in Movies

Feb 29, 2020 (Updated Feb 29, 2020)

Freaks (1932)

1932 | Drama, Horror

8.2

(16 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Tod Browning's notorious horror movie remains problematic and uncomfortable to watch nearly a century on from its release. The plot is much more the stuff of a melodrama than a traditional horror movie: a vain and greedy trapeze artist and her lover plot to murder a gullible man enamoured of her for his fortune. What makes the film so queasily memorable is the fact that many of the characters are sideshow 'freaks' of different kinds.

Severely hampered by the fact that many of the cast aren't professional actors, and it shows; also by the fact that several of them don't have English as a first language (some of the dialogue is so heavily accented to be unintelligible). The existing version of the film is fairly thin on plot, too. There is strange tension between the script, which takes pains to make clear that the deformed characters are people, not monsters, and the way that the camera voyeuristically dwells on their physical abnormalities - it's there again in the climax, where the trapeze artist clearly deserves some kind of retribution, but the sequence of the 'freaks' closing in on her is deeply disturbing. A uniquely unsettling movie, and perhaps that's for the best.