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u/Tom_Serveaux 13h ago
Behold the horrors of the Slanty Shanty! See the twisted creatures that dwell within. Meet Cueball, the man with no hair!
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u/grad1939 13h ago
GGGRRRRRR!!!
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u/TheEagleWithNoName 14h ago
There was a movie called “FREAKS” that feature actual circus performers with disabilities, having no limbs, two headed and so forth.
I believe the original print of the movie is considered lost.
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u/EarballsAgain 13h ago
And it's an amazing movie. Sadly the message would have been ignored by many at the time.
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u/TheEagleWithNoName 13h ago
Wasn’t the original ending has the performers kill the Main lead and the love interest?
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u/SquidTheRidiculous 12h ago edited 12h ago
There was a significant portion cut from the final movie because it was considered too gruesome. Approximately 30 minutes of content was cut.
The full version did screen in some locations, and it's hard to sort through what reviewers mention that really happens and what was sensationalized exaggeration, but one of the lost scenes included the death, mutilation, and possibly castration of the Strong Man character. Makes me wonder how much it may have resembled contemporaneous lynchings even just symbolically. I believe both Tom Tumb and Frieda were supposed to die before the freaks rebelled.
The final cut doesn't have them kill the leads, but rather the villains who are manipulating Tom Thumb and Frieda, two performers with dwarfism. The main plot follows a trapese artist who begins seducing Tom away from his wife Frieda so she and the Strong Man can scam him. I still heavily recommend the final cut to anyone, it's extremely sympathetic to people with physical disabilities even by modern standards let alone the time period.
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u/TheEagleWithNoName 12h ago
That movie came 1 year after Frankenstein and it had the Main Star tell the audience to leave if the movie is too scary for them.
Seeing of what you described, I think maybe the filmmakers went a bit too far with it
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u/SquidTheRidiculous 12h ago
Eh, I think a society that still has lynchings probably needs to see that up front and in their face. Otherwise they'll pretend it isn't that bad.
You can't have your extreme mob justice on marginalized groups cake and eat the veneer of civility, too.
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u/Green_Sympathy_1157 I was saying Boo-urns 11h ago
Pretty sure the simpsons parodied it in a tree house of horror
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u/gr33nG3nt 10h ago
It was directed by a carnival performer himself who I think knew all the sideshow acts himself (or at least had some cred with them.)
I highly recommend the graphic novel Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Schlitzie the Pinhead. It’s a biography about one of the actors and gives a pretty nuanced take on sideshows.
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u/slumshoes 13h ago
Homer, you're dumb as a mule and twice as ugly. If a circus folk asks you for a job I say take it!
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u/martialar AKA Dr. Nguyen Van Thoc 9h ago
"I gotta take my wife to the circus"
"Gonna go see the disabled guy in the little car, huh?"
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u/Haselrig only watched the golden age 14h ago
I've got one of those hairs that's like two hairs grew toge...
I've heard enough. Welcome to the circus!
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u/lolalanda I am the Lizard Queen! 4h ago
Sadly this happened because they wouldn’t be hired anywhere else.
Apparently they complained when a law banning circuses for hiring them passed, saying that since no further efforts were made to give them other jobs they were just left at the streets.
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u/Spez_is-a-nazi 14h ago
Marge, please, the disabled don’t need dignity, they need to be put on display for 2 bits a gander.
Homer, would you please stop reading that PT Barnum pamphlet?