![\"\"](\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2018\/z071118freaks_trivia.png\")
<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\nMatthew Jackson at Mental Floss<\/a> posted 11 Astonishing Facts About Freaks<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Here are three of the most interesting…<\/p>\n Though there were certainly monstrous characters populating various silent films (particularly those portrayed by Chaney in\u00a0The Phantom of the Opera<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0London After Midnight<\/em>), the horror film as a genre didn\u2019t really take off until the era of talkies began. Shortly after Chaney\u2019s death due to complications from lung cancer, Browning was off at Universal Pictures, helping to lead the horror wave with his now-classic adaptation of\u00a0Dracula<\/em>. When Browning returned to MGM in the wake of\u00a0Dracula<\/em>\u2019s success, head of production Irving Thalberg wanted to capitalize on the horror boom. The hope was that, with the director of\u00a0Dracula<\/em>\u00a0back at the studio, MGM could best Universal with something even more horrifying, and so Browning was finally given the go-ahead to make\u00a0Freaks<\/em>, which had remained a pet project of his for years.<\/p>\n According to Skal, it became a classic lesson for Thalberg in being careful what you wish for: The story goes that after he was presented with the screenplay for the film, Thalberg reportedly hung his head and said, \u201cWell, I asked for something horrible, and I guess I got it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Before\u00a0Freaks<\/em>, Browning was one of the most successful directors in Hollywood, and his success had earned him enough clout to get the ambitious and gutsy film made after\u00a0Dracula<\/em>\u00a0hit big at Universal. After\u00a0Freaks<\/em>, he never quite\u00a0recovered<\/a>. According to Skal, this was not just due to that film\u2019s failure, but due to Browning\u2019s continued discomfort with the change in the filmmaking process that came from the rise of talkies. That discomfort, coupled with an increasing inability to get more personal projects approved by the studios in the wake of\u00a0Freaks<\/em>, led to his decline in the 1930s.<\/p>\n Browning directed just four more films (two of them uncredited), with his final directing credit coming on the MGM mystery\u00a0Miracles for Sale<\/em>\u00a0in 1939. He retired with enough savings from his directorial successes to live comfortably in a pair of homes in Beverly Hills and Malibu, and died in 1962.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n After its critical and commercial failure in the United States,\u00a0Freaks<\/em>\u00a0faded into the background as a kind of Hollywood curiosity, and was banned in several countries (including the United Kingdom) for decades. The film was licensed by distributor Dwain Esper in the late 1940s, and played on the grindhouse circuit at various independent theaters, but it wasn\u2019t until the 1962\u00a0Cannes Film Festival<\/a>\u00a0that the film\u2019s revival really began. After screening there, it was heralded as a kind of forgotten classic. Noted film collector and archivist Raymond Rohauer picked up the baton from there, landing the rights to\u00a0Freaks<\/em>\u00a0and showing it as a cult film. It gained prominence on the midnight movie circuit, and found particular success with members of the 1960s counterculture movement, who saw kindred spirits in its cast.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Matthew Jackson at Mental Floss posted 11 Astonishing Facts About Freaks.\u00a0\u00a0Here are three of the most interesting… 2. MGM WANTED<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,53,54,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-horror","category-movies","category-trivia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20635"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20637,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20635\/revisions\/20637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
2. MGM WANTED IT TO RIVAL\u00a0DRACULA<\/em>\u00a0AS A HORROR FILM.<\/h4>\n
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10. IT DERAILED BROWNING\u2019S CAREER.<\/h4>\n
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11. IT FOUND A NEW AUDIENCE IN THE 1960S.<\/h4>\n