A poster from one of Hollywood’s most controversial films, 1932’s Freaks, has sold for $112,500 at auction in the US this week.
The single sheet poster was the first of its type to ever appear at auction. It is one of only two posters for the movie thought to exist.
It survived in extraordinary circumstances, found in the wreck of a Wisconsin movie theatre that burned down the year of the film’s release.
Freaks is one of the most controversial films ever made in Hollywood. It was banned in the UK for decades when censors refused to pass it for public release.
Director Tod Browning with the “Doll Family” (really the Schneider siblings, who were born with dwarfism) from the film Freaks. The Schneiders also appeared as Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz.
The film was made by director Tod Browning. Its melodramatic plot of feigned love and betrayal is set among the world of carnival “freaks”, people with disabilities or differences who were exploited for money.
Browning had run away to join a circus as a child and was fascinated by the world of carnivals and sideshows. He’d had a successful directing career, notably working with horror legend Lon Chaney on a number of movies, though it was with Bela Lugosi that he enjoyed his biggest success, 1931’s Dracula.
That hit won him studio backing for his dream project, Freaks.
Test screenings ended with audience members fleeing the cinema. A drastic edit was released nationally but fared little better and was the first film that studio MGM ever withdrew from circulation before it had completed its national run.
To recoup some of their losses MGM sold the rights to the movie and it enjoyed a long second life as an “exploitation film”.
Over time, the film was reassessed as a compassionate and allegorical take on disability and exclusion, a subversive horror film that was ahead of its time.
Punk band the Ramones adopted its archetypal line, “we accept you, one of us,” as something of a motto. It became a massive cult hit.
That makes it highly collectible. The coincidence of its near erasure from the official record in its original form makes Freaks posters extremely rare.
“This could well be the only time a Freaks one sheet crosses the auction block,” Heritage Auctions, who handled the sale, said in a statement.
From an opening bid of $37,500, the poster described as “one of the most momentous finds in recent years” quickly climbed to its selling price of $90,000 – $112,500 with buyers premium – in around 2 minutes of competitive live and online bidding.
The world’s most valuable movie poster is from the 1927 sci-fi movie Metropolis. It sold for $690,000 (reportedly to Leonardo DiCaprio) in 2005. Browning’s Dracula is the second most valuable, selling for $525,800.
This sale does not put Freaks in the top 10 most valuable movie posters, but confirms it as the strangest and most sought-after cult movie poster of all time.
