Freaks

Tod Browning, the director of ‘Freaks’, had been a member of a travelling circus in his youth and was determined that in his adaptation of the Tod Robbin’s short story ‘Spurs’ the carnival performers that provided his cast would be fairly represented.
Consequently the ‘freaks’ of the title are the heroes of the piece with the villainy provided by two ‘normal’ circus artistes who conspire to kill one of their fellow performers.
However, Browning could not control the response of the general public to his film.
Problems began when F. Scott Fitzgerald, then a jobbing screenwriter, was nursing a hangover in the studio cafeteria as the Siamese twins from the production came in for lunch.
Fitzgerald saw them and scrambled out of the cafeteria to vomit in the nearest bathroom.
Fitzgerald references the scene in his short story ‘Crazy Sunday’ where he has the main character, a screenwriter, see a troupe of circus performers from a film in production wandering around the studio lot. Fitzgerald's character proves to be made of stronger stuff than his creator and has no adverse reaction to seeing the troupe.
Browning presented the studio with his final cut which ran at around 90 minutes.
A series of disastrous test screenings culminated in a threat of a lawsuit to the studio from a woman who claimed the film had made her miscarry her baby.
The studio removed scenes that were deemed to be too shocking or disturbing, which included the ‘freaks’ attacking one of the villains as she lay under a tree and a particularly gruesome castration scene. They also added an epilogue that provided a substantially more up-beat ending.
This new 64 minute version was the one that saw commercial release and it is believed that the scenes removed are lost forever...