WARNER HOME VIDEO Macabre collection hits DVD in black and white

Tod Browning's 'Freaks' features alternative endings.
By GLENN LOVELL
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Halloween arrives two months early this year, compliments of Warner Home Video, which has just pressed DVDs of "Freaks," "The Bad Seed," "Dead Ringer" and, on a single disc, the clammy Brit classics "Village of the Damned" and "Children of the Damned."
All five titles have been restored to lustrous black and white, but it's Tod Browning's "Freaks" (1932) that makes this collection so important for fans of the macabre. Offered up by Irving Thalberg as MGM's answer to Universal's monster hits ("Dracula," "Frankenstein"), "Freaks" performed to specifications: The Beauty and the Beast reversal freaked out critics, censors and audiences with its real-life assortment of circus oddities who, one dark and stormy night, ally to serve up grisly poetic justice.
The upshot of Browning's rare sensitivity toward the deformed? The film -- adapted from Tod Robbins' even darker "Spurs" -- was saddled with a "Special Message" disclaimer and an upbeat epilogue (to help soften the shock of the final sideshow monstrosity). It was then jerked from release because it had been greeted as "a new low in Hollywood depravity," in the words of one expert.
Became inspiration
It would take 30-plus years for "Freaks" to be rediscovered by the '60s counterculture, which, instead of fleeing in disgust, responded as Browning had intended: They found the midgets, human torsos and Siamese twins to be "freaky," as in cool and worthy of empathy. And the once-banned horror film became a midnight-cult attraction that would inspire several generations of filmmakers, from Brian De Palma ("Sisters") to Mark and Michael Polish ("Twin Falls Idaho").
Besides the film itself, Warner's DVD contains prologue, expert commentary, alternative endings and a comprehensive new documentary titled "Freaks: The Sideshow Cinema." The latter traces the troubled production from Lon Chaney's early participation to the casting of the "normal" people (Jean Harlow and Myrna Loy were mentioned for roles that would go to Olga Baclanova and Leila Hyams) and the "oddities" (midget Harry Earles had appeared in "The Wizard of Oz"; Siamese twins Daisy and Violet Hilton were the best known; "human worm" Prince Randian lived to middle age and even fathered a son, who carried him around).
No rules
How was "Freaks" ever green-lighted in the first place? Easy. The infamous Production Code, which was very specific about interracial love scenes, had no rules governing relationships between "normal" and special-needs people. The film's original poster asked, "Can a Full-Grown Woman Truly Love a Midget?"
"The Bad Seed" (1956), from the creepy best seller and hit Broadway play, comes with amiable commentary by star Patty McCormack, who was 12 when she played Rhoda the psychotic child; "Dead Ringer" (1964), a dandy little psychological thriller, provides Bette Davis with her favorite co-star, herself; "Village of the Damned" (1960) and "Children of the Damned" (1963) are wonderfully atmospheric sci-fi chillers about kids with superpowers. They're alien spawn in the original, taken from John Wyndham's "The Midwich Cuckoos," and symbols of Cold War madness in the sequel, written by John ("Gandhi") Briley, who provides the soft-spoken but politically charged commentary.