I used to think that Freaks was an aberration for MGM. I mean, it's not the usual sort of movie one associates with the so-called "Dream Factory." You think MGM, you think musicals and epic dramas. You think wealth and opulence. You certainly don't think of pinheads crawling through the mud. I think the notion that Freaks was an aberration was planted in my head by Carlos Clarens in his Illustrated History of the Horror Movie, one of the essential reference volumes on my bookshelf. But Clarens was wrong, and so was I for believing him. There's too much evidence to the contrary. I mean, it's not like Freaks was the first movie that Tod Browning ever made for MGM, and the studio counted Lon Chaney among its marquee stars. That alone counts for a perverse appetite for grotesquerie on the part of the studio. Most of these thoughts ran through my head as I tried to come to grips with Kongo (1932, directed by William J. Cowen), a film that begins with Leo the Lion and then dives headlong into batshit insanity.
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