New on Blu-ray: TOD BROWNING'S SIDESHOW SHOCKERS (Freaks / The Unknown / The Mystic)

Freaks The Unknown The Mystic Tod Brownings Sideshow Shockers New On Bluray Criterion Collection

Product Description: The world is a carnival of criminality, corruption, and psychosexual strangeness in the twisted pre-Code shockers of Tod Browning. Early Hollywood’s edgiest auteur, Browning drew on his experiences as a circus performer to create subversive pulp entertainments set amid the world of traveling sideshows, which, with their air of the exotic and the disreputable, provided a pungent backdrop for his sordid tales of outcasts, cons, villains, and vagabonds. Bringing together two of his defining works (The Unknown and Freaks) and a long-unavailable rarity (The Mystic), this cabinet of curiosities reveals a master of the morbid whose ability to unsettle is matched only by his daring compassion for society’s most downtrodden.

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Movie Details

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Video

Audio

Subtitles

Special Features & Extras

Trailer and Clips

Pictures

MOVIE DETAILS

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Director: Tod Browning

Starring: Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford, Aileen Pringle, Conway Tearle

Genre: Crime, Thriller, Horror, Silent

Runtime: 204 min

Rating: Not Rated

Language: English

Studio: Criterion

Home Video Release Date: October 17, 2023

AVAILABLE FORMATS (click links to order from Amazon):

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DVD - Criterion Collection

Blu-ray - Criterion Collection

VIDEO

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DVD

Codec: MPEG-2
Resolution: 480i
Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1, 1.33:1, 1.32:1
Encoding Format: 16:9
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only)

Blu-ray

Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Resolution: 1080p
Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1, 1.33:1, 1.32:1
Region: Region A/1

AUDIO

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Dubbed:

DVD: None
Blu-ray: None

Audio Formats:

DVD: Dolby Digital Mono
Blu-ray: LPCM Mono, LPCM 2.0

SUBTITLES

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DVD: English SDH

Blu-ray: English SDH

SPECIAL FEATURES & EXTRAS

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New 2K digital restoration of Freaks, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
New 2K digital reconstruction and restoration of The Unknown by the George Eastman Museum, with a new score by composer Philip Carli
New 2K digital restoration of The Mystic, with a new score by composer Dean Hurley
Audio commentaries on Freaks and The Unknown and an introduction to The Mystic by film scholar David J. Skal
New interview with author Megan Abbott about director Tod Browning and pre-Code horror
Archival documentary on Freaks
Episode from 2019 of critic Kristen Lopez’s podcast Ticklish Business about disability representation in Freaks
Reading by Skal of “Spurs,” the short story by Tod Robbins on which Freaks is based
Prologue to Freaks, which was added to the film in 1947
Program on the alternate endings to Freaks
Video gallery of portraits from Freaks
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by film critic Farran Smith Nehme