Word: freaks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Though the tanks are easy to open from the inside, some patients do lose their sense of direction and, unable to find the door, go into a panic. Another problem is that people on drugs are likely to freak out in the tank. Daniel bars druggies, and many tank centers make customers sign a paper stating that they have taken no drugs. But even a carefully controlled tank trip can turn out to be a bummer. Daniel's TV executive, who shows up every Friday for a simple soak, had a harrowing first experience: he felt that...
...more pitiful existence than that lived by John Merrick, the Elephant Man, could not be imagined. Born with a deteriorating disease that infected his body with gruesome deformities, he was treated by Victorian England first as a freak show amusement and then as a society oddity. His story is currently the basis for a first rate complex play about conflicting motivations, and this rather simple-minded black-and-white (in more ways than one) movie...
There are many historical discrepancies: Merrick's freak show owner was not an immoral lout who abused his charge; Frederick Treves, the doctor who recorded Merrick's case, was not saintly; and the other freaks did not free Merrick from the sideshow. These deviations from fact would not be particularly important if the movie did not wear its supposed authenticity like a shield, daring people to criticize its intent...
...streets and alleys, where the loud chugging and whooshing of factory machines creates an incessant, maddening clamor. In one night-marishsequence dozens of dirty, sweating, barechested laborers slave over a huge, clanging machine that wheezes black smoke. The process of dehumanization is in full swing, with the appearance of freak shows and the degradation of John Merrick just a small part of the whole. In a world that is becoming ever more cruel, Merrick is one of many victims...
...Merrick and various excessively slimy and sinister persecutors flirt with melodrama. Rather than concentrating their fire on these caricatured villains, the writers might have more thoroughly examined the subtler exploitation that Merrick suffers under Treves' care. The doctor worries that the hospital has replaced the carnival as Merrick's freak show, that the Victorian socialites come to have tea with the Elephant Man only to stare at him and "to impress their friends." He begins to question his own motives in taking care of Merrick, wondering if he sought only recognition and not social justice. It's an intriguing idea...