For his talk, he opens up his archive to reveal three different versions of the script, talks through everything that was cut
Fresh off the massive success of Dracula (1931), director Tod Browning was tasked by MGM’s production chief, Irving Thalberg, to create a movie that would out-terrify Universal Studios’ booming monster franchise. He chose to adapt ‘Spurs’, a short story by Tod Robbins that was first published in the February 1923 issue of Munsey’s Magazine. It was a property Browning had convinced MGM to buy the rights for in 1925, but the project stalled. Browning temporarily left MGM to film Dracula for Universal Pictures, and watching Universal print money with their horror output, MGM’s head of production, Irving Thalberg, called upon Browning to make a film that would “out horror Frankenstein”. The result was Freaks (1932) and the resulting controversy was immediate.
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