Movies That Horrifyingly Killed People In Real Life

Freaks (1932)

Director Tod Browning's 1932 drama Freaks is widely regarded as a classic today, but it faced more than a little blowback during its initial release. Browning, who'd spent time in the circus as a youth, hired actual sideshow performers to bring life to the story of a circus midget (Harry Earles) whose wealth inspires a beautiful trapeze artist (Olga Baclanova) to marry him in the hopes of murdering him and inheriting his money. Freaks' story was controversial enough for its day, but some accused the movie of exploiting its stars, while others were simply offended, and the studio—who'd hired Browning after his massive success directing Dracula—was left with a release that ended up being pulled from theaters even after a series of edits intended to pacify the public. According to Don Sumner's book Horror Movie Freak, the trouble with Freaks actually started even before the film arrived in theaters. One woman who attended a test screening allegedly threatened to sue the studio for causing her to suffer a miscarriage. An apocryphal story? Perhaps—but one that demonstrates how the line between cinema and reality has been blurred from the beginning.