The first time I saw Freaks was a dark night about 15 years ago in Columbia, Missouri. I was a member of a cult movie club that found an empty common room every few weeks and blasted the obscurer stuff– your Thrillers, your Evil Deads, etc.. I never made any friends out of it– I was too shy to actually talk to anyone else at the time, usually hanging around like a lost puppy. One night they showed Freaks; I wasn’t sure what I was going to make out of it. I guess I was worried it was going to be at the Herschell Gordon Lewis-level of campy grossness; instead I walked across the empty, dark campus after the showing chilled to my bone.
