After being shown around festivals (including Glasgow Frightfest in 2022), under its original title ‘Freaks Out’, Freaks vs the Reich has finally been released in the UK. Changing the title to something more eye-catching and B-movie like means the film is more likely to reach a wider audience. It can also seem more offensive and bad taste than it is – as described in one harsh Guardian review (that also has multiple errors about the plot but I won’t be petty and list them all), when in actuality the film is entertainingly ambitious. Despite its intimidating running time (two hours and twenty minutes), it flies by with spectacle, action and gripping storytelling – as Israel, the ringmaster of the titular freaks, tells his audience at the start, here “imagination becomes reality”.
The opening scene showcases this beautifully with an almost entirely dialogue-free sequence that introduces our four leads as they perform for a crowd. Cencio, who “works with all the insects except bees, which piss me off” – a self-description that summarises him accurately; Mario, a literally magnetic clown both on and off the stage; Fulvio, the gruff super-strong wolfman; and Matilde, an electrifying (again literally and figuratively), acrobat. After this the Nazis abruptly and violently blow up the tent and the town itself, which sums up the approach of the film as one where whimsy and fantasy is intruded upon by the horror of Nazism.
Israel, the owner of Circus Mezzapiotta, may look “normal” compared to the freaks he hires, but his Jewish identity immediately puts his life at risk. Fulvio declares that “without the circus, we’re only a pack of freaks”, and without Israel’s protection the four would be left to survive on their own in a world that’s actively hostile towards them. The Nazis provide a reasonable social threat, but their characterisation is straight out of Indiana Jones – with swastikas plastered everywhere, including on Rubik’s cubes.
This is a film that’s set on being an entertaining crowd pleaser that deserved a wide release on the biggest screens to fully show off its spectacle and ambition.
The Nazis are given little inferiority beyond being evil baddies, the notable exception being Franz – a six fingered, drug addled, piano playing man who can see the future. A being of pure fantasy, he interestingly straddles the line between historical reality and superhero fiction that the film itself falls into. He runs the Zirkus Berlin to house “freaks” with powers in order to find the ones that he believes can help the Nazis win the war. Franz Rogowski is clearly having a lot of fun with the role and helps bring out different dimensions of the character – his wild fantasising, his desire to be respected, his confidence in his single-minded beliefs.
The fact that Franz works as a credible villain demonstrates how well the film balances its tone, revelling in the fantasy of super heroes emerging from the margins to blow Nazis up, while not sensationalising or belittling the real atrocities that they’re being punished for. It’s earnest and sincere about its characters’ emotional journeys as they learn how to find their place in the world being themselves.
This is a film that’s set on being an entertaining crowd pleaser that deserved a wide release on the biggest screens to fully show off its spectacle and ambition. It’s as much a superhero film as anything in the MCU (at one point our heroes are even called the “Fantastic Four”). It has the confidence of a Hollywood blockbuster – including an unearned romantic subplot, and yet it still received little attention on cinema release, so hopefully it’ll find its fans online and get the love it deserves.
Freaks Vs The Reich is out now on Dazzler Media Blu-Ray and on VoD
