Original subtitles

[tense music]

male narrator: What's the most disturbing genre in movies?

[shrieking]

[metal and teeth scraping]

♪

For many, the answer is body horror.

♪

- [screams]

- Sort of queasy to think

we're walking packages of flesh

just waiting for a virus to corrupt us.

[screaming]

- When the body is the host of something from within,

how horrifying is that?

[growling and screaming]

- All these deep, repressed things that people

don't wanna think about, and what if they all came out?

♪

- [whimpering]

- We'll tear your soul apart.

- Oh, "Hellraiser"'s incredible.

[bestial snarl]

It's sort of wonderfully delicious.

[dramatic musical sting]

- It is all about the terror of being alive,

and the terror of having a body,

and the terror of other people,

and the terror of the natural

and supernatural world.

♪

- I am a human being!

[monkey snarls]

- That is at the core of body horror--

what makes the human being a human being?

- [screams]

- Is it this or is it something else?

♪

[explosion] - [screaming]

[eerie music]

♪

- [screams]

narrator: We all have bodies.

Some are young and strong.

[artery hisses]

Others are crumbling prisons.

It doesn't take much to go from one state to the other.

♪

A little time...

- [groans]

narrator: Disease...

- [screams]

narrator: And misfortune...

- [screaming] [boiling water hissing]

narrator: And you could be living body horror.

- [moaning growl]

narrator: But for some people, there is a special thrill

in exploring the terrors of the flesh

and the extremes of sensation.

People like Clive Barker,

writer-director of the ground-breaking

psychosexual horror classic,

"Hellraiser."

[eerie dissonance]

- We have such sights

to show you.

- [gasps]

narrator: "Hellraiser" begins

as thrill-seeking bad boy Frank opens up a portal

to a dimension of pleasure and pain.

[eerie dramatic music]

♪

After Frank's apparent death,

his brother Larry, edgy second wife Julia,

and Larry's daughter Kirsty move into the family home.

♪

But bits of Frank are still in the floorboards.

A dash of blood gives him a way

to escape the hell dimension.

[dramatic music]

♪

- One of the things I love about that film,

the transformation from nothingness

to this man forming.

♪

Little by little, you start to see more of the body,

and initially it's some really wonderful

sort of puppetry work.

And then it turns into a real actor

with this sort of sinewy, bloody muscles.

- [yelps]

♪

[yelps]

- Julia? - [gasps]

narrator: Frank's return reanimates

his secret affair with Julia.

- You'll do it?

- Yes.

I will.

narrator: She begins luring men into the attic...

- [grunts] [bone crunches]

narrator: To feed Frank their flesh.

[dark music]

- The wonderful thing about "Hellraiser" is that in fact,

though it's a horror film,

it's really a very sick love story.

Julia is so in love

with Frank, but she can't leave him.

We know what that's like.

You get in a relationship with someone,

you know it's unhealthy, but you just can't get out.

You won't leave.

[blow lands] She is so addicted

to this diseased love affair

that she would be willing to go out and kill people

to help bring him back to life.

- I'm going to live and you're going to help me, yes?

- Yes.

♪

narrator: In the ultimate case of identity theft,

Frank kills his brother and puts on his skin.

[dramatic musical sting]

But his plans are disrupted

by his resourceful young niece.

- Give me that.

♪

- I think Kirsty is a very normal girl

and doesn't expect that the trajectory of her life

will end up having to negotiate

with demons from hell

for her own soul. [chuckles]

narrator: Kirsty opens Frank's puzzle box...

[box zaps]

Accidentally summoning

Hellraiser's breakout stars,

the Cenobites,

transdimensional lords of pleasure and pain.

- They are the perfect combination

of carnal and something otherworldly

that is literally stitched together.

♪

[teeth chattering]

- There's a great image from "Hellraiser"

that it's always just stuck with me,

which is the Chatterer,

and he's sticking his fingers down Kirsty's throat.

- [screams]

- And that, to me, just sums up "Hellraiser."

It's invasive. It just pushes the limits.

- [yelping]

narrator: "Hellraiser"'s sadomasochistic imagery

was highly unusual for its time.

The unique look of the Cenobites,

tight, black leather and extreme body modifications,

was inspired by the S&M culture.

Clive Barker took their darkly erotic style

into the mainstream.

- Clive Barker is kind of the master

of sexuality in horror.

[dissonant notes]

Clive is, quite famously, gay, and, you know,

a lot of his material comes from that perspective,

but it's not about a sexual preference,

it's about gender issues,

it's about the threat of what one's gender represents.

[dramatic music]

- He's showing us parts of ourselves

that we didn't even know existed,

and because he doesn't make moral judgement,

everything is fair game.

[tense music]

narrator: With the help of the Cenobites,

Kirsty has her bloody revenge on Frank.

- [screams]

- The Cenobites are impartial.

I don't think Clive wrote them as bad or evil.

They give people what they ask for.

- [whimpering] - Explorers

in the further regions of experience,

demons to some,

angels to others.

- So in "Hellraiser,"

what is the monster? What is the menace?

I think that the menace is really obsession,

you know, much more than the demons.

♪

You go with the demons

when you can't rise above your own obsessions,

your own fixation on the puzzle box,

when you've turned away from your life

and into that unhealthy fixation.

- [rasping] Not leaving us so soon, are you?

[hook screeching]

narrator: Clive Barker blazed the trail

for sexually transgressive monsters.

[women screaming]

But when it comes to body horror--

[guttural sputtering]

One name stands above them all:

- [screams]

narrator: Cronenberg.

[bone snaps] - [screams]

[dramatic music]

- [breathing heavily, snarling]

[tense music]

narrator: Say the words "body horror" and odds are

you'll immediately think of a film

by David Cronenberg.

[yelling, screaming]

[pulsating music]

- [screams]

narrator: The films Cronenberg made in Canada

in the 1970s and '80s probed our deepest anxieties

about the fragility of human bodies

and human minds.

[glass shatters]

[water splashing]

[tense music] - [gasps]

narrator: Cronenberg was never solely out to shock.

- [gasping]

narrator: His early films

were pointed commentaries on society,

never sharper than in his film, "Videodrome."

- [gasps] [static hisses]

- You wanna try a few things?

narrator: James Woods and Debbie Harry

play Max and Nicki, amoral hedonists

who become victims of their dark desires.

♪

- The plot of "Videodrome," a TV station programmer

wants something with a little more pizazz

and finds this bizarre show that shows torture.

[eerie music]

- There's no plot.

It just goes on like that for an hour.

Torture, murder, mutilation.

- For perverts only. - It's absolutely brilliant.

I mean, look, there's almost no production cost.

You can't take your eyes off it.

It's incredibly realistic.

Where do they get actors that can do this?

[dramatic musical sting]

- He's fascinated with it

and he starts trying to track it down.

Where are these videotapes coming from?

[ominous music]

narrator: Max learns that "Videodrome" tapes

contain a hidden signal that triggers

vivid hallucinations.

♪

It's all part of a right-wing conspiracy

to clamp down on lax morality.

- Please.

- You're getting fed this message

through watching videos that are broadcast

from a secret place somewhere on Earth.

- Murder.

- [whimpering] [static buzzing]

- We've all kind of have a thing

of watching something that--

that we probably shouldn't be watching,

and we're kind of tantalized by it in some way,

but we don't know why, or-- we shouldn't be watching this.

- [screaming] [flail snapping]

- God, I can't believe it. - I'll turn it off.

- No, no, no, it's okay. I can take it.

[ominous notes]

- It definitely starts a disintegration of the mind

as well as the body.

♪

- The TV starts, like, reaching into him,

and he's got a-- I mean, let's call it.

It's a chest vagina.

♪

The videotape goes into him

or it goes into the TV-- there's a lot of both.

- Oh, my God! [gasps]

- It all feels very personal, you know?

James Woods pulling the gun,

that image of him just pulling the gun out of his stomach.

♪

[gunfire and screaming]

- Yes, you shoot flesh pellets from a flesh gun

that's attached to the end of your arm,

but is that really happening

or is that because of what you've been fed

through watching television?

- Death to "Videodrome"! Long live the new flesh!

[feedback screeches]

[tense music]

♪

- What are you waiting for, lover?

- It's got all these crazy metaphors in it about, like,

intimacy, and sexual weirdness,

and exposing that part of yourself to other people,

and also how you're influenced by the media

and, like, what have you decided

and what has the media decided for you,

which I still think is stuff that's if not as relevant,

more relevant now.

- Long live the new flesh.

[explosion]

- My films tend to be very body-conscious,

and the body, and what is, and what it does,

and what it can do tends to be very central in my films.

To a certain extent,

it's your own body that's the monster.

[tense musical sting]

- He had lost his mother to cancer

and was experienced

with seeing the decline of the human body from within,

a revolt from within,

and so much of his work is about a body in revolt,

and changing, and turning septic,

and almost evil.

[ominous music]

narrator: Cronenberg's first American studio film

was his acclaimed remake of "The Fly."

[dissonant music]

- I'm working on something that'll change the world

and human life as we know it.

narrator: Seth Brundle,

memorably played by Jeff Goldblum,

has invented a teleportation device.

Unfortunately, when Seth tests it out,

his genetic pattern mixes with the DNA of a housefly.

[ominous music]

♪

[guttural sputtering]

♪

- [screams]

narrator: Seth slowly transforms

into a hybrid of man and insect,

much to the horror of his lover,

played by Geena Davis.

- He's turning into a fly, she loves him madly,

is seeing this change, can do nothing to stop it,

and neither can he. He doesn't want to stop it.

He thinks he's being enhanced, and in the beginning, he is.

- It's purified me, it's cleansed me,

and I'll tell you, I think it's gonna allow me

to realize the personal potential

I've been neglecting all these years.

[bone snaps] - [screams]

[dramatic notes]

- But then he's being destroyed from within,

and their love has to pass this metamorphosis,

and it's not possible.

- What will happen? - [panting]

Well, I think it's showing itself

as a bizarre form of cancer.

- The film was always looked upon as an AIDS metaphor.

It was made during the height of the AIDS epidemic,

but Cronenberg himself said he sort of saw it more

as a metaphor for the aging process

and how that gets fast-forwarded

in this character.

[soft dramatic music]

- Body horror is a meditation

on the transitory nature of the human form,

and, you know, we all get old, we all decay.

That's true horror to people.

[both screaming]

- Geena Davis' character isreally what that movie's about.

She was trying to stay in there with him

as long as she possibly could.

- [whimpering]

God, no, no!

- But ultimately,

she was the one who had to pull the trigger.

- [breathing heavily]

[wheezing]

- I think that "The Fly" says as much about love

as any film I've ever seen.

♪

- [cries]

narrator: But there's even more to body horror

than decaying flesh and physical abnormality.

♪

It also describes the reality of being dehumanized

because you're desirable.

- [gags]

narrator: Pretty faces, though, can mask deadly minds.

[tense music]

narrator: When we think of body horror,

we usually think of disease and deformity.

[tense music]

But being attractive

can also open up a world of body horror,

especially for women.

- [screams] - [gagging]

[soft tense music]

- Walking around in a female body is terrifying.

You're a target,

you're an object, and I think

that is part of the reason why

we put up all these walls is to, you know,

obviously, protect that.

- [gasps, screams]

narrator: Beauty can make you the target of predatory men.

- [gags]

narrator: Just as a perfect surface

can mask something twisted underneath.

In horror, both things can be true at the same time,

as we see in the films "Audition"...

- [gagging and screaming]

♪

narrator: And "Under the Skin."

♪

"Under the Skin" follows an alien succubus

whose mission is to collect men for use as a food source

for her people.

♪

[mechanical thunk]

♪

The Collector knows humans are easily manipulated

by appearances, which mean nothing to it.

- Do you think I'm pretty?- Aye, I think you're gorgeous.

- Do you? - Aye, definitely.

- Good.

narrator: So when the Collector picks up a man

suffering from neurofibromatosis,

the Elephant Man's disease,

she can effortlessly capture him.

♪

narrator: But for the first time,

she feels sympathy for her prey.

- We all love the assassin

who struggles with carrying out their task

because they've fallen in love with their target,

and that's essentially what happens

in "Under the Skin,"

is that she slowly becomes enamored of humanity

and the complexities of being human.

♪

One of the most beautiful moments

in "Under the Skin," for me,

was when Scarlett Johansson pauses

and stares at the fly trapped in the spider's web

and then decides to let one of her victims go.

[door latch clicks]

And that is the cascade that everything falls apart

and leads to her demise.

narrator: The Collector abandons her mission

and attempts to enjoy her human body,

but she's doomed to fail.

- [chokes]

♪

- She tries to engage in consensual sex,

and it tears her suit.

♪

And the fact that his penis, his human penis,

tore her human skin suit because it's, like--

she's not there for penetration,

was a fascinating kindof, like, wake-up call for her.

♪

It's not your body,

and you've convinced yourself that it's your body,

so it absolutely is Cronenbergian in that aspect.

[tense music]

narrator: Because the Collector

is in the body of a woman,

she becomes the target of a violent man

who first wants to rape her then wants to murder her.

[gasoline splattering]

[tense music]

♪

- We experience through horror

what we tend to gloss over and pretend isn't there.

The horror of what our own bodies can do,

the horror of what other people can do,

the sexism that we deal with every day

is just what we deal with every day.

It's how you react to it,

it's whether you let it bother you or not,

and most of the time, you let it roll off your back,

and we're all very used to how we're treated in general.

♪

[wet squelching]

narrator: But in some body horror films...

[loud wet squelching, piano keys playing]

Women are the punishers.

- [gagging]

narrator: They turn the tables on men who've objectified them

and abused their power for sex.

[flesh sizzles] - [screams]

narrator: That's what happens in Takashi Miike's

profoundly disturbing film...

- [moans]

narrator: "Audition."

- "Audition" is--is horrifying.

♪

It starts out almost a social comedy

about a lonely guy,

and you're very sympathetic to the guy.

- This man is a widower and he is being encouraged

by his son to get back out there

and give it a go in the dating field.

- [speaking Japanese]

- And they do

just the absolutely despicable thing

of auditioning women to be his girlfriend.

narrator: With the producer's help,

the widower stages a fake casting call for a film,

but he's really casting for his ideal woman:

physically perfect and perfectly submissive.

He thinks he finds her in shy, serene Asami.

- And this woman, you know, becomes enamored of him.

She falls in love with him

and realizes the premise withwhich she has come to know him.

- And being unstable, as the woman is,

and being existing within a horror film,

her response to that is to

get very specific and really innovative revenge

on the man who deceived her.

♪

[tense musical sting] - [groans]

narrator: Every shot in "Audition"

is meticulously framed and beautifully lit.

The film's perfection hypnotizes you,

which makes the moment Asami goes to work

with her needles and wire all the more jarring.

- [whimpering softly]

[groaning]

- Suddenly, this demon is unleashed.

- [speaking Japanese]

[dramatic musical sting]

- The wire cutting in "Audition" is amazing.

- [groaning and gasping]

[eerie music]

♪

- What--what is it? [speaks Japanese]

[tense music]

♪

- That's--that's such an upsetting film.

[ominous music]

narrator: The otherwise decent man

abuses his power one time,

but he pays for all the times

it's been done to the woman in the past.

[clanking]

And that's the point.

You only need to do it once for it to be wrong.

- The reaction to this man doing a bad thing

is disproportionate,

but in the context of a horror film,

this is exactly what he had

coming to him. [chuckles]

♪

narrator: Body horror films tear off our masks

and expose us for who we really are.

- [screaming]

narrator: And sometimes, what's inside us

isn't pretty.

[sinister music]

narrator: Body horror movies have always fascinated me.

[both screaming]

So much so that my first film deals

with a highly-infectious skin-eating disease

and how it tears apart a group of friends.

[ominous music] - [faintly] Oh, my God.

♪

- I love how "Cabin Fever" draws inspiration

from a lot of classic horrorand gore films from "Evil Dead"

to the body horror films of David Cronenberg,

early Wes Craven and George Romero.

[dramatic music]

- Better close the door, Marcy.

You don't want to infect everyone.

♪

The thing about "Cabin Fever"

is we didn't know what it was gonna be.

I had never read a script like that.

I think at the time,

the scripts that were going outfor people our age

didn't have that level of gore.

♪

They didn't have that grittiness

and realness to them,

and they weren't pushing the envelope so far.

- The guy had bowled people's organs.

Arms, legs, everything.

- And I thought, "This is gonna be really incredible

or it's gonna blow up in our faces."

[tense music]

- [screams] - Whoo!

No more [no audio] finals!

- "Cabin Fever" is about five friends

who embark on a vacation in the woods, in a cabin,

and they each come down with a flesh-eating bacteria.

[dramatic musical sting]

- [wet coughing]

- Oh, God. Here.

- The paranoia sort of sets in,

and they start turning on each other.

- Okay, we can eat alone, we can sleep alone, whatever.

We have to talk to each other, we have to work together.

♪

- The tone is just so odd, and it's mostly, you know,

about the saturation level of the violence, and the gore,

and the--its intensity, you know?

Everything is just so intense that you're, like--

you jump and then you laugh

because it's so ridiculous that this is happening.

- [screaming]

- This guy's lit on fire,

this dog is suddenly attacking,

it's, like, it's just, oh, my God,

it just keeps coming at you

and that's sort of--that's the fun of watching the movie.

- Paul, that guy asked for our help.

We lit him on fire.

- My character, Paul, is a horribly selfish person.

Party's over, Winston. [thump]

He's just worried about himself, and that's the karma.

It comes back to bite him in the ass,

and then to bite them all in the ass.

[horn blasts]

♪

The makeup effects were done by KNB,

and they were back in LA, but the person on set

was this amazing makeup artist named Garrett Immel,

and it was really his ability to improvise with what we had.

[tense music]

And when Garrett did the workon Jordan's face, for instance,

this sort of legendary skull look, I mean, it was--

it was incredible.

[dramatic musical sting]

- I had never done prosthetic makeup work before.

[dramatic musical sting]

It's incredible artistry,

so applying it was, I would say,

two to four hours.

And then it's a slow process to take off,

because they have to re-use the appliances,

and if you just tear it off your face,

you'll tear your skin off, and then, in fact,

it really--your face would looklike mine did in "Cabin Fever."

But it was devastating to see myself that way.

- We all had to be sort of forewarned,

because, you know, we didn't want Jordan to feel too bad.

You know, how ugly she looked?

'Cause it was like, your immediate reaction

when she walked out of the trailer was like,

"Oh, my God!"

♪

[dramatic musical sting]

- You're there with your best friend,

but then you have to kill your best friend

because of this thing that's inside them.

And that's what the disease became in "Cabin Fever."

You're with your best friend,

but you gotta isolate them, or you've gotta kill them,

because whatever is inside them could get inside you.

And suddenly, you're not seen as human anymore,

and I think that there'ssomething very real about that.

You know, when lepers have leprosy,

what do we do? We isolate them.

When SARS happened,

when there's disease you don't understand,

tent 'em off.

People wanna get out? Too bad.

Epidemic, population control. Can't let it get out.

There's something really, really scary about that.

- Grim?

[ominous music]

- I would say it begins as a body horror film,

but then the real villain is people's cruelty, you know?

And people not willing to help somebody who has a disease.

- [muffled] Don't [no audio] come near me!

- Jeff! - Stop, stop!

I don't want to get sick!

I don't want any of us getting sick!

- Horror films usually-- usually leave you

with a sense of dread about the world,

and that's--I think that's healthy to explore.

- [gasps]

- The more the movie can make you feel

that reaction of, like,

"Oh, that's horrible, I don't want that in my life,"

good because that's what,

you know,we shouldn't want those things.

We shouldn't want-- like, violence is awful,

and if we can confront it in a way that is, like--

makes you want to look away, that is healthy, you know?

That's a good exercise of your imagination.

- [screams]

narrator: Paranoia was the menace of "Cabin Fever"...

- Showtime, Billy!

narrator: But sometimes,

they really are out to get you.

[cloth ripping] - What are you doing?

narrator: Especially if you're part

of the twisted world of "Society."

[cheers and applause]

narrator: F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously said,

"The rich are different."

[excited clamoring]

narrator: In the film "Society,"

the rich are literally another species...

- Wanna play? [cackles]

narrator: Parasitic lifeforms that feed on the poor.

[evil laughter]

♪

- Brian Yuzna's "Society" is one of my all-time favorite

body horror movies.

The makeup effects by Screaming Mad George

in that film are unmatched.

[laughter] - [moans frightfully]

- "Society" is, like,

where '80s teen movie meets Cronenberg.

You've got a family with an older sister

who's getting ready to have her debutante sort of thing,

and the younger brother who just doesn't feel like

he fits into the family.

Can't figure out why.

- They don't approve of me, okay?

They don't accept my friends.

[ominous music]

- And then it becomes more and more clear that

he's not actually part of the family.

The parents and the sister are really the family,

and they are part of this thing called "Society"

that they're always worried about,

like, "What will Society think?"

"Bill, be careful, you have to fit into Society."

- You know, you'll make such a great contribution to Society.

[soft dramatic music]

- I'd never seen a horror movie

that had a mythology

that was based on class.

- You're a different race from us,

a different species, a different class.

- The idea was how can you havefun with class exploitation?

narrator: The film's paranoid teen hero, Billy,

learns that he and his friends are pawns

in a sinister conspiracy...

[dramatic musical sting]

narrator: A conspiracy that the wealthiest people

in Beverly Hills all seem to be a part of.

[ominous music]

- Definitely has the formatof a high school hijinks movie.

The difference is is it quickly gets a little disturbing

when Billy listens to the tape

of his parents and sister goingto her coming out party.

- On the schedule, first we dine, then copulation.

With someone your own age first,

then with your mother and me.

- All of a sudden, it's taken

the high school hijinks to another place.

- That thing what I think it is?

- That's a really disgusting thing

to bring into Mom and Dad's bedroom.

- [stutters]

- Generally, it's accepted thathorror movies deal with taboos,

and one of the main taboos that we have is incest.

♪

It's so pervasive, that taboo,

that we don't hardly talk about it much.

I think it's the basis of a lot of horror movies

implicitly, not explicitly.

In "Society," we make it more explicit...

- If you have any edible fantasies

you'd like to indulge in, Billy, now's the time.

[laughs]

- That discomfort about sex,

which is really important in horror movies--

I always feel like horror and sex and death

are just so intertwined.

[dramatic music]

- Mom? Dad?

I'd like to have a little chat with you.

♪

narrator: It turns out,

Billy was adopted for the sole reason

of broadening Society's inbred gene pool.

[laughter]

- I do love the--[sniffs]

smell of the hunt...

and the taste of the Shunt. [all cheer]

- Let go of me!

♪

narrator: He'll be sacrificed at an event called the Shunt,

where Society shows its true face

and all of its other body parts.

[all shouting]

[laughter]

narrator: It's one of the strangest

and most disturbing sequences ever put on film.

♪

- They get together and their bodies merge.

Their clothes come off,

they start moving to this amorphous blob,

and they eat poor people, and they bathe in their blood,

and you see all of it in graphic detail.

♪

- It's the first time I had a chance to direct.

I said, "Wow, what haven't I seen that I'd like to see?"

I imagined a couple people in a room

and their bodies kind of melding together.

[laughter, slurping]

The whole idea of a big orgiastic ending--

I saw "The Ten Commandments" when I was a kid,

and it really affected me,

because, first of all, it's very magical.

It's like a horror movie.

[tense music]

The sea turns into blood...

[staff clatters]

There's sticks that turn into serpents,

there's a green mist that kills kids,

but at the end, there's this huge orgy

when they're worshipping the golden calf.

That certainly influenced me.

- The rich have always sucked off

low-class [no audio] like you.

♪

- Obviously, it's, like, all a metaphor

about propriety and fitting in and also capitalism

and having the upper class act as though

they've got access to much finer things, when really,

they have access to much more upsetting and debased things.

♪

narrator: Physical monstrosity is often equated

with moral deformity.

- [screaming]

narrator: But sometimes,

the "normal" people are the monsters,

and the so-called "freaks" are too good for this world.

- [whimpering]

narrator: Body horror films play

on a dark part of human psychology.

- [frightened yelling]

narrator: Our discomfort with any physical difference

from the norm.

[ominous music]

narrator: They have their roots

in the carnival sideshows

of the 19th and early 20th centuries,

where people with birth defects,

so-called "freaks," were put on display

for the general public's amusement.

Tod Browning, the director of "Dracula,"

worked those carnivals as a young man.

[laughter]

narrator: He turned his fascination

with the performers into one of the most

infamous horror films of all time:

"Freaks."

- [chanting]Gooble, gobble, gooble, gobble.

- [chanting] We accept her, we accept her.

- [chanting]Gooble, gobble, gooble, gobble!

- "Freaks" is a one-of-a-kind. It's a unique movie.

How it got made,

under the aegis of MGM in the 1930s,

I will never understand.

- Tomorrow night's the big night, eh, Daisy?

- Yes. Your sister's getting married.

- Because MGM was the [indistinct] of movie studios,

so for that studio to turn out this fascinating,

and yet, sometimes repellant film,

is just a marvel.

- "Freaks" didn't rely on special effects makeups,

it used disabled and deformed human beings

from real circuses and sideshows across the country

to be its main players.

- It reverses the tradition.

It has the freaks, or the people we care about,

and the beautiful people, the beautiful trapeze artists,

and the strongmen, the physical specimens,

are the monsters.

- Well, here's something for your eye!

- [laughs]

narrator: The film spins the tale of a trapeze artist

who marries a dwarf for his money

then plots to murder him.

[dramatic musical sting]

When she's found out,

the freaks take revenge.

♪

- The thing about that movie that's so difficult

is it generates such sympathy for the freaks.

And then the movie does this strange turn...

[shouting]

Which is when they, all the freaks,

come to mutilate her,

there's images you don't forget.

♪

- [shouts]

- [screams] [thunder booms]

- [screams]

[squawking]

narrator: "Freaks" was attacked by critics

and shunned by audiences.

- [screams]

narrator: For decades,

it was banned in many countries.

Today, it's considered a significant part

of film history.

[tense musical crescendo]

- [screaming]

- [indistinct]

narrator: In 1980, producer Mel Brooks

hired the young David Lynch to direct "The Elephant Man,"

a very different take on physical deformity.

[dramatic carnival music]

[laughter]

Nominated for eight Academy Awards,

"The Elephant Man" tells the true story

of John Merrick,

who goes from carnival exhibition

to friend of the English aristocracy.

- Because naturally,

some people do find my appearance disturbing.

- "The Elephant Man" is probably the antithesis

of Tod Browning's "Freaks"

in that it is so sympathetic

and it's from the point of view of someone

who was born as a monster,

even though his heart was that of an angel.

This is a man who's so deformed, so grotesque,

that he has to wear a mask

so that he doesn't frighten everybody

he comes in confrontation with.

[all exclaiming]

And is put on display in circuses

because he's a freak.

- Elephant...Man.

[audience murmuring]

narrator: Lynch employs a naturalistic style

that reflects the brutal realities of life

in Victorian England.

[all clamoring]

But combines it with dreamlike touches

that are uniquely his own.

[distorted howling]

♪

- That film, in black and white,

just shimmers.

The use of light and dark chiaroscuro shots--

it's ironic that you can say it's a thing of beauty,

even though it deals with

someone who is anything but beautiful.

But the power of that film is the very deft way

that Lynch first reveals the look of John Marrick

and then gradually lets you see him a little longer,

and you begin to understand

that it's not what's on the outside,

but what's on the inside that really does count,

corny as that may sound, but that's the entire premise.

- I am not an animal!

I am a human being!

- The tagline of the movie on the poster,

"I'm not an animal, I'm a human being,"

that is at the core of body horror--

what makes a human being a human being.

Is it--is it this?

Or is it something else? Is it something below?

- My life is full 'cause I know that I am loved.

- If you watch that film on an emotional level,

I want to be John Merrick.

He's a pure goodness, you know?

He's a loving creature

who's not been destroyed by all the darkness he's seen.

What more could we wish for ourselves?

- She's very pretty, your mother.

- Oh, yes.

- A friend of mine told me

he saw "Elephant Man" in the theater,

and there was a scene where the Elephant Man's

talking to the singer woman,

and it's a very sweet, gentle scene,

and she's kind of looking at him like he's a human,

and she saying, "It's so nice to meet you."

And there's this quiet moment.

And a guy in the theater went,

"Kill her, Elephant Man!" [chuckles]

Like, he's like, "It's a monster movie, right?

When's Elephant Man gonna startkilling people?"

[laughing]

[tense music]

- [screams]

narrator: Sometimes disgusting,

often disturbing--

- [whimpers]

narrator: But always powerful...

- [growling] [phone rings]

narrator: Body horror films

make us question our prejudices

against physical difference...

- You filth!

narrator: Our attitudes about sex and gender...

[wire sawing]

[screaming]

narrator: Our fear of disease and contamination...

- [shouts]

♪

narrator: And how much our appearance

determines who we are.

- [screaming]

narrator: They confront us with the beauty

and horror of being human.

- [screaming]