The article discusses 10 early films that were considered unsettling and disturbing for their time. These films include:
1. "Freaks" (1932) - a film about circus performers with physical deformities, featuring a graphic and violent ending.
2. "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" (1959) - a sci-fi horror film with graphic violence and gore.
3. "A Labb" (1906) - a Spanish film featuring hallucinations and grotesque imagery.
4. "The Man Who Laughs" (1928) - a film about a man with a permanent, disfiguring grin.
5. "L'Inferno" (1911) - an Italian film based on Dante's Inferno, featuring disturbing and hellish imagery.
6. "Maniac" (1934) - an exploitation film featuring graphic violence, nudity, and a gruesome scene involving a live cat.
7. "Häxan" (1922) - a Danish film about witchcraft, featuring disturbing and hallucinatory imagery.
8. "Meshes of the Afternoon" (1943) - an experimental film featuring a woman's hallucinations and a sense of unease.
9. "Eyes Without a Face" (1960) - a French-Italian horror film featuring a mad doctor and graphic surgery scenes.
10. "Un Chien Andalou" (1929) - a surrealist film featuring disturbing and nonsensical imagery, including a famous scene involving a woman's eyeball being sliced open.
These films were considered shocking and disturbing for their time, and many were banned or heavily edited due to their content.
Here are the key facts extracted from the text:
1. Filmmakers have been trying to make dreams come to life for as long as Hollywood has been around.
2. Todd Browning was a veteran film director by the time he scored an enormous success with 1931's Dracula.
3. Browning was given free rein to create a unique vision for his next project, which became the 1932 film Freaks.
4. Freaks was described as inhabiting a genre all its own, one that no other filmmaker has dared to touch.
5. Freaks was based on a story by Clarence "Tod" Robbins and starred Wallace Ford and Leila Hyams.
6. The film featured a cast of actual circus performers, including conjoined twins, a limbless man, and others with deformations.
7. Test audiences were appalled by the film's ending, which led to extensive cuts and a new ending.
8. Despite the changes, Freaks was still considered extremely controversial upon its release and was completely banned in the UK for 30 years.
9. The Brain That Wouldn't Die was shot in 1959 but didn't see a theatrical release for 3 years due to its content.
10. The film was released to drive-in theaters in the summer of 1962 and was considered one of the first gore films.
11. Labb, also known as The Funny Shave, was a 1906 Spanish film directed by Segundo de Chomón.
12. The film featured a man who hallucinates after tasting shaving cream, seeing a series of grotesque caricatures in the mirror.
13. The Man Who Laughs was a 1928 American production with a German director, famous for working in that country's typical expressionist style.
14. The film's main character, Gwynplaine, was disfigured as a child with a horrifying permanent grin.
15. L'Inferno was a 1911 Italian film directed by Adolfo Padovan, Francesco Bertolini, and Giuseppe de Liguoro.
16. The film was based on Dante's Inferno and featured depictions of hell, including suicides hanging from trees and demons torturing hopeless souls.
17. Maniac was a 1934 film directed by Dwain Esper, who worked outside the traditional Hollywood system.
18. The film told the story of a villainous actor and a sex pervert who murders his doctor and assumes his identity.
19. Haxon: Witchcraft Through the Ages was a 1922 Danish film directed by Benjamin Christensen.
20. The film portrayed a terrifying Satan who lures women from their beds in the middle of the night.
21. Meshes of the Afternoon was a 1943 experimental film directed by Maya Deren.
22. The film featured a woman who experiences a series of strange and hallucinatory events in her home.
23. Eyes Without a Face was a 1960 French-Italian film directed by Georges Franju.
24. The film told the story of a mad doctor who was obsessed with finding his disfigured daughter a new face.
25. Un Chien Andalou was a 1929 Spanish film directed by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí.
26. The film featured a series of surreal and dreamlike sequences, including a shot of a woman prodding at a severed hand with a cane.
27. The film's opening sequence featured a man slicing open a woman's eyeball, which was achieved using a dead calf.
Note: These facts are based on the provided text and may not be a comprehensive or definitive account of the films mentioned.