“Freaks” is back. Actually, since the 1960s, it has enjoyed a state of perpetual return, showing up periodically at art houses and campus screenings and on video and laser disc. Not many television airings, though – a tribute to its undated ability to cause distress. After Todd Browning’s 1932 sideshow thriller was pulled from release by a chagrined MGM, it was butchered and suppressed for nearly 30 years. Yet “Freaks” provides the same voyeuristic kick for which millions of Americans happily shelled out money in carnival tents around the country, only more so and with a twist. It survives as a pulp tour de force.

The censors and critics initially trounced it not for the bizarre sexual trysts and rude remarks (a brazen pun about prophylactics skipped merrily past their radar), but for exploiting “nature’s mistakes.” What did they care that Hollywood provided Browning’s performers better pay and accommodations per day than an average week on the midway? They were probably more disturbed that Browning’s vignette (running little more than an hour) presents its armless, legless, limbless, mindless, bound-at-the-hip, skeletal, and double-gendered wonders in the light of day. Watching so many of them – more 10-in-1 attractions than any real circus could afford – romp at a picnic in the French countryside makes the psychological feat of feeling pity while recoiling in horror more difficult.

A penitent introductory scroll, tacked on when “Freaks” was first revived (and included as a DVD extra, along with a commentary and talking heads documentary) has the unexpected effect of increasing the dread. It promotes the film as a last chance to observe these special people because modern medical practice has succeeded where Hitler failed. Browning, whose career flourished in the silent era as Lon Chaney’s collaborator and fizzled after “Dracula” and “Freaks, begins the film by admiringly introducing his cast for nearly half an hour. In one scene, the limbless Prince Randian strikes a match and lights a cigarette with his face, then dares a boastful, physically complete performer, “Hey, can you do anything with your eye brow?” The line is baffling (and unintelligible without the subtitles),but the point is clear: Use what you’ve got.

When the plot finally kicks in, the film turns dark and stormy. A German midget, Hans (Harry Earles), is engaged to someone his own size, Frieda (Daisy Earles), but falls head-over-heels for Cleo (Olga Baclanova), the blonde, Amazonian, bitch-goddess of the trapeze. When Cleo learns that Hans is heir to a great fortune, she contrives to marry and murder him, a scheme that she rather foolishly publicizes at the wedding banquet. This is one of the unforgettable episodes in world cinema. As the director’s camera slyly circles the congregants, Angelo Rossetti (another little guy, who went on to appear in low-rent movies) leaps onto the table and wiggles toward Cleo bearing a huge loving cup, as they chant, “Gooble gobble, one of us” – an invitation she frantically declines. To avenge the attempted murder of Hans, the freaks gang up on her in a torrential downpour and, with a surgical skill you won’t find at Beth Israel (it’s done off camera, so their secrets are safe), they turn her into a human duck or chicken or fowl of some sort.

In short, when one of theirs is threatened, the freaks can get supernaturally freaky.

This scene raises a problem of interpretation, however, and here the producers of this otherwise admirable DVD have made a serious miscalculation. Browning, harried by censors and forced to cut nearly a third of the film, was finally forced to respond to front office concerns that audiences would feel uncomfortable seeing sweet little Hans turned into a vengeful sawbones. So he filmed an epilogue, which showed Hans as a reclusive guilt-ridden millionaire, reunited years later with Frieda. But a wiser head – presumably that of Irving Thalberg – prevailed, the epilogue was cut, and the film as released ended with the revelation of a quacking, clucking Cleo.

It’s a perfect ending. The film begins with a carny guide leading marks into a tent, showing them but not us the revolting creature and spinning a tall tale to explain how she got that way. Since the entire film is a flashback, “Freaks” begs the question of whether any of it happened. The spiel does double-duty, playing on ancient fears in caricaturing the misbegotten while cunningly acknowledging that sideshows revel in creative fraud. Not content to include the discarded epilogue as an added feature, though, the DVD tacks it onto the film, sabotaging one of the great visual punch lines of all time with a staged and badly acted happy fade-out, complete with patronizing wink from the (relatively) normal clown who reunites the midgets. Foul!

***

The restored “Freaks” debuted at the 1960 Venice Film Festival, in retrospect an instance of cosmic timing. That was a banner year for horror, when various movie taboos were subverted by “Psycho,” “Peeping Tom,” “Black Sunday,” “Terror of the Tongs,”

“The Fall of the House of Usher,” and other bellwether shockers. One, “Village of the Damned,” was short on gore and lust, but introduced a memorable special effect (whited-out eyes) and the prophetic idea that the most terrifying aliens were our children, especially little Aryan ones with bangs.

Based on John Wyndham’s lively novel, “The Midwich Cuckoos,” Wolf Rilla’s film portrays a pastoral English village (the opening shot is of a flock of sheep) that seems caught in a time-warp: no television and the only phonographs play 78s. One morning the population blacks out for a few hours, after which a dozen women awake bearing immaculate conceptions. Since the censors prohibited the use of words like “pregnant” or “virginity,” there’s a lot of euphemistic hemming and hawing. But the real subject, left over (like those 78s) from World War II, is the male fear of returning from war to find one’s mate claimed by another. George Sanders is unusually sober in the lead role, and misty, silent black-and-white pans augment the growing claustrophobia.

The 1964 “Children of the Damned” is a sequel in name only, though it begins with the closing image of its predecessor, a clock. John Briley, who offers a commentary, wrote an overtly political and religious variation on the theme. This time the children are a virtual United Nations of Darwinian freaks, whom the powers want to kill out of sheer raging paranoia. The story plays out in a dilapidated church that could double as Castle Dracula (for that matter, London’s oddly abandoned alleyways are distinctly Caligari-ish), and the children confess that their purpose is to, well, die. As in the first film, dynamite is the species cleanser of choice.

“Children” doesn’t make much sense, but it has more wit and surprises than the original. It also has the unctuous, lizard-eyed, scenery-chewing Alan Badel, an English stage star who despite several attempts never proved exportable to the international film market – not because he disappeared into the strenuous makeups of his diverse roles, but because the roles disappeared into the maw of his actorly ego. He is compulsively watchable, like a cat.