Director: Leslie Zemeckis
MPAA Rating: NR
We, as a society, have always had a morbid fascination with the concept of gawking at “freaks.” Be it from a circus sideshow, or more recently, from whatever the latest TLC reality program is, we just love looking at those who are different than the norm. Leslie Zemeckis’ new documentary, Bound by Flesh, profiles two of the most famous sideshow performers, conjoined twins Violet and Daisy Hilton. The film explores their lives, from their early exploitation, to their later years as independent, yet struggling, women trying to stay relevant after the fall of vaudeville.
Born in 1908, Violet and Daisy were promptly given up by their mother, who looked at them as an abomination and a punishment from God for conceiving out of wedlock. The twins were “sold” to their mother’s employer, a pub owner named Mary Hilton, who quickly decided to cash in on the girls’ unique physical trait.
The film utilizes a by-the-numbers, talking-head style to paint the sad, roller-coaster-like ride of Violet and Daisy’s lives, from their overbearing and abusive caretakers to the crooked managers who swindled them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. At the height of their career, the twins were pulling in an unbelievable $5,000 a week from their vaudeville act, which translates to roughly $67,000 a week by today’s standards. Unfortunately, the girls barely saw any of this money, as it was all controlled by Mary Hilton and her husband, Myer Myers.
Later in their lives, Violet and Daisy did break away from the grip of their guardians, however, because of how they were raised and their lack of business sense, their career plummeted. By this time The Depression was in full force; work was drying up, and the twins had no skills and nothing to fall back on. They played roles in Tod Browning’s famous film Freaks, but it wasn’t enough to rocket them back into the spotlight. They acquired several shady managers who convinced them to make several bad choices, including multiple fake marriages that proved to be nothing but elaborate publicity stunts.
While the content of the film is fascinating, the way in which the documentary is presented is nothing more than generic. Of course, with docs content is king, and there’s plenty of entertaining and informative content held within.
The interesting thing about Violet and Daisy’s story is that it can be easily transplanted into how we look at show business today. People continue to be exploited for our entertainment all the time, and although the medium may have changed, the result will surely be the same. A century from now I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a documentary coming out about Honey Boo Boo and her meteoric rise to fame and hard crash into drugs, alcohol and destitution.
