Gymkata Freaks

I've been talking about my vision of goblins and other goblinoids. I mentioned in passing that, in addition to traditional tales (and the poems "Goblin Market" and "Little Orphaint Annie",) I'm taking inspiration from two movies that actually have nothing to do with goblins: Freaks and Gymkata.

Freaks (1932) is a famous film by Tod Browning about sideshow freaks and how they are betrayed by "normals" pretending to be their friends. The entire movie is available online at Archive.org, since it's fallen into the public domain. But for those who don't want to watch an entire movie, here's the specific scene I'm thinking of: our "heroine" (or rather, villainess) fleeing into a storm at night as the deadly freaks stalk her relentlesslty.


Gymkata (1985) is also famous, but isn't a classic, even if it was directed by Robert Wise, who also did Enter the Dragon. It's not very good, except maybe in places. Or maybe I'm just saying that because I watched the movie ten or twenty times when I was part of a fan MSTing.

The fake foreign country of Parmistan sends its criminally insane citizens to an otherwise abandoned "village of the crazies". During "The Game", players of the Game must run through the village and somehow escape the murderous inhabitants. It's a lot of goofy surreal stuff mixed with a few genuinely creepy bits, none anywhere close to the quality of Freaks, but still potentially useful for goblin inspiration.