Freaked (originally titled Hideous Mutant Freekz) is a 1993 American comedy film, directed by Tom Stern and Alex Winter, and written by Stern, Winter and Tim Burns. All three were involved in the short-lived MTV sketch comedy show "The Idiot Box", and Freaked retains the same brand of surrealistic and absurdist humor as seen in the show.Originally conceived as a low-budget horror film featuring the band Butthole Surfers, Freaked went through a number of rewrites, eventually developing into a black comedy set within a sideshow, which was picked up by 20th Century Fox for a feature film. After several poor test screenings and a change in studio executives who then found the film too "weird", the movie was pulled from a wide distribution and only played on a handful of screens in the United States.