1980s, the film was regularly shown at midnight movie screenings in the United States. It also enjoyed a critical reappraisal in France during this period, as, according to Hawkins, Browning had achieved a "certain Poe-esque stature among French intellectuals." Critic Derek Malcolm noted in 1999 that the film is "one of the masterpieces of baroque cinema," and a "damning antidote to the cult of physical perfection and an extraordinary tribute to the community of so-called freaks who made up its cast." In 1994, Freaks was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, which preserves "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" films. Film scholar Jennifer Peterson cites Freaks as one of the 50 most important American films ever made. In a 2018 retrospective on Browning's career, Martyn Conterio of the British Film Institute assesses the film as "best approached with a fuller understanding of Browning's work, specifically, the director's emotionally complicated interest in human abnormality and the severely disabled," and considers it among Browning's films that "are pioneering and boundary-pushing, amounting to repeat attacks on Hollywood's standardised images of beauty and glamour." It is also listed in the film reference book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, which says "No mere plot summary can do justice to this alarming yet profound movie, which truly must be seen to be believed. It is a supreme oddity (freak?) of world cinema considered by many to be the most remarkable film in the career of a director whose credits include the original version of Dracula (1931)." Several sequences in the film have been noted for their lasting cultural impact, particularly the freaks' climactic revenge sequence, which was ranked 15th on Bravo TV's list of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments. The banquet sequence in which the freaks chant "We accept her, we accept her, one of us" has also been noted, with Mike D'Angelo of The A.V. Club describing it as "the film's greatest cultural legacy... "One of us, one of us, one of us" reliably gets trotted out in situations involving an individual being forced to conform by the masses—I can recall seeing homages on both The Simpsons and South Park, and there are probably dozens of others out there." Freaks has inspired two unofficial remakes: She Freak (1967) and Freakshow (2007). It also served as a major inspiration for the fourth season of the television series American Horror Story,