“There’s somebody in the castle!”
Even for a Stuart Gordon film, Castle Freak is a tough watch. Gordon was a director renowned for his unhinged excess – look no further than the hot pink sensuality of From Beyond, or the madcap body horror of Re-Animator. Gordon was the closest thing that American horror has ever produced to a giallo director. Castle Freak feels like his crowning achievement, despite the fact that it skipped a theatrical run and went straight to VHS in 1995. This is the third (very, very loose) adaptation that Gordon made of an H.P. Lovecraft story, and the third one starring Barbara Crampton and Jeffrey Combs. Strangely enough, amidst all the body horror and sexual violence, Castle Freak is maybe Gordon’s most mature work.
That said, the plot is threadbare enough to approach self-parody. It makes sense when you find out that producer Charles Band had a poster mocked up for nonexistent movie called Castle Freak. Gordon was interested, and Band gave him free reign with the property on the condition that the resulting film had both a castle and a freak. Gordon adapted – and I use that word in the most generous possible sense – Lovecraft’s “The Outsider,” and then called action. It’s an hilarious origin story, yes, but it’s undeniably impressive that Gordon was able to produce this as the finished product. Lloyd Kaufman could never.
Anyway, John Reilly (Combs) has inherited a castle in Italy from an unknown relative. He travels there with his wife, Susan (Crampton), and daughter, Rebecca (Jessica Dollarhide), who has recently been blinded. You don’t need to have ever seen a Stuart Gordon movie – or, indeed, any horror movie – to know where this is going, and Gordon is unquestionably up to the grisly task at hand. What makes Castle Freak stand apart is the emotional stakes. Combs and Crampton might not be phenomenal actors in and of themselves, but they are great together, and their work here is some of the best of either of their careers.
John is struggling with sobriety after getting into a drunk driving accident that blinded Rebecca and killed their young son, JJ. The symbolism here is clear, if a bit on the nose: when JJ (presumably John Jr.) dies, a small part of John dies with him. So to call the marriage rocky would be selling it short. Combs has perhaps the meatier role, while, at least in the film’s beginning, Crampton’s character is given short shrift, written as more of a harridan than a grieving mother. To be fair, though, Castle Freak never glorifies John; if anything, it relishes in his misery and debasement, and Combs does fine work playing someone who hit rock bottom and just kept going down.
But this is a Stuart Gordon film, and martial strife is probably not why anyone would rent this movie. If you’re fan of Gordon’s, you probably already have a strong stomach, which is good, because you’ll need it for Castle Freak. When the titular ghoul breaks free of his restraints, it’s a harbinger of the horror to come, as he bends and breaks one of this thumbs clean off in order to loose himself from his shackles. The freak – real name Giorgio – is a kind of marvel of makeup. He has long, ragged fingernails; sickly gray skin; a clubbed foot; and a deformation on his face that results in a permanent snarl. It’s genuinely hard to look at, and this is aided by Jonathan Fuller’s full-body performance as Giorgio. Fuller is almost Lon Chaney-like in his physical commitment to a nonverbal role.
Some parts of the movie just don’t add up, even from a character standpoint. How can John, while inspecting Giogrio’s empty cell, completely miss the mutilated cat carcass at his feet? How does no one hear the rattle of Giorgio’s chain? These are valid nit-picks, but at the end of the day, that’s all they are. Neither Gordon nor Castle Freak care about little gripes like this, and besides, when a film has a framing device like this one does, it is far beyond caring about reason or logic. Keep in mind, that is meant as praise.
Castle Freak, in a lot of ways, epitomizes all the ways you can have fun watching a horror movie. You have one of the greatest directors of splatter movies, directing two of the finest B-movie actors of their generation. There’s gore, mutilation, sex, and underpinning all that is a sense of genuine humanity. Maybe I’m being hyperbolic; maybe I’m reading too much into a straight-to-VHS movie called Castle Freak, for God’s sake. Watch it and tell me I’m wrong when I say that, put simply, Castle Freak rules.
Thursday, 10/1: Phantasm
Friday, 10/2: Frozen
Saturday, 10/3: Suspiria
Sunday, 10/4: Suspiria (2018)
Monday, 10/5: Emelie
Tuesday, 10/6: Castle Freak
Wednesday, 10/7: Session 9
Thursday, 10/8: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
Friday, 10/9: We Are Still Here
Saturday, 10/10: The Changeling
Sunday, 10/11: The Bad Seed
Monday, 10/12: Verotika
Tuesday, 10/13: The Legend of Hell House
Wednesday, 10/14: Lake Mungo
Thursday, 10/15: Puppetmaster
Friday, 10/16: Marrowbone
Saturday, 10/17: A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
Sunday, 10/18: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
Monday, 10/19: Sweetheart
Tuesday, 10/20: Girl On the Third Floor
Wednesday, 10/21: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
Thursday, 10/22: Triangle
Friday, 10/23: Dog Soldiers
Saturday, 10/24: Noroi: The Curse
Sunday, 10/25: Train to Busan
Monday, 10/26: Tales From the Hood
Tuesday, 10/27: Mandy
Wednesday, 10/28: Sometimes They Come Back
Thursday, 10/29: Veronica
Friday, 10/30: The Wicker Man
Saturday, 10/31: Child’s Play
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