Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks

Given that it has one of the best titles in bad movie history, Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks mostly fails to deliver the goods, as far as sheer horror. However, it nonetheless delivers the camp, and that may be the most important thing here. Sans blood, sans nudie titillation, sans even a stitched-together, green-skinned, rotting reanimated cadaver (which is what one generally expects from a Frankenstein picture), the film still manages to be entertaining, and, at the end of the day, that's really all that matters.

Dr. Frankenstein (Rossario Brazzi) lounges around Castle Frankenstein, in a lab with bubbling, smoky beakers and Tesla coils, is planning on reanimating a neanderthal cadaver or something he calls "Goliath." It's a huge man with a Sasquatch head with a scar on it, and Cookie from the old "Bozo Show" hair. His daughter and her lady friend or something take milk baths and go on splelunking trips where they do mineral baths and where Gentz (Michael Dunn), the bitter, angry Necro Dwarf (he mollests a recently disinterred female cadaver) watches them with angry, ugly, leering eyes. From a secret vantage point, of course.

Gentz befriends "Ook " (Salvatore Baccaro, billed as "Boris Lugosi") another caveman (apparently the rural Italian countryside is crawling with living exemplars of the stone age world), and both of them go on a murder rampage in the countryside, kidnapping and mutilating a young peasant girl. Really, all told, not much else happens here.

Costumes and sets are kind of lame; Ook looks like he was a cast extra on Caveman with Ringo Starr (you remember that old flick?). There's virtually no gore or blood or anything, and not a single titty I can see anywhere. The discerning garbage bin movie afficianado must surely be asking themselves: What gives?

Well, the film still manages to have an entertainment value not very far removed from the average Saturday Morning show aimed at very young kids (except of course for Pervo the Dwarf Necrophiliac, whch is just totally out of left field). "Goliath" (Loren Ewing), the big (really big) shaggy reanimated Frankenstein monster wannabe stand-in, is an ugly bugger with clown hair and a unibrow who goes on a rampage at the end. Close but no cigar, as they say. He's a veritable disapointment in this dish rather full of them. But, having said that, the film was quick, ugly, dirty fun, if just because it has such a wonderfully (forgive us) "ooky" title. It comes out of an era when you could get away with this shit.

What else?

I need two hundred more words here kimosabe, so all I can do is describe the one scene that opens up this dreck fest, which is replayed TWICE when it didn't really go down too smoothly the first time.

A posse of mad, rampaging villagers is throwing stones at Ook, who writhes and dies (presumably) on a hill, while they're throwing stones and holding torches in broad daylight (maybe they gonna burn the sucka') and then Ook kind of ooks around on his midriff and gives up his Italian neanderthal ghost so that Dr. Frankenstein can revive him later on. I think.

But apparently this scene was so wonderful they thought (wrongly) that they had to run it twice, and so we're subjected to asscrack shots up Ooks fur-clad caveman toga-do, and what the hell else can I really say? A breathtaking example of cinematic artistry it ain't.

But I suppose it's a passably fun, if rather dry, exploitation kiddie camp gimmick picture, but it also belies the very title. Because, while arguably, ALL of these cuka-rachas could be considered "freaks," not a one of them iss freaky enough for THIS freak-o-phile.

We're nothing if not a discriminating conniseur of sewer.

Directed by exploitation legend Dick Randall, who went globe trotting directing sleazoid pictures such as Primitive Love (1964), The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968), and Black Deep Throat (1976), just to name a few.

Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks | Horror | 4K | Full English Movie

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