Castle Freak (1996)

Stuart Gordon is a well known director among fans of horror films. He has made some cult horror films such as Re-Animator(1985), From Beyond(1986) and Dagon(2001). In this film, an Italian Duchess delivers a baby, Giorgio Osina and keeps it locked away in a basement cell, hidden from the public. Slowly, this child reaches adolescence and develops sexual appetites which it cannot fulfill naturally, because of its severed penis. A lot of years pass, the old Duchess dies of old age and John Reilly(Jeffrey Coombs) inherits the castle of the late Duchess. He moves in with his wife Susan(Barbara Crampton) and blind daughter Rebecca(Jessica Dollarhide) unaware of the gruesome creature locked away in the basement. Sometime later, Rebecca stumbles across the basement and finds the door of the cell where Giorgio is kept prisoner. He is aroused and desperately tries to free himself. He breaks off his own thumb to get out of the manacles that bind him to the wall.Watch the film to find out what happens next.Verdict: The plot is meager and really not at all good. The special-effects are average as well as the sound-effects. This film doesn't feel like a typical Stuart Gordon film. We see two actors from previous Gordon movies like Jeffrey Coombs and Barbara Crampton. Jeffrey has the bulk of the lines in the movie and though he carries the weight of the whole film on his shoulders, he fails to shine. Barbara has a very small role in the film and doesn't make any impact on the film.Johnathan Fuller is excellent in his portrayal of the freakish Giorgio. As the title character of the film he plays a depraved individual with unnatural sexual appetites. The gore in the film is graphic, but today's generation will find this film rather tame.More Stuart Gordon films: Robot Jox(1989), The Pit and the Pendulum(1991), Fortress(1992. Must see film starring Christopher Lambert).Thanks for reading. Live long and prosper.

I've known about this movie for some time and am a casual fan of Gordon's work, but this one came out at a time when things were changing in the low-rent movie biz...more and more a B-film was meaning a "DIY" film, any old hack could put something out and call it a movie and Full Moon, Troma or SOMEONE would try to sell it as a legit feature. I just didn't believe it could be worth the effort, I was tired of being burned by early-90's low-rent horror sludge."Castle Freak" is a legit feature...sorta. It's shot on film, it has real actors and locations, but still suffers the trappings of a low budget...the sets are underwhelming and nothing much happens. And that's one of two major beefs I had with this movie.1) Nothing much happens, and what does transpire is old news...there's a Thing in the cellar and before we dispatch with it there's a modicum of bloodletting and screaming. Meanwhile we have to sit through a healthy heap of tedium concerning the domestic problems of a small family. Despite the presence of some good B-movie actors these scenes seem superfluous to the action...which we never quite get to, except...2) When it does happen, it's outrageously repulsive. Not the most offensive thing you've ever seen it's just...this movie is just really icky! Out of nowhere there are a couple of things that transpire that include naughty bits that are just...unpleasant, and not in the fun way. I wasn't so much offended or caught in that so-gross-it's-fun mode as just...well, sorry I had to bear witness to it--and the effects weren't even that well done. It's just...the sight of the Freak and what he does to his victim is just...blecchy! And it's so completely out of touch with the rest of the movie, which is very "USA Up All Night," back when that show was on. It's really weird to see an average little quirky B-film with this kind of grue in it. I'm glad they went there, actually, I just wish the film would've either sustained/accelerated it (as Gordon did so well in "Re-Animator") or not even gone there to begin with.It's not bad, really it isn't...what's good about it is great--the castle, the final fight, the mysterious Italian village aura and the compelling idea of what exactly the Freak is all about. But the combo of this not being quite bad enough to be really bad or good enough to be really good left me ambivalent, and left me stuck with the sickening images of Freak's mutilated crotch and the prostitute's mutilated boobs. If that's what you want stuck in your head, see this film immediately.

This movie was a disappointment. The story is essentially The Shining with a castle (or a very cheap set masquerading as a castle, to be specific) substituting as the hotel and a monster instead of the ghosts. The budget is the same you'd see from a Cinemax softcore porn, as is the photography, sets, lighting, and video it was shot on. The story is a failed attempt at sincerity: there's no easier way to make your audience feel sympathetic for your characters than to show them experiencing emotional trauma. And the trauma in this movie is pretty trite. Want an example? A blind girl listening to a language tape teaching the Italian words for colors begins to cry at what she will never see.This movie had a few things going for it, however: the monster is actually pretty cool, pretty scary-looking. And there is a pretty decent amount of nudity from Raffaella Offidani, herself a star of Italian "erotic" films. The gore, however, leaves much to be desired, as does the acting, even from the experienced Jeffrey Combs.Other than this I've only seen two other Stuart Gordon films: Re-Animator and From Beyond, both of which were outstanding. But I won't let this little footnote in his career keep me from watching many more of his movies.

"Stuart Gordon's Castle Freak" is a really enjoyable, if slightly flawed creature feature.**SPOILERS**Traveling to Italy, John Reilly, (Jeffrey Combs) and his family, wife Susan, (Barbara Crampton) and daughter Rebecca, (Jessica Dollarhide) learn they have inherited a giant castle in the countryside. Deciding to sell the castle, they spend the night so they can take inventory in the morning. Exploring the castle, they start to find evidence of why they've inherited the castle and who was living in the castle before them. She starts to suspect that someone else is in the castle with them, which they laugh off as being a wish born from her handicap, and their irritation towards each other continues to grow. As they soon fall under a series of strange accidents and disappearances, they come to believe that there is someone inside the house, and are forced to defend themselves in hopes of getting out alive.The Good News: This one here wasn't that bad, and had some quite good moments to it. The fact that the castle here is an old-school Gothic masterpiece is something to be admired, since there's something about the design and flow of it that just lends itself to a creepy surrounding. There's the grand design of the place with the way that it's constructed and furnished, as well as the fact that it genuinely looks like it hasn't been lived in for a long time due to the amount of dust, cloth over the furniture and much more, lead to an overall great location. So many scenes here play up the creepiness of the castle, from the blind walk into the catacombs following a cat to the walk-through to gather inventory to the great sequence where they're chasing off after strange noises in the distance and are unsure of what they're chasing after, are all excellent examples of the film using the glorious castle suspense in great ways. The design of the creature in here is just as good, as the deranged and deformed features, over-sized teeth and the sharpened claws on the hands and feet are perfect in keeping with a great monster which is imposing and quite creepy. Once the bedspread is utilized manages to improve the design and make it much better. The scene where it escaped, by biting it's finger off to wriggle out of chains, is a great scene and manages to work in a couple brutal moments and is an overall great scene. The opening sequence is just as good, getting the brutal punishment underway that starts it off with a disturbing, cruel manner, setting up the rest of the film perfectly. There's a rather sleazy sex scene in the catacombs which manages to get really nice amounts of nudity into the film, that is well-done and combined with a later sequence with the prostitute inside the lair, comprise some nice amounts of nudity. The last big part of this that works is the really nice gore provided here, since the kills are really bloody. There's one that has the skin from around their hips and legs eaten away, another is bashed in the head repeatedly with a large chain, there's an eyeball eaten out, slashings with broken beer bottles and much more in here that makes for some bloody good times. All of these here make the film rather enjoyable.The Bad News: This one here only had a few small flaws to it. The fact that the film spends a long portion of time with the family drama and the tensions with each other over their dead child is something that can get irritating. It's something that requires everyone to simply yell at each other for no reason at all, since the flashback actually makes it clear that there's no reason to be like it at all due to it being a complete and total accident, and is just thrown in for the last-second reprieve at the end. That is obvious, and ever since the flashback that supports everything from the one character states, all it does is just aggravate due to it taking up so much time on something that already has a foregone conclusion. The fact that it starts getting to the main action a little late in the film is something else, since this one has the creature loose about twenty minutes in, yet the rampage doesn't really start until close to the end, leaving a large middle section creepy but action-less, and that can be a turn-off to some. Otherwise, this here was a really fun film.The Final Verdict: A really fun and enjoyable creature feature that has enough good parts about it to be able to entertain with only a few mild flaws to hold it down. Highly recommended for fans of this style of film, fans of the cast or creative practices or just a creepy monster film, while those who can't appreciate them should heed caution.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Full Nudity, Language and mild animal violence