She Freak (1967)

Carnival Barker: Ladies and gentlemen, you're about to behold a sight so strange, so horrifying, so utterly monstrous, that I urge you who are easily frightened or upset, who suffer from nervous disorders, weak hearts, or queasy stomachs, who experience nightmares, and any children under the age of 16, to forgo witnessing this exhibit. There are only two kinds of freaks ladies and gentlemen. Those created by God, and those made by man. The creature in this pit is a living breathing human being that once was... well, that's another story that happened a long time ago, a long way from here. Look if you must. I can't believe I looked!

It makes carnivals really, really, really dull. Really. The most interesting thing for me, a boomer kid, was reminiscing about the fashions and decor of the era, and noticing how freak-show signs never seem to change.We didn't need the extolling at the outset of the film to realize that the producer probably was getting a big chunk o' change from the West Coast Shows carnival to make this film. I mean, for pity's sake, as has already been mentioned here, the scenes of the carnival in which NOTHING HAPPENS are mind-bogglingly frequent and long. But it certainly did the carnival no favors to have five minutes here and seven minutes there and another five minutes here of these scenes, because they're things like the same shots of the same rides, or the same shots of the same signs, or people standing next to trucks and smoking, or people putting ride parts on trucks or taking them off, or even, heaven help me, Jade, the main character, clearing debris off picnic tables. If this had been my experience of the carnival when I was a kid, I'd have been in tears asking my parents to take me home NOW.And for the grownup seeking some titillation in Moon's "topless" dancing, well, caveat emptor. There's a question mark on her sign for a reason.If anyone wants to know what it was like working in the actual West Coast Shows, there is a site by the (late) Amazing Vanteen, who played Mr. Babcock and also one of the killers, which details his life with that show. He briefly discusses the making of this film as well.The attempted rip-off of Browning's "Freaks" is shameless and futile. For all of Jade's trembling hatred for the freaks, we don't see many of them. We have the odd-talent people, who only marginally qualify for this sad label. The closest to the classic definition of a sideshow freak is Shortie (and the oddest thing to me about Shortie is that he didn't grab that bottle of booze while Blackie and Pretty-Boy were duking it out by the trailer under which Shortie was hiding). The finale, of course, is total theft, although the details of the transfiguration constitute a more plausible end to Jade than the Browning ending provides. Whatever revolted viewer satisfaction there might be in the revenge is, however, I think undone by Greasy's reveling in Jade's undoing. We have no reason to think he is not as despicable as she is, after all.Anyway, save yourself a wasted afternoon. This is no cult classic, kids.

Celebrated "Nudie Cutie" producer and exploitation film genre pioneer from Alabama David F Friedman's labour of love, SHE FREAK concerns a waitress from an unspectacular café in Texas who joins a traveling carnival hoping to find a rich man to provide her with the finer things in life, unlike her mother whose existence was unfulfilled and miserable. She indeed finds her man, invested in the carnival, Steve St. John (Bill McKinney, whose notoriety derives from making Ned Beatty squeal like a pig before raping him in the backwoods in DELIVERENCE), and this woman, Jade Cochran (Claire Brennen) exploits their marriage by allowing the newfound power he gives her to mistreat the workers, particularly the freaks she finds repulsive, paying a dear price for her misdeeds. Friedman's movie dedicated to carnivals and Tod Browning's FREAKS was for me a tedious bore, but it does give us a look inside the construction of the a Bakersville, California carnival, showing the hired help breaking down and setting up tents and rides, the locals who attend them arriving with happy smiles. Claire Brennen is featured prominently in the film often with men eyeballing her as she shakes her ass and shows off her curves. Many might recognize Claude Earl Jones (the café owner who promises Jade that she will pay for her sins) from lots of television and the made for TV horror classic, DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW. Lee Raymond is Blackie Fleming, the "ferris wheel foreman" Jade has sex with while Lynn Courtney is the stripper Pat "Moon" Mullins who befriends Cochran before the power goes to the new Ms. St. John's head. The ending, where the freaks get their revenge, is right out of FREAKS, practically a shot-for-shot remake of that infamous scene. While I found the plot uneventful and plodding, the make-up from Harry Thomas is wonderfully grotesque when Jade gets her makeover as a result of her tyranny.

Complete, total crap. Truly awful. I'd rather ingest my own excrement than sit through it again. Redefines the meaning of the word "bad" (Leonard Pynth- Garnell never endured this). I'd say that watching it was cruel and unusual punishment, but I don't want to give cruelty a bad name. Seriously, we're talking Amateur Hour at the Film School for Living Brain Donors from frame one. The story begins about ten minutes before it ends -- and even then, nearly every shot crosses the line or is awful in some other way. A pathetic, pointless, incompetent waste of celluloid. Other than that, not too bad.