While Stuart Gordon’s 80s horror output had the sense of the comic book absurd about them, it seemed like the man wanted to approach the 90s with a noticably harder edge. I mean, it’s not like movies like Re-Animator, Dolls and From Beyond weren’t loaded with their fair share of outlandish gore, sexual perversions and insane plots, but while these features were bathed in a gloriously pulpy glow, Gordon’s lurid adaption of The Pit And The Pendulum and the stark, stripped back trauma of Castle Freak felt like far nastier, cynical affairs.
Maybe this wouldn’t have stood out so much if Gordon wasn’t so insistent on getting his financing from Charles Band, whose Full Moon studio was more likely to churn out rubbery comedic garbage and Puppet Master sequels than deadly serious, psycho-sexual horror films. As a result, Gordon once again fell foul of Band’s financial woes (the first being Robot Jox) as yet another studio started to find itself on shaky ground.
After ex-alcoholic patriarch, John Reilly, finds out that he’s inherited a 12th century castle, his crumbling family unit travel to Italy in order to get a look at their expansive new digs. Previously owned by a famous Duchess that John was apparently related to, yet never heard of, he’s hoping that any he can raise from selling the property will go toward salvaging the hollow husk of his ailing marriage. However, it’s only been nine short months since his love of the booze caused him to crash his car, killing his five year old son and permanently blinding his teenage daughter, Rebecca, and his wife, Susan, understandably has no plans to forgive him any time soon.
Thanks to the domestic tension running high, the family don’t realise that there’s someone else aside from the housekeeper lurking within the bowels of the castle. Meet Giorgio Orsino, the child of the Duchess who was believed dead at five, but in actuality has been tortured and mutilated for the entirety miserable existence right up to the vengeful old bitch died of old age mere minutes after his daily lashing.
After escaping from being chained up in a subterranean dungeon, Giorgio locks onto the vunerable Rebecca as uncontrollable sexual urges begin to flow through his ravaged body. However, this manages to coincide with John and Susan’s relationship finally imploding and in a self destructive act of self loathing, he goes out and gets well and truly tanked and even enlists the services of a local prostitute that he brings back to the castle in secret.
However, unbeknownst to John, the whore never leaves the castle alive thanks to Giorgio’s uncontrollable lust gruesomely getting the better of him.
With John heavily implicated in her disappearance, he finds himself in police custody – but if he’s not at the castle, what’s to stop Giorgio making a lethal advances toward his daughter?
Simply put, Charles Band was about as well equipped to market this brutal and nasty little family drama than Disney would be if they had to put out a release of Cannibal Holocaust and as a result, Castle Freak was release to almost zero fanfare, thus leaving it as about unloved as the twisted form of Giorgio himself. Still, in Band’s defence, while this refreshingly vicious movie certainly doesn’t hold back, it could hardly be described as an unloved masterpiece as it carries more flaws in its mangled body than its ravaged antagonist.
Seemingly stoked to be filming once again in the Italian castle that Band legitimately owned, Gordon crafts yet another edgy, brutal and noticably loose H.P. Lovecraft adaptation that riffs on both The Outsider and The Dunwich Horror to impressively sleazy effect. But despite it film’s legit surroundings and numerous thunderstorms raging as Giorgio stalks the Reilly’s through their own house, Castle Freak has a surprising lack of atmosphere for such a promising premise. Maybe its because the majority of the film suffers from some primitive sounding looping, or some of the drama veers into soap opera territory, despite its grim nature. Both Gordon veterans Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton are fine actors who have paid their dues in various genre roles in the past, but the material that they have to work with here is way too theatrical for the tight budget.
It’s a shame, because the theme of sustained torture – both emotional and physical – and the damage that parents can inflict on their offspring when their flaws override their protective instincts. John alcoholism decimated his family beyond all repair while the Duchess’ sustained and unimaginable abuse of her son is born from a desire to inflict unending vengeance on the man who left her. However, the threadbare production values don’t allow the themes resonate as powerful as you’d hope.
It’s not for the want of trying, because despite its shortcomings, Castle Freak, goes fucking hard when it comes to the rough stuff – in fact, even hardened horror fans of the 90s might agree that it possibly goes a little too hard. Gordon’s most infamous moments have usually involved extreme sexual violence, but such show stopping moments have had their impact deliberately lessened thanks to a sheen of fantasy or comedy to make it slightly more palatable, but there’s no such safety net here. A scene where Giorgio orally mutilates the prostitute in a chilling attempt to replicate the sex acts he watched John indulge in are legitimately upsetting, as is the scenes where the blind, teenage Rebecca is menaced while wearing her bra – but Gordon uses such distasteful moments to show the aggressively twisted result and as a result, Giorgio is just as much a victim as he is a vicious perpetrator.
Played with 110% intensity by Pit And The Pendulum’s Jonathan Fuller, Giorgio is a memorably ravaged wretch. With his back a tangled roadmap of scars from daily lashes from a cat o nine tails, his mouth a gaping wound and his genitals and tongue long since amputated, he’s both pitifully grotesque and grotesquely pitiful as he whimpers and groans his way through his various atrocities, but those hoping for the campy perverts of past Gordon flicks may find Giorgio too raw to stomach.
A deeply unpleasant experience, Castle Freak should be commended for not trying to soften the results of extreme child abuse, but Gordon’s ambitious aims are ultimately undone by a studio that simply was unequiped to handle such a distressing production with the care it needed.
While any no holds barred horror film is usually a good thing, a fumbling of its deeper themes means that Castle Freak is just too freakish for it’s own good.
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