Bad/awesome flixxx review: Castle Freak (1995)

"There's somebody else here there's somebody in the castle!" - Rebecca

"Giorgio D'Orsino- he was never burried! She kept him alive! He's here somewhere in this castle!" - John

"I didn't kill her, I fucked her, Okay?" - John

This flick has been suggested to me on several occasions. A bunch of dudes said, If you dig RE-ANIMATOR, then you should check this one out. From the same director Stuart Gordon comes this story based on the Lovecraft novella THE OUTSIDER. It was released straight to video and stars a few of the same actors from RE-ANIMATOR, Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton (who my Earth mom would tell you was a huge soap opera star). I present to you CASTLE FREAK!!!

Supposedly this is a hard to find movie. I think maybe that was the case a few years ago, but I think maybe if they never released it on DVD, you may actually be able to find it on Blu-Ray now. Here we have the story of an old Duchess who had a son. Apparently he was all fucked up, or maybe he wasn't fucked up at all except for that she beat the shit out of him with a whip- or kept him as a "whipping boy" as they state near the end of the movie. The movie has a creepy feel throughout that beings right away with the weird low camera angles on the old lady chopping bread, and shooing the kitty out of the way. The prologue ends quickly after serving some bread to whatever is tied up way downstairs in this castle, she suddenly has a heart attack and dies, and is found months later mummified.

Fast forward who knows how many years later, and John Reilly and his wife and blind daughter are called to Italy to check out this castle he has inherited. He didn't even know that his dad had been married to a duchess and is suprised by the whole thing. There's a weird pause where the wife asks the maid if she can prepare an extra room for John. So there is tension in their marriage. We learn through flashback that he had been drunk-driving and flipped their car killing their four year old son and blinding their daughter. BUT the real reason that she is not into him anymore is that he has been caught cheating with some other chick in the past as well. And even though he wants to get back with her, she's not having it.
Pretty soon after moving into the castle, they begin to hear weird crying and moaning coming from the basement. Upon investigation, they never really pinpoint where its coming from.

The cat is still loose in the house and the blind girl goes running after it one day and almost reaches the freak's cage. Her dad calls her back upstairs, and when she leaves the kitty starts to follow, but is quickly snatched up by the freak. When they're eating dinner they hear something and you see the bloody kitty corpse slam against the wall. Then the Freak wants out so he rips his own fucking thumb off just so he can get the shackles off his arm. Then he starts cavorting around the castle as he pleases wrapping a sheet from a chair around himself because he sees himself in the mirror for the first time ever and realizes he's hideous. He then smashes the mirror. The police comes because the family thinks something fishy is going on, but the cops can't be bothered to check it out. So after further advances on his wife don't work and she tells him she wishes it was him who died instead of the kid, he contemplates suicide at the top of the tower, but decides to get drunk for the first time in a long time instead. GOOD PLAN. He ends up taking this whore home and bangs her but is disgusted with himself and throws money at her telling her to get out. She is splitting up the backstairs when the freak grabs her and chains her up, feeds her wine, shows her that he doesn't have a weiner, and then viciously kills her and the maid. We see the setup coming, their gonna pin it on the reanimator.

So apparently the cop has a kid with the whore so he's super pissed when she comes up missing. John tries to get his lawyer to get him out of the shit, but then the lawyer tries to blackmail him. Then they search the castle and find the whore and maid (who was the lawyer's sister) and they immediately blame John. They won't allow the wife or the daughter to leave. I don't want to spoil the ending, because even though I saw the setup coming, I wasn't entirely sure what the outcome of the movie was going to be. I will say that the Castle Freak seems to me to be a victim of circumstance. He couldn't help who he was. He even takes his scarf off when he realizes that the daughter is blind. She can't see him and he likes that because maybe he thinks that the reason he was treated that way all these years was because of his appearance. She can't see that, so maybe she won't treat him that way. I don't know. I'm pretty sure that's what you're supposed to get from it, but it goes so fast and is so focused on gore, that you may not actually grab that in a portion of a horror movie like you would if you read it in an eloquently stated book (or movie review). Should you see it. If you're lucky, its still up for free on Youtube.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012