#12: Castle Freak (Stuart Gordon, 1995)

Director Stuart Gordon, stuck with a much lower budget than he desired and a shitty distribution deal that sent "Castle Freak" straight to video, had to take plenty of consolation in the fact that his film's producer owned a castle. Seriously, a guy who produces straight-to-video schlock owns an enormous castle in Italy, and this movie was shot there. God, how did I end up with my life? You never hear anybody say, "He paid for that castle with proofreading money." (Full disclosure: I've never heard anybody say anything about buying a castle, pro or con.) So, what this movie lacks in funds, it makes up for in atmosphere--castle atmosphere.
"Castle Freak," loosely based on an H.P. Lovecraft short story, is about a man-beast held captive in a castle's dungeon by an elderly woman, for reasons we discover near the film's end. She regularly beats him and lets her cat lick his food and has apparently removed his tongue and penis. The old lady croaks, and her American nephew, as the next-of-kin, inherits the castle. Little does he know he has also inherited the Castle Freak! The nephew has a sordid little past of his own. A recovering alcoholic, he smashed his car into a tree a few years previously while drunk, killing his young son and blinding his teenage daughter. His wife hasn't forgiven him, and he's dangerously close to a relapse. Complicating these matters, the castle freak escapes and terrorizes the family.














As you may have guessed by my plot synopsis, there's not a lot of humor in the film, which is unusual for Stuart Gordon. The two other Gordon films I've seen, "Re-Animator" and "From Beyond," nicely combine comedy, gore, and Lovecraft, but "Castle Freak" plays it straight, mixing classic horror themes and dysfunctional family drama. It works pretty well, and "Re-Animator" veterans Jeffrey Combs, as the nephew, and Barbara Crampton, as his wife, are surprisingly strong dramatic actors. Still, the melodrama is a lot more cliched than Gordon's inventive sense of humor, and I missed the jokes.
Another caveat is an unnecessary violent rape scene. I'm hardly a prude, but I'm not a big fan of violent sexual imagery, particularly in horror films, and this particular scene made me feel dirty and uncomfortable, and not the good kind of dirty and uncomfortable.
Now that I've scared you away from the film, let me tell you what I like about it. First of all, the castle freak himself is a great movie monster. Jonathan Fuller plays him with an intense physicality, combining the man-child qualities of Frankenstein's monster with a wounded, predatory wild animal. He's genuinely scary. The castle's lived-in authenticity keeps the film from looking cheap. The plot isn't belabored like it would have been if filmed Hollywood-style. Jeffrey Combs does a good job playing a drunk.

















I'm pretty easy on horror movies, but, despite some problems with "Castle Freak," I think it's a good one.







He's a castle freak
Castle freak
He's castle freaky
Yow!

#11: Brain Damage (Frank Henenlotter, 1988)

I have a soft spot in my head for schlock filmmaker Frank Henenlotter, writer/director of "Frankenhooker" and the "Basket Case" trilogy, but I'd never seen "Brain Damage" before. This was a terrible oversight. It's his best film. One of the last, and best, psychotropic drug films, "Brain Damage" is about an average guy, Brian, who lives in a modest apartment in New York City with his brother. He has a regular job and a nice girlfriend, Barbara. One night, feeling a little sick, he passes on going to a concert with Barbara and tries to sleep off his illness. He wakes up with blood all over the sheets and the back of his neck. He goes to the bathroom to try to figure out what's happening to him, and finds a small creature who resembles a hunk of brain with teeth and a long, thin tongue in his bathtub. The creature, escaping from its current keepers and winding up in Brian's place, has basically tongued a hole in the back of Brian's neck where it periodically injects a mysterious blue liquid into Brian's brain. This liquid supplies pleasant psychedelic hallucinations, but with the addictive aspects of heroin. Brian loves the high and is soon convinced by the creature, Aylmer or "Elmer" as Brian calls him, to hit the streets and have a little fun. Aylmer needs to eat brains, but he also needs to spend most of his day soaking in water to survive, so he finds some chump to keep high and help him do his brain-eating and water-soaking. The symbiotic relationship escalates, and Brian is soon freaking out his brother and girlfriend and some unfortunate New Yorkers. Aylmer is voiced by none other than TV horror host and fucking lunatic the "Cool Ghoul," an unbilled Zacherle. I love that guy.












"Brain Damage" is a tight, lean, economical, short, and inventive film. Even the strongest exploitation films tend to have pacing problems, but "Brain Damage" clips along without ever dragging. Henenlotter does a lot with his limited budget, the hallucinations are intentionally funny, the gore is disgustingly satisfying, the acting is strong, the visual palette of deep blues and reds is striking, a couple cast members of "Basket Case" have funny cameos, and a scene on the subway and the film's final scene are inspired lunacy. I like this movie. It's fun and weird, and I need weird fun in my life.


Zacherle, the "Cool Ghoul":




















Dan Quayle should have consulted with Henenlotter before trashing Murphy Brown. Despite his films' blood, nudity, and profanity, Henenlotter is a family values man to the core. The "Basket Case" films are pro-family and urge brothers to stick together and look out for each other, even if one of them is a telepathic bloodsucking deformed mutant dwarf; "Frankenhooker" warns against playing God and promotes the old adage "you can't buy love," or more accurately, assemble it from the body parts of dead prostitutes; and "Brain Damage" is a cautionary, albeit metaphoric, tale about the dangers of drug abuse and addiction. Obama/Henenlotter 2008!