Review of Castle Freak (1996) by Mike R — 13 Jul 2009

Probably the best director that Charles Band has ever had work on films for Full Moon Entertainment is cult filmmaker Stuart Gordon. And Gordon always seemed to really be in his element whenever adapting an H.P. Lovecraft story into a film. Compared to other Lovecraft stories that Gordon has brought to life, Castle Freak is the simplest. It doesn't deal with other dimensions, creatures from beyond or bringing dead things back to life. But it is leaps and bounds better than all his other Lovecraft adaptations.

Castle Freak has a great setting, which if you can't tell by the title is a castle. Castles are freaky as is, and the castle that the family of this film inherits ranks as being among the freakiest. Why is it that no good ever comes from inheriting a castle? I guess I shouldn't be complaining, since Castle Freak more than perfectly uses its setting and creates one of the best, if not the best, films that Full Moon has ever released.

The movie opens up with an elderly woman cutting a few slices of bread and some sort of meat, and bringing it down into a dungeon and proceeding to whip a man chained up inside one of the cells. If Gordon wanted to make it apparent that this movie was going to be freaky, then this creepy intro was more than enough to set up that feeling.

The freak of the film more than fits his description. Most of the time he is lurking in the castle, he is covered in a tattered sheet and the remnants of the chain that use to bind him in the dungeon below. I'm not sure if this was so, but I liked how both the sheet and the chain looked like nods to the cliches of most ghosts that haunt castles and old houses. His face and body are horrific looking, but there was a great amount of special effects and makeup done on making him look as well as he does.

I also liked that the freak is a much more complex character than one would expect. He is the monster of the film, but I couldn't help but sympathize with him the further the movie went along. That was another great surprise, the level of back story and character development that went into a creature that could have easily become just a mindless monster for this family to deal with.

It was nice to see Jeffrey Combs, who is a regular in a lot of Stuart Gordon's films, starring in Castle Freak. I felt he did a decent job as John Reilly, the man who has inherited the castle the film takes place in. Barbara Crampton was fine as well as John's wife Susan, and I really liked Jessica Dollarhide as their daughter Rebecca, who becomes a sort of target for the freak. She was impressive with the way she convincingly played a blind girl throughout the film.

There is a graphic scene in Castle Freak where a prostitute is captured by the freak, and subjected to a horrifying fate. A reoccurring thing I've noticed with Stuart Gordon horror films is the female nudity they contain. But the strange thing about these scenes, is that they are usually accompanied with some of the most horrific acts or situations imaginable, thus making them as un-sexy as possible.

I really liked Castle Freak, and see it as being the strongest effort that has ever come out of Full Moon Entertainment. It has a few flaws here and there, but the end result is still impressive. With its eerie setting, well-rounded monster, great soundtrack and fantastic pacing, Castle Freak is more than what you would expect from a film like this.