Castle Freak



An old woman prepares a sparse meal of moldy bread and meat, goes down into a dungeon, opens a cell, and whips the chained prisoner inside, before throwing the food at them. Then she locks the cell, goes upstairs to her lavish bedroom and promptly croaks.

Some time later John, his estranged wife Susan, and their daughter Rebecca, are informed that John is the only living relative of the late Duchess D’Orsino, and John has just inherited her estate. There isn’t any money to be had, but the attorney who found him informs John that a 100+ room castle and all the furnishings within are part of the inheritance. John doesn’t plan to keep the property, but he and his family travel to Italy to inspect the castle, so they can take inventory before liquidating the estate. The issue? Apparently after the Duchess’ death, no one bothered to go through the house, because that shadowy figure is still locked down in the basement, he’s just figured out a way to free himself from his iron bonds, and he’s none too happy about nearly being starved to death….


To be fair though, I wouldn’t be either.

So, not too long ago I watched one of those little list-based documentaries (if you can call those documentaries…). You’ve probably seen them. They’re always titled something like “The 50/100 Best…” something something. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, this particular one was called “The 50 Best Horror Movies You’ve Never Seen.” Being the big horror junkie that I am, I thought, “Well, that’s a bold claim.” But I’m always happy to learn about new movies I should watch, so I gave it a try. And indeed, after watching it, I had seen most of the films on the list. In fact, I’ve written about a lot of them on this very blog. Or if I hadn’t seen them, I had at least heard of them, and they were on my list of movies to get to…you know…eventually (I’m sorry you’re not a priority, Exorcist III). But! There were also a couple that I indeed hadn’t heard of before. So I figured that would be a good theme to start the month with: watching all the freebee movies on that list that I hadn’t heard about, or gotten to (yet).

Thus, we have Castle Freak. This was one of the movies I actually had at least heard about before, because it was directed by Stuart Gordon, and I tend to like his films, and it stars Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. So you’ve kinda got a mini Re-Animator reunion going on here, which actually bodes quite well. At the very least you know these are people that work well together. But the reason I hadn’t gotten to it yet was because the film also happens to be another Full Moon picture, which I am ever so slightly sick of watching at this point, and worse, it’s mid-90s Full Moon, a time when the production quality at the company had really started to take a giant nosedive into Crap Town. So, suffice it to say, I was really hesitant about watching this one. But, I needn’t have been, because the film actually turned out to be pretty good. Which is heartening, because compared to the two decades that came before it, the 90s really isn’t an era known for its stellar horror output.



While not necessarily based on any of his works, the film is highly influenced by the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, including the short story “The Outsider,” which revolves around a man escaping his dungeon for the first time and watching everyone he meets flee in terror from him until he sees his own mangled reflection in the mirror. But beyond that that’s where the specific Lovecraft story comparison ends. Yeah, the mood and heavy gothic imagery may also be heavily influenced by his writings, but instead of worrying about ‘The Dark Ones’, this movie feels more like a slasher with heavy mystery elements. Except instead of a bunch of sex-crazed teens blindly running around in the woods being chased by some unusually strong freak, you have a small family blindly running around a well furnished, dank castle being chased by an unusually strong freak. It’s subtle, but the addition of the creepy atmosphere makes a big difference. And the use of the more serious adult themes makes the movie feel more…well, adult. It’s a nice touch.


Also, it’s a well known fact that adding gothic imagery immediately classes up even the cheesiest of horror tales. So that’s always nice.

Movies released in the 90s that didn’t make it to theaters often get a bad wrap, but though the film may have ended up going directly to video, that is in no way a predictor of some level of terrible acting. Crampton and Combs remain consistently good in their roles, even when their parts take on a more emotional turn than they’re probably used to having to care about in these low-budget outings, though I think Combs does veer a little too close to the melodrama line in a couple of scenes. All in all though, the acting is great. Even Jessica Dollarhide, in what I believe to be her only film role, did an excellent job. Though I did feel a little bad for her on occasion. Her character is blind and is constantly being pulled around towards the end of the film when everyone is running for their lives, and I’m fairly confident she wasn’t fully “acting” when she got dragged into most of those furniture pieces. I do not envy her the bruises I’m sure she suffered after filming those scenes.



Even the gore in this movie was better than I was expecting. To put it simply, this film is often downright brutal. It starts off right at the beginning when a woman literally whips a man in the first couple minutes, and then it just slowly gets worse from there, where it culminates in a particularly savage scene in the last quarter of the film. An impressive amount of things are gouged, bitten, stabbed and ripped off, in an stunning display of believable blood and viscera, especially for a movie with such a small budget. What’s here may not be as prevalent or extravagant as it was in earlier works like Re-Animator, but at least with Gordon at the helm you know he’s someone who knows where to stretch a dollar in all the right ways.



But while I ended up really liking it and think it’s very good, the film is not perfect. While the story and the pacing are tight, there are a couple of glaringly annoying issues with the plot. Like, how is it that nobody went through the entire house after the Duchess died? Shouldn’t someone have at least done a cursory inspection? I mean, I know the answer to that is “because if they did, then there wouldn’t be a movie,” but, come on. The place was a local mystery for 40 years. You’re telling me no one wandered through it, even just out of curiosity? Hell, where the heck did they put that chick’s body? The family crypt was down there right next to the guy’s cell! And you’re telling me no one noticed him moaning one room over? Please. I ain’t buying that.



Then piggybacking off that, if it took as long as the film suggests to both discover the Duchesses’ body, and to find John and his family and get over to Italy, AND you’ve established that no one else knew about the castle freak in the castle basement, HOW IN THE HELL IS THAT GUY STILL ALIVE? It probably took weeks to get all that shit straightened out, so even assuming he had a sufficient water source, shouldn’t Castle Freak be, I don’t know, dead at this point? Or at the very least severely weakened? Yet he somehow manages to find the strength to stand, escape, and stealthily hide and murder people, after 40-some-odd years of torture, at that exact moment? How freaking convenient. Dude could have ripped his damn thumb off a lot sooner than that and saved himself, and everyone else, a lot of trouble.

And that’s not even getting into the smaller issues, like no one believing the poor blind girl when she tells her parents that there was someone in her room at night…despite the entire damn comforter mysteriously going missing from her bed. Like, seriously, my guys, you were across the hall when this happened and our Freak friend has a pronounced limp, 1) how did you miss a ghost noisily hobbling by your door, and 2) Even if you did miss the shambling ghost, what TF do you think happened to the bedspread? You think the damn thing grew feet and walked off? Gods, sometimes people in these movies annoy me.


Freedom!

But I think all the annoying characters in this movie must be intentional, because beyond the poor blinded teenager who was permanently disfigured by her father, no one in this movie could be considered likable. John is a drunkard whose life is in shambles because he continues to make horrendously bad choices. His wife seems to only be staying with him to rub his failures in his face because after causing the death of their son she feels he hasn’t yet suffered enough. The lawyer and his family are crooks, the police are incompetent and/or corrupt, and the Duchess started this whole mess in the first place because she was an angry, bitter bitch. Shockingly enough, the only other character that comes close to getting anyone’s sympathy is the Castle Freak, because despite his horrible crimes you learn that he was mutilated and tortured for much of his life, meaning he was basically raised on nothing but a steady stream of violence, so that’s probably why he reacts so violently to everything around him. That’s literally all he knows. It’s kinda a sad state of affairs when the murderous cannibal ends up being the second most sympathetic character in your entire story.



So, though it ‘s not perfect and it had several plot-related issues that made me roll my eyes, Castle Freak ended up being much better than anticipated. The acting is great, even from the side characters. The effects are bloody and gruesome, and the dreary, creepy atmosphere is *chef’s kiss*. It does take a little bit for the movie to really hit its stride, but once it does it’s a highly entertaining horror mystery with a lot of skill and a lot of heart behind it. It’s a shame the film went Direct-to-Video and received no efforts to market it. This little horror gem really deserved better.

Castle Freak is available on a variety of streaming services.

Castle Freak is also available on DVD and Bluray.

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