Castle Freak (Gordon, 1995)IMDB LinkMany years ago, when I was a teenager, I used to rent movies. Whenever people talk about the “good old days”, I think about renting videos, and how much it sucked. Now, if I want to want a movie, I just go to the internet and just download it! There is almost everything! Back then, I didn’t go in asking for movies, but I’d take the big movie album, and browse through them to see what seemed like a good choice. I didn’t even have IMDB.com to read more about movies to give a better idea on what to rent.
No, most of the time, I’d choose my movies based on the poster. And “Castle Freak” based on its cover, was the sort of the movie, I’d never rent. I did point it out to my friend a couple of times laughing and saying how bad it looked. The poster was a close-up of an ugly looking monster looking right at us and the movie called “CASTLE FREAK”. And I was like, oooh, is this suppose to be scary? Castle freak?
But now, in the wonderful year of 2007, I do not judge movies by their covers anymore (I do judge people by their skin colors though, that’ll still take a few more years). So I don’t laugh at the name or poster of “Castle Freak”, because I know it was directed by Stuart Gordon and stars Jeffery Combs, and that’s two reasons for me to watch it. Stuart Gordon is, in my opinion, a very underrated horror director, and the ones I have enjoyed were, “Re-Animator”, “From Beyond”, “Dagon”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, two classic episodes of “Master of Horror”, and two great non-horrors, “Edmond” and “King of Ants”. We can now add “Castle Freak” to that list.
That’s not to say that “Castle Freak” should be your introduction to Stuart Gordon. But like a lesser album from a favorite band, fans will still appreciate it. Jeffrey Combs inherits a castle, so he decides to go there with his wife and teenage daughter. A quick back story shows us that Combs was drunk-driving with his children and crashed. His small son died and his daughter was blinded. Now his wife hates him, and even though he has quit drinking for the past nine months, the wife still considers him a murderer. At the same time, the castle houses a freak. And the reason he is a freak, is because his mother has imprisoned him in a cell for forty years, and whips him every day. That’ll fuck anyone up.
And while the premise of the movie is not that original and the budget is small, I still find Gordon’s touch unique. He handles his character with care, so even though you have prostitutes having their tits chewed off, you still are interested in the family’s conflict. And Combs is one of those actors who I do not think deserve to be a B actor. He does a lot with what he has, but usually, it is only Stuart Gordon who gives him a chance. Poor Jeffrey Combs, end with sad smiley face.
3/5
