Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks (originally Terror! Il castello delle donne maledette) is a 1974 Italian horror film directed by Dick Randall that is loosely based on the Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein.
The film is also known as Dr. Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks (American video title), Frankenstein’s Castle (British video title),Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks (American dubbed version), Monsters of Frankenstein, Terror, Terror Castle, The House of Freaks and The Monsters of Dr. Frankenstein
In a non-specified time in an undisclosed European country, Neanderthals roam the countryside, upsetting the local villagers. Seeing an opportunity to rid themselves of their tormentors, they corner one of the brutes (Goliath, Loren Ewing from Devil in the Flesh), some evading the tree trunks and rocks he hurls, to bash him over the head and kill him. Leaving his corpse, this is soon collected by some shadowy individuals and taken to the castle laboratory of Count Frankenstein (Rossano Brazzi, slumming it somewhat post-The Barefoot Contessa and The Italian Job) so that he can continue to conduct his unholy experiments. The Count is most disappointed that the other (female) cadaver collected up has been tampered with by his necrophiliac dwarf assistant, Genz (Michael Dunn, The Mutations, Werewolf of Washington)
The locals are becoming alarmed – they’re suspicious as to what is going on at the castle and also a tad unhappy that the graves of their loved ones are being robbed. Not for the first time in the film, they are told to go away and stop being silly by the hopelessly inept head of police, played by that familiar face, Edmund Purdom, Pieces, Absurd, The Fifth Cord – in fairness it’s a very sparse mob with a touch of the Monty Pythons about it. Elsewhere, Genz has befriended the other marauding caveman, Ook (the brilliant character actor Salvatore Baccaro, aka Sal Boris but here under the worst pseudonym ever, Boris Lugosi) and…if you’ve made it this far, it probably doesn’t matter. Some female nudity, comedy caveman grunting, some pervy dwarf action and some endless experiments with the world’s smallest lab set-up, the ending can’t come quickly enough – indeed, rather like the opening scene, when it does come it seems out of place.
Directed by Dick Randall (here as Robert H. Oliver), best known as a producer of low-budget schlock and horror (Pieces, For Y’ur Height Only, The Mad Butcher), the film was made in Italy and features many bit-art actors from genre of the time – are more correctly, slightly before the time, many of them clearly having fallen on bad times – also along for the ride are the likes of German stunner Christiane Rücker (Torture Chamber of Dr.Sadism), buff strongman Gordon Mitchell (Satyricon, Frankenstein ’80), Xiro Papas (The Beast in Heat) and Luciano Pigozzi (Blood and Black Lace, Baron Blood, All the Colors of the Dark).
The real wonder of Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks is that it conspires against the odds so wilfully to become one of the most painful horror films to watch. As the script is at pains to clarify, the story is broadly speaking that of Frankenstein and so one might assume the hard work has been done…but no, endless, pointless twists, cut-aways, a breathtakingly slow operation (Frankenstein spends longer shaving Goliath’s head than Colin Clive did making two monsters come alive) and some mild hanky panky spiced up with the inclusion of a dwarf and a caveman who communicates through grunts, only serve to make this a harrowing mess. Worse still, bad enough that the likes of Brazzi are disgracing themselves but that the film is so bad that even Dunn and Baccaro (also seen in Beast in Heat and briefly in Deep Red), usually arresting and air-punchingly fun in their performances are unable to save this is alarming. The squelchy, grimy score is by Marcello Gigante, better known, and suited, for his work on Italian Westerns. The settings are meagre and rather harbour the feeling that if the camera moved slightly to the left they’d get a decent shot of the car park; as it goes, the gothic flavour is one of the few nearly-ticks.
Picked up by Harry Novak’s Boxoffice International Pictures and unleashed in cinemas during 1974, the film has not improved with age and is so ponderous it’s difficult to even reappraise it as kitsch. The film found its way onto the home market initially through the likes of Magnum Video and later seen alongside Randall’s far more accomplished production, The Mad Butcher, through masters of lo-fi Something Weird.
Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia
