SPOILERS INCLUDED Nineteenth century Italy is beset by attacks from Neanderthal men living in a cave (complete with furs and clubs) when the villagers manage to overpower one of them. Count Frankenstein (Rossano Brazzi) uses its body for experiments creating a monster called Goliath complete with Hong Kong Phooey hair. Grave robbing is specialised in by Frankenstein's `freaks' a randy hunchback, a misfit butler and Genz the evil dwarf. Billed in the credits as `Frankenstein's Monsters' they're played by Italian movie heavies Alan Collins, 60's muscle-man Gordon Mitchell and Xiro Papas. Genz is played by 3'11' dwarf actor Michael Dunn who spent the Seventies in the British The Mutations, the French Too Small My Friend and this, both he and Papas died soon after. When Genz's touchy feely mischief brings the attention of the local fuzz as represented by Edmund Purdom, he's thrown out of Frankenstein's castle. Vowing `I'll get my revenge on Doctor Frankenstein', Genz befriends the local Neanderthal, Ook (The Beast in Heat's Salvatore Baccaro, who with glued on hair is a dead ringer for Aphrodite's Child era Demis Roussos) and plans his revenge. Meanwhile Frankenstein's daughter Maria, her boyfriend, and her best friend Krista come to stay. 1963's Mondo Cane revealed Brazzi couldn't walk around New York without sex crazed housewives tearing off his clothes, a decade later, back on home soil its the women who can't keep their clothes on. Sure enough Krista soon falls for Brazzi's Latin charm, taking a nude bath with Krista in Ook's cave, Maria titters `when you arrived he became like a little boy'. Krista later returns to drop 'em again but a grunting Ook drags her off. Genz releases Goliath who kills off most of the `Freaks' but the carnage continues when Genz brings Goliath back to the cave and Ook and Goliath fight to the death over Krista. Surprisingly the film offers Genz no comeuppance, you expect a climactic game of dwarf throwing between Goliath and Ook, but no, the film ends with Genz seemingly smothered in Christiane Royce's bosom. The final word is left to Edmund Purdom as only Purdom can deliver it `there is a bit of a monster in all of us, especially when there is fear'. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (`Il Castello della Paura') was impresario Dick Randall's extension of the scenarios he had penned for 1971's Lady Frankenstein which included raging hormone scenes between its monster and Rosalba Neri plus a nude woman thrown into a lake instead of a little girl. A big hit in Italy and the States (sans its more deviant moments) Lady Frankenstein would appear to be the blueprint for many imitators within the Italian film industry. Never one to be outdone Randall seems to have conceived Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks as the sexy Frankenstein movie to end all sexy Frankenstein movies- this one just had to have it all and then some. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks is pivoted somewhere between the childish and the perverse, its very much monster movie nostalgia incarnated as 70's kitsch, everyone seems to have names like Igor, or ludicrously fake humps and what can you say of a film that identifies one of its actors as `Boris Lugosi'. Theres a dirty paperback edge as well though, along way from South Pacific in his 70's era Brazzi was often astounded in Jet Set era actresses lack of inhibition to undress infront of the cameras for `fun' scenes. Such `fun' scenes are endlessly on offer in Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks, the camera never tires of purring over its voluptuous leads like a lovers gaze. Its not all loving however, and Genz and Ook are soon taking village girl's back to the cave to be stripped and ravaged by Genz `ook, ook' barks his Neanderthal pal. The token pseudonymous nature of the credits has always made any true auteurship of Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks hard to determine, but Dick Randall's handprints are all over it, the films crossbreeding of Italian Gothic and American exploitation could only have come from someone with wheeler dealings in both- theres even a Shangri-La early nudie-cutieness to the naked bathing sequences with Royce and Blondell. Faults exist, but generally Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks fulfils its promise as a successful marriage of shameless titillation and vintage trash cinema, played out by a motley ensemble of marquee value former matinee idols, familiar faces and top heavy actresses. Even today with prior knowledge of the eccentric standards set by Seventies European horror films, Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks still stands as admirably outlandish viewing. For a true understanding of mid-period Randall Eurosleaze, the 1972 production Bogeyman and the French Murders/ Paris Sex Murders is also required viewing for the same reasons.
Review of Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks
