According to Gordon’s biography, when it comes to adapting the ghastly works of legend H.P. Lovecraft, he is an authoritative person. There has never been a director who has translated Lovecraftian lore with the speed and regularity that Gordon has.
In a loose adaptation of Lovecraft’s The Outsider, Jeffrey Combs, and Barbara Crampton have paired again and put through hell. Jeffrey Combs is to Stuart Gordon what Bruce Campbell is to Sam Raimi. Nonetheless, seeing their collaborations generate such fruit is satisfying. In this filthy little film, the actor-director pairing is about the only thing that feels right.
In a sleazy sort of way, From Beyond and Re-Animator were entertaining, but Castle Freak is even more terrifying. Gordon, unlike Lovecraft, has no patience for things that are seething beneath the surface. From John Rielly’s yearning to reconcile with his wife to the monster’s sexual arousal, sexual desire drives Castle Freak.
Hideous… hungry… and loose! – Castle Freak (1995)
John Reilly, his wife Susan, and their blind teenage daughter Rebecca visit Italy after inheriting a 12th-century castle that once belonged to a famous duchess. Susan believes John is responsible for their 5-year-old son’s death in a drunk driving accident which also cost their daughter her sight.
The three intend to remain in the castle until the estate can be liquidated on the advice of the executor. Unknown to them, the Duchess’s son, Giorgio Orsino, who was kept in the dungeons of the castle as a punishment for her husband’s abandonment, still lives there.
In order to escape from his manacles, the disfigured beast breaks off his own thumb after killing and eating a cat. He prowls around the bedroom of the terrified Rebecca, who can hear, but not see him as he wanders the castle.
John believes her when she says there’s someone else in the house, but Susan does not. As he struggles with guilt over the death of his son, John turns to drinking alcohol and hiring a prostitute from a nearby town who does not speak English, angering Susan further for cheating. In the process of leaving the castle, the prostitute is attacked by Giorgio, who brutally mutilates her. The maid finds the still-living prostitute before she herself is murdered. Despite her plans to leave with Rebecca, Susan is forced to remain with her daughter while police investigate the missing prostitute.
The Duchess was actually John’s father’s first wife, and Giorgio is actually his half-brother. Due to her husband’s abandonment of the Duchess and their son for John’s mother, the Duchess chained Giorgio and tortured him all of his life. When the police discover the bodies of the prostitute and maid, they arrest him. Rebecca and Susan stay the night in the castle, praying together for John’s forgiveness.
After killing two policemen, Giorgio abducts Rebecca and chains her up in his cell. Susan rescues Rebecca and stabs Giorgio, making him angry. After a fight with a police officer, John escapes the police station determined to save his family.
As a result, he fights Giorgio on the castle roof and sacrifices his own life in order to pull him from the roof and kill both of them. As John dies, Susan forgave him, and they reaffirmed their love. At John’s funeral, the son of the prostitute is pictured with his father, the policeman.
This film is as gory and gruesome as you can get for a movie released in 1995. At its peak, the plot utilized real brain matter. A 1994 theatrical release date for the movie was bumped to November 1995 due to the film’s graphic carnage.
There’s no doubt that Castle Freak isn’t your typical Full Moon feature. You will not find any puppets, animatronics, or even dwarves here. The film seems to be a serious attempt to make a proper horror film. Gordon is more than capable of delivering. Although he takes some liberties with Lovecraft’s original story, he keeps the overall vibe of the author’s work and melds it with his own sensibilities.
Castle Freak is a real gem. The movie is scary, disturbing, and gruesome. Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton perform it superbly. It features exceptional cinematography, location, gore, and special effects. In terms of creature design, it’s horrifying. Of course, Stuart Gordon’s direction is excellent.
The plot with Rielly’s blind daughter is somewhat obvious, but fortunately, it doesn’t take the same distasteful turn as it did with the prostitute. While the work isn’t as impressive as Re-Animator and From Beyond, it is no less effective. Though it has flaws, it is one of the best Lovecraft adaptations ever made.
The band filmed in Italy at his own castle, which he used regularly as a cost-effective location. Meridian, the sophomore film from Full Moon, was the first to shoot there, followed by Pit and the Pendulum, but Castle Freak makes the most of the location. Being in that huge and empty ancient castle really shows what a purgatory the leads have created for themselves. These characters are so defined by pain and tragedy, and the castle looks like a haunted house that it feels like they are the ones haunting it.
There are also several scenes in Castle Freak that could be taken from any haunted house movie that set a creepy mood. An example might be the scene in which John hears Giorgio wailing at night and investigates, encountering an elderly servant who tells a story about family intrigue and haunting.
Casting is, undoubtedly, one of the absolute highlights of Castle Freak. Combs and Crampton are back in the spotlight as a married couple who couldn’t possibly have drifted further apart. They had both shown that they were adept at walking the line between horror and comedy in their previous projects with Gordon, and Castle Freak casts all of that aside to allow them to deliver very raw performances. Gordon uses the same actors in incredibly different roles in this movie which feels like he has created his own makeshift theater company.
Freakish Monster From Castle Freak
At the end of the day, Giorgio isn’t a straightforward villain. He seems to act mainly as a reaction to how people treat him or in imitation of what he sees from afar. He seems to have never been in the sun because he is emaciated and disfigured. A truly harrowing figure, through no fault of his own. John is naturally terrified when he sees Giorgio for the first time. Giorgio is also naturally terrified and angry. He has only been able to understand the world through the lens of violence. Although he craves connection, he doesn’t know how to achieve it.
He has been locked up since he was 5. He has been whipped daily and forced to eat scraps for forty years. He has lived in a cell, locked up, and starved. At this point, he is a wild animal, horribly mutilated, and unable to speak. In the film, some childlike qualities are infused into his character, which adds depth while raising questions.
John chasing Giorgio through the house, for instance. In a room full of sheeted furniture, Giorgio hides under a sheet and poses as a chair. The problem with Giorgio is that he obviously still has a five-year-old mind since he has been locked up since he was five. The childish impulse could be buried in his subconscious, but how resourceful could he be then?
These conflicts can also be seen in the famous prostitute scene. John’s actions in the wine cellar prompted Giorgio to capture the hooker, bring her to his cell, and mutilate her by emulating John’s actions. It is known that children copy the behavior of older people, but where does Giorgio’s sex drive come from? Consider the concept of a five-year-old’s mind.
To make things worse, Giorgio has been castrated, so he has no real reason to paw at the other women in the cast. Giorgio’s treatment of dragging them to his cell and chaining them up is understandable since that’s all he has ever known. When Giorgio pursues Susan and Rebecca, the only action he takes that is totally inexplicable is the leap he takes out of the window into the courtyard. It’s a mystery how he doesn’t break both of his legs, considering his legs aren’t very strong, to begin with.
A mysterious feral side of disabled representation, Giorgio has been chained up in his disappointments room with the coffin used to fake his death. He isn’t mindless like Frankenstein’s Creature, but he is remarkably quick to adapt to his environment because he doesn’t know anything but violence. This is a classic example of an absurdly disabled monster.
Castle Freak (2020)
As a result of a tragic car accident, Rebecca is permanently blinded, but she receives some strange news: her long-lost mother has recently passed away, leaving her their ancestral castle in rural Albania. Rebecca, who travels to the estate with a group of friends, hopes it will provide an opportunity to reconnect with a past she never knew and a mother who seemingly abandoned her. A series of mysterious events lead to the deaths of Rebecca’s friends, and she must unravel the secrets of her family’s history before she falls victim to Castle Freak.
Tate Steinsiek’s Castle Freak is a truly unique film. In the previous film, John and his wife Susan travel to Italy after inheriting an Italian castle. His daughter Rebecca is blind. The unfaithful and drunk John has been accused of gruesome murders, but they were actually committed by a freak who lived in the castle’s basement.
In spite of the fact that the opening credits of the new Castle Freak proclaim that it is based on “the original story by Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli, and the original screenplay by Dennis Paoli,” Kathy Charles has stripped it down to its bare bones for something new and different.
It’s Rebecca who inherits a castle in this Castle Freak, this time in Albania. Her blindness was caused by an accident resulting from her reckless lifestyle with John. While John may appear to have a similar personality in this new film, Castle Freak instead explores “how our current culture views ‘the other,'” embracing some tangents from Lovecraft’s seedier lore. In terms of concept, Tate Steinsiek’s soft reboot is largely the same as Gordon’s.
It has a beautiful set – a castle interior, a chapel, lavish chambers, broken mirrors – and luscious cinematography that fits the plot of poor Rebecca’s tale. It was sometimes dreamlike, sometimes trippy, sometimes nightmarish.
As a cult classic title, the 1995 Castle Freak deserves to be seen by everyone who enjoys horror movies; it’s bloody, gruesome, and filled with everything that makes a great horror film. If you enjoyed watching the 1995 version, and want to see a different version with different but similar characters, then you should watch the 2020 remake. It might not be as violent, but it’s worth watching. In both versions, Castle Freak delivers what we want from it.