Badmovies.org Forum

Andrew spoke quite kindly of this film some time ago, when I was speaking od how good Dagon had seemed to me, specially coming from somebody like Stuart Gordon, who I always taken, until then, by a lousy filmmaker, since I feel very litle appreciation for his earlier works, including Re-animator and From Beyond.

Just having seen Castle Freak, and also taken into account his non-genre film King of the ants, I have to say that i was wrong. Gordon may have been heavy-handed and careless in other ocasions, but these two movies -three if you include Dagon- show that he's somehow matured into a very different filmmaker as the years passed.

Castle Freak is a mid-nineties Full Moon productions, and as many of Gordon's genre films, it is loosely based on a Lovecraft tale. If I remember correctly, the tale was one of his earlier ones, and presented the story -told by himself- of a young man that had spended most of his life separated from other human beings, and when he finally tried to contact them realised too late that he was amonster, and that was the reason he had been kept aside for long years. It is a haunting short tale, probably written with Poe in mind.

Here Gordon and coleague Dennis Paoli have changed the focus of the story and the main characters are a marriage in crisis who unexpectedly inherit an Italian castle. Problem is, the castle comes with a unwelcomed guest, a deformed creature that stalks and tries to kill them.

And it is a great film. It is filmed on location, on a real Italian castle. The script is tight and expertly paced, if a bit too laconic in character development, but both Gordon and the main actors - Jeffrey Combs and Barbara crampton - deliver it with extraordinary ability and seriousness. Gone is the tongue-in-cheek tone and the heavy-handed narration that plagues some of Gordon's worst films. Instead, everybody seems to be trying hard for a contemporary gothic. And it works fantasticaly. Even the ocasional gore is played more for serious horror -as it would be later on dagon and King of the ants- than for gratuitous shock.

A very pleasant surprise, and a must for horror fans out there.

Very good film, it has an actual plot and subplot (relationship between husband Coombs and wife Crampton) to it.

I liked it too though I won't heap the praise on it that Neville did (I prefer DAGON to this one).  The setting was awesome, the acting is very good with Barbara and Jeff as good as they've ever been.  The plot could have been better IMO as it degenerated rather quickly into harum scarum monster movie just as things were starting to get interesting.

Note to hookers: don't try to seduce monsters when you get trapped with one.

Gerry wrote: "I prefer DAGON to this one"

And so do I. It is only that I though that that one was just a lucky shot, hence my enthusiasm in seing I was wrong.