Last year’s 31 Days of Gore renewed my interest in Full Moon movies. This one stars B-movie icons Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, who also appeared together in The Re-Animator and From Beyond. I was barely a teenager the first time I saw Castle Freak and thought it was the weakest of Stuart Gordon’s Lovecraft trilogy. This time I realize it’s not so much worse, just different as it abandons the psycho-humor of those movies and becomes an effectively serious exploitation film.
Combs, Crampton, and their blind daughter inherit a castle. How did they inherit a castle? Doesn’t matter. What matters is there’s a mutilated freak living in a tiny dungeon beneath it. Near the end of the movie, Combs will have a House, M.D. moment in which he pieces together scant clues into the freak’s backstory. Until then, we never really know why the titular monster is living in the bowels of the 150-room castle, but the reveal is a doozy.
In the meantime we’ll learn the daughter wasn’t always blind and there used to be a son in the family. It turns out Combs is an alcoholic who was drinking and driving the kids around a rainy road one evening. The ensuing wreck killed his son and blinded his daughter. Needless to say, Combs’s accident put a strain on his marriage (ya think?). Desperately, he hopes moving into the castle will rekindle things, but Crampton’s character is rightly having none of it. Meanwhile, the castle freak lurks in the shadows, developing a crush on the blind girl.
Crampton said in a recent interview that she and Stuart Gordon found a new appreciation for the film the last time they screened it for an audience. I have, too. The creature effects are perfect from beginning to end while Combs and Crampton give great performances. Okay, so the cops are borderline dumb and the parents take a little too long to believe their daughter when she asserts they’re not alone in the gigantic castle. Other than that, this is a mature film with serious horror.
The Goug' Blog 