Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks

"Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks" is rancid 70's euro-exploitation at its absolute finest! Not a single line in the screenplay makes any sense, the females look hot & willing, the males are all sick perverts and the supposedly horrific make-up effects are so cheesy they cause you to laugh instead of to cringe. The residents at Count Frankenstein's castle are not only freaks, they're crazed sexual deviants! He has an army of lunatics surrounding him, all assisting in his macabre scientific research, and each of them is worthy of his/her own horror spin-off! There's the horny caveman lying on Frankenstein's operating table, the hunchback who has aggressive sex with the main butler's wife and – of course - the depraved midget Genz, who fondles dead girls' bodies and has peepholes all around the castle to stare at people having sex! Count Frankenstein is a bit of a sleaze-bag himself. When his gorgeous daughter returns home, he immediately falls in love with her sexy friend and even involves her in his demented experiments. Genz the dwarf gets banned from the castle, but he teams up with a roaming Neanderthaler in the woods and teaches him the 'art' of raping innocent women. Everything comes neatly together in the end, when the townspeople no longer tolerate the abnormalities going on at the castle and form an angry mob. As you can tell, there's a whole lot going on in this crazy flick, but it's unbelievably incoherent. This wacky production features none of the tense Gothic atmosphere of all the previous Frankenstein tales and I don't think director Robert Oliver ever intended to focus on suspense. This film is all about shlock, sleaze and the ravishing naked bodies of Simonetta Vitelli (as Frankenstein's daughter) and Christiane Rücker (as Frankenstein's mistress). The cameras follow them each time they take a bath or go swimming, preferably with Genz the sniveling dwarf spying on them. The horror-sequences are scarce, short and actually quite irrelevant. The photography and use of music are horrendous, but they acting performances are surprisingly tolerable. Rossano Brazzi doesn't seem to be very interested in playing the titular character, but the freaks and particularly the girls do a fine job. Utter trash, but vastly entertaining cult material.

Count Frankenstein (Rossano Brazzi, best known as the star of the screen version of SOUTH PACIFIC) is busy at work at his castle home, sending out his gravediggers to get corpses for his experiments, and tinkering around with a tied-up cave man named Goliath (check out that unibrow). The doc's beautiful daughter Maria (played by "Simone Blondell") shows up with her fiance Eric (Eric Mann) and friend Krista (Christiane Royce aka Rucker) whom the count takes a liking to. One of his assistants is the dwarf Genz (3'4" Michael Dunn), a real sick-o type who fondles dead bodies, spies on the women bathing and having sex, and is eventually kicked out on the castle. He teams up with Ook (Boris Lugosi aka Salvatore Baccaro), yet another cave-dwelling Neanderthal man outcast, and the two plot to get back at the doctor. In one scene the duo kidnap a girl from town, tie her up, rape and kill her. Genz tells Ook, "I'm going to teach you the pleasures of life!" Meanwhile, Goliath (Loren Ewing) escapes and starts killing and townspeople with torches show up for the finale.

Helen Keller must have been serving on the MPAA ratings board when they gave this nudity and sickness-filled effort a PG rating. All in all though, it's a pretty silly combo of tried and true exploitation elements from the period and nothing much surprising happens.

Score: 3 out of 10

Working under the pseudonym of Robert H. Oliver, prolific exploitation producer Dick Randall has a crack at directing with the wonderfully titled Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks; although Randall's inexperience in this particular discipline is evident from the film's poor pacing and frequently awkward visuals, the final result delivers such a hefty dose of cheesy Gothic nonsense and random silliness that it's hard not to enjoy just a little bit.

The daft plot throws in everything one might expect from the genre—a perverted, vengeful dwarf, a hunchbacked assistant, a mad scientist's lab, a thunder storm, buxom beauties, and villagers armed with pitchforks and flaming torches—and then goes one better by introducing Neanderthal cavemen into the mix!! Rather surprisingly, the film delivers very little in the way of gore, but Randall compensates somewhat for the lack of blood by providing exploitation fans with some sleaze instead, including frequent female nudity, voyeurism, rape, adultery, and even a spot of corpse fondling (courtesy of the deviant dwarf).

The daughter of Dr Frankentein : Simonetta Blondell pays a visit - along with her boyfriend and a friend : Christiane Rucker- to her father Doctor Frankenstein : Rossano Brazzi. While the mean Doctor is creating a monster named Goliath : Loren Ewing. Meantime , on the contryside inhabits a Neardenthal Man : Sal Boris or Salvatore Baccaro attacking villagers , the latter befriends a nasty midget : Michael Dunn, a helper who was dismissed by Count Frankenstein and is seeking vengeance. Later on , a police inspector, the prefect Edmund Purdom is investigating the kidnap of young girls and subsequent murders.

Disjointed Psychotronic B movie with chills, thrills, nudism and disconcerting events. It results to be a mixed bag in which various monsters in Universal style are unexplainingly jointed. There shows up a Neardenthal Man, a monster named Goliath created by doctor Frankenstein, a lascivious dwarf , the ordinary hunchback, among others. All of them are reunited with no much sense and along the way causing destruction, wreak havoc and deaths. Here appears some familiar faces of the Italian B genres such as : Gordon Mitchell as Igor, Salvatore Baccaro under pseudonym Boris Lugosi , and Luciano Pigozzi nicknamed as Alan Collins considered to be the Italian Peter Lorre . The motion picture was regularly written, produced and directed by Dick Randall. He was a regular producer who financed a lot of exploitation films , such as : "Pieces" , "Supersonic Man", "Angkor Cambodia Express", "Pleasure Island" , " Slaughter High" , "The Mad Butcher" , "La Casa Della Paura" , among others . Rating 4/10.

The Italians were the kings of the Horror genre from the 60s to the 80s, and, as far as yours truly is concerned, the combination of this genre, era and country is as great as cinema can possibly get. The rise of Italian Horror/suspense cinema started with atmospheric Gothic tales (such as the brilliant films by the ultimate master Mario Bava, Antonio Margheriti and Riccardo Freda) in the late 50s and early 60s. In the 70s, a time when the Giallo genre had replaced the Gothic tale as the dominant sub-genre Italian suspense cinema, some (but by no means all) of the Italian Gothic Horror films that were still being produced were very low-budget and sleazy, but nonetheless elegant Exploitation efforts.

TERROR! IL CASTELLO DELLE DONNE MALEDETTE aka. FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS (1974) is a super-cheesy slice of 70s Italian B-movie Gothic Horror which will certainly not give anybody the creeps, but which is incredibly entertaining nonetheless. Directed by the American Dick Randall, the movie puts a lesser emphasis on the typically Italian elegance and atmosphere, and, sometimes looks more like one of the many contemporary Spanish Gothic Horror films (which is probably due to the low budget). Sleaze-fans should not be scared off by the PG rating (as according to IMDb), since this little trash gem contains plenty of female nudity, perverted characters and some very cheesy gore effects. The film doesn't take itself too seriously, and the demented characters alone make it worth a look for my fellow Euro-Exploitation fans.

Count Frankenstein (Rosanno Brazzi) lives in a castle with a bunch of freaky helpers including a necrophiliac midget, a hunch-back who has rough sex with the housekeeper when her sadistic husband (Luciano Pigozzi) is not around. His hot daughter (Simonetta Vitelli) comes to visit with her fiancé and an equally hot friend (Christiane Rücker). Both of the women have exhibitionist tendencies. What follows is a sleazy and incredibly entertaining succession of very absurd horrors.

While FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS is below-par in terms of style and elegance by the high Italian Gothic Horror standards it is still very stylish for a rather nonsensical B-Movie of the kind in international comparison. The most well-known faces in the cast are former strongman and B-movie regular Gordon Mitchell (in the role of the undertaker) and the Peter-Lorre-lookalike Luciano Pigozzi, a great supporting actor who was in all sub-genres of Italian cult-cinema, including several films by Mario Bava and Umberto Lenzi.

Overall FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS is a sleazy, very cheesy, and often unintentionally funny trash-gem that is incredibly entertaining and should not be missed by true lovers of European Trash flicks. However, one should definitely be acquainted with the many great Italian Gothic Horror films before watching fun trash like this one. For Italo-Cult buffs like myself this film is often hilarious and vastly entertaining.