Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1974)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Good movie but grossly overrated

best movie i've ever seen.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Now this is my idea of a Gothic sick comedy, dry, brisk and more or less random plot—wise. Unlike other Italian thrillers, this one, vaguely inspired by Frankenstein's tale, looks like a bit of a Hammer pastiche; and it has a buxom starlet (Christiane Royce, as 'Krista'), likable and interesting actors (but the whole thing is direly acted), nice sets, the playful, ironic brio and briskness of some Italian period movies, generally a sense of leisure, common to many Italian B movies and European TV shows …—and it seems to have been given some budget—as well as some thinking. As a matter of fact, the movie has some TV feel to it. It's the score who leaves to be desired, a quite ineffective, random and unconvincing movie music. IL CASTELLO … is enjoyable, deliberately and dryly goofy—unsparingly and dryly goofy, I should say; I agree with B. Gauss that it resembles, by its dry humor, and mere pointlessness and randomness of the plot, the Spanish genre flicks, but the 90' movie I have seen didn't have that much nudity on display … (he also gives different names for the starlets, but nonetheless loosely resembling those screened on the credits of the movie I saw). The atmosphere is generally sunny and bawdy, the plot is leisurely narrated, the naked women: worth viewing—the landscapes, awesome. The plot involves revenge, lust, the servants' loves, women keen on science; a vengeful midget befriends a Neanderthalian ('Ook'), together they kidnap a girl and the midget rapes her, in front of the suddenly interested caveman. The viewers should respect the director for giving credit to the Frankenstein trope—instead of complaining about it being changed.(The 'Frankenstein' trope has trenched, at least partly decaying corpses—the 'Dracula' trope has spiked corpses. The former is, in a way, more morbid.)The wicked Count is played by Brazzi, Simone Blondell plays the Count's daughter. Mitchell, the '60 muscle-man, perhaps not even then as well known as Park, Scott and Reeves, sometimes player in movies about Maciste ('61, against the Cyclops), Ali Baba or Sinbad (in '63), Brennus (in '64), and even about Caesar (in '62), Achilles (also '62), Vulcan (in '60), got here a more becoming part—a bit part as one of Frankenstein's creatures and henchmen. In '83, he still got a part in a late _peplum. In the B movies' history, there were two Mitchell—Gordon& Cameron, and also two Gordon—Scott& Mitchell. Which of the three do you like better?The basic idea is that of a mad scientist bringing corpses back to life, reviving corpses by means of electricity; but the story also brings in Neanderthal survivors, without much other explaining about their fate--one of them uses a knife, and wears funny rags .... The screenplay belongs to M. Smith, W. Rose, and R. Spano; R. H. Oliver directed, and if he wouldn't have mentioned Frankenstein, if he would of skipped crediting Frankenstein, his work would of passed as a rip--off; like this, it passes as a . The score is by M. Gigante; sometimes atmospheric and cool, in a Lynch vein, but most times--ineffective.The movie is thematically grim, but light--hearted, feel--good, refreshing, and, I believe, intentionally funny; it's a weird comedy, a grim comedy.There's a bit of Lynchian TV leisure, in this bizarre comedy, that makes the gruesome weirdness seem light--hearted; stylistically, there are quite a bit of things to be added in its favor, as this approach is basically absent outside Latin western Europe (Italy& Spain).

This is the most screwed up and divergent version of "Frankenstein" that I have ever seen. It bears almost no similarity to the Mary Shelley novel or other film versions I've seen and is a pretty terrible film.The Baron is played by the Italian actor Rossano Brazzi--who just seemed all wrong for the film. Michael Dunn (best remembered as the dwarf from the "Star Trek" episode 'Plato's Children') plays a dwarf who is mostly there to get yelled at and bullied by practically everyone. And, there is a giant--called a 'Neanderthal Man'! But what really is important in this film is to watch people take their clothes off for no particular reason. However, the version from archive.net (which, in a rare case is not linked to IMDb's site) is porn-free (I did NOT say "Born Free") as all the nudity has been sliced out--but you can still see quite a bit of friskiness! Nothing is to recommend this low-budget mess. While not as bad as "Dracula Versus Frankenstein", it is pretty bad and not worth your time unless you are also a glutton for punishment.

The movie starts suddenly on a small cliff. What appears to be a man in animal skins (a caveman I suppose) is on top of the cliff throwing things at people below. The people are dressed in 18-19th century garments and are throwing things, up at the caveman. Sadly you know this will be a bad/cheap movie from the start as there appears to be a man in jeans and a turtleneck in the crowd of villagers. Did the movie run out of costumes up front or was this guy crashing the movie? Eventually, the villagers overwhelm the lone caveman and proceed to beat him to death with clubs & rocks. Then the titles.Marie Frankenstein (the doctor's daughter) is on her way home to her family's country castle, with her fiancé and a female friend tagging along for spring break. According to the good doctor, the Neanderthal man's (a.k.a. caveman) appearance is not a fluke, but is explained by "science". They somehow live in the nearby caves and have for hundreds of years. His experiment is the reanimation of that ex-caveman, now called "Goliath".This is a typical Italian knock-off/mash up of movie genres. I have had numerous experiences with these, from spaghetti westerns to giallo to the epics and even the apocalyptic future. This one is the Italian version (much cheaper) of a Hammer film with gratuitous nudity. It does try to portray Dr. Frankenstein as a misunderstood character, who is good by nature and circumstances and others have tarnished his image (the Wicked effect). This aspect is muffled by the gratuitous nudity, some horrible dubbing, extremely low budget and the "freaks". When you add 2 Neanderthals cavemen (one living in a cave and the other necrotic), a revenge driven ex-employed dwarf (Michael Dunn, most renowned for his role in Star Trek's Plato's Stepchildren episode) and a mustached, adulterer hunchback (Boris Lugosi, Karloff & Lugosi's Italian love child), what good can come from it? Basically, it was the dwarfs fault. Firing the dwarf causes the series of events that we are all aware of : monster escapes, innocent people are killed, villagers riot with torches, the monster & Frankenstein are killed by the end. There is not much horror, logic, acting, suspension of disbelief, nudity or much of anything else in this movie except a painfully long run time. You will struggle with the dialog, as some of it sounds like English, but in the end all you come away with is that the rule of the mob is that the mob rules. That and the idea that a long, nude mineral bath can fix just about anything.

Terror! Il Castello delle donne Maledette, or Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks, Frankenstein's Castle, Monsters of Frankenstein or The House of Freaks as it's also known under amongst other deceptively lurid titles, starts as Maria Frankenstien (Simonetta Vitelli), her fiancé Eric (Eric Mann) & her friend Krista (Christiane Rucker) arrive at her childhood home the Frankenstein Castle. There they are greeted by Maria's father Count Frankenstein (Rossano Brazzi) who has been conducting experiments on local Neanderthal cavemen, throw in some grave robbing, some mild nudity, a hunchback & a dwarf & you have a mess of a film with virtually no plot...This Italian production was directed by Robert Oliver & is total crap. The script by Mario Francini, William Rose, Mark Smith & Roberto Spano (it took four people to write a film this bad?) is a mess, there's no recognisable coherent storyline in it & it just seems a loosely connected series of incidents & character's which makes for a very tedious 90 odd minutes. The Frankenstein character is present in this film in name only as he doesn't stitch any body parts together, he doesn't play about with any brains or 'create' a creature. I have no idea what the thinking behind the Neanderthal cavemen are all about, it's just plain odd & throw in stupid annoying dwarf into the mix & one has to wonder what the makers of this nonsense were thinking. Was this meant to be a comedy? If it was it isn't funny apart from the hilarious English dubbed dialogue. Is it meant to be scary? Well, it's not scary at all & has virtually no horror elements that I see. Other than either horror or comedy I can't see what else the makers were trying to do with this film & since it fails miserably at both I wasn't impressed.Terror! Il Castello delle donne Maledette is a mess of underdeveloped ideas that go nowhere & awful character's. Despite it's many lurid & exploitative English titles this is very tame stuff, there's some brief nudity but no blood or gore to speak of. The most exploitative it gets is when it is implied a dwarf rapes a woman, it is not shown on screen though so don't get too excited. Also, what happened to the body Frankenstein stole from the graveyard? It gets mentioned quite a few times but it's never revealed why Frankenstein stole it or what he did with it. Another problem with this film is that it is just so boring, virtually nothing happens & the photography is so bland & dull it's just a chore to sit through.Technically the film is basic with shaky & jerky camera pans & zooms, rubbish special effects & lowly production values where an entire village is represented by about seven people. Some of the interior castle scenes look quite good & are quite atmospheric but that's down to where it was shot rather than any great effort on the filmmakers part. It's hard to tell about the acting since all the cast are dubbed into English but the English voice actors are terrible & the dialogue just sounds ridiculous & fragmented.Terror! Il Castello delle donne Maledette is awful apart from some unintentionally funny moments, a decent castle setting & a few naked bodies, overall I thought it was tedious & pointless in the extreme.