User Reviews

SPOILERS INCLUDED Nineteenth century Italy is beset by attacks from Neanderthal men living in a cave (complete with furs and clubs) when the villagers manage to overpower one of them. Count Frankenstein (Rossano Brazzi) uses its body for experiments creating a monster called Goliath complete with Hong Kong Phooey hair. Grave robbing is specialised in by Frankenstein's `freaks' a randy hunchback, a misfit butler and Genz the evil dwarf. Billed in the credits as `Frankenstein's Monsters' they're played by Italian movie heavies Alan Collins, 60's muscle-man Gordon Mitchell and Xiro Papas. Genz is played by 3'11' dwarf actor Michael Dunn who spent the Seventies in the British The Mutations, the French Too Small My Friend and this, both he and Papas died soon after. When Genz's touchy feely mischief brings the attention of the local fuzz as represented by Edmund Purdom, he's thrown out of Frankenstein's castle. Vowing `I'll get my revenge on Doctor Frankenstein', Genz befriends the local Neanderthal, Ook (The Beast in Heat's Salvatore Baccaro, who with glued on hair is a dead ringer for Aphrodite's Child era Demis Roussos) and plans his revenge. Meanwhile Frankenstein's daughter Maria, her boyfriend, and her best friend Krista come to stay. 1963's Mondo Cane revealed Brazzi couldn't walk around New York without sex crazed housewives tearing off his clothes, a decade later, back on home soil its the women who can't keep their clothes on. Sure enough Krista soon falls for Brazzi's Latin charm, taking a nude bath with Krista in Ook's cave, Maria titters `when you arrived he became like a little boy'. Krista later returns to drop 'em again but a grunting Ook drags her off. Genz releases Goliath who kills off most of the `Freaks' but the carnage continues when Genz brings Goliath back to the cave and Ook and Goliath fight to the death over Krista. Surprisingly the film offers Genz no comeuppance, you expect a climactic game of dwarf throwing between Goliath and Ook, but no, the film ends with Genz seemingly smothered in Christiane Royce's bosom. The final word is left to Edmund Purdom as only Purdom can deliver it `there is a bit of a monster in all of us, especially when there is fear'. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (`Il Castello della Paura') was impresario Dick Randall's extension of the scenarios he had penned for 1971's Lady Frankenstein which included raging hormone scenes between its monster and Rosalba Neri plus a nude woman thrown into a lake instead of a little girl. A big hit in Italy and the States (sans its more deviant moments) Lady Frankenstein would appear to be the blueprint for many imitators within the Italian film industry. Never one to be outdone Randall seems to have conceived Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks as the sexy Frankenstein movie to end all sexy Frankenstein movies- this one just had to have it all and then some. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks is pivoted somewhere between the childish and the perverse, its very much monster movie nostalgia incarnated as 70's kitsch, everyone seems to have names like Igor, or ludicrously fake humps and what can you say of a film that identifies one of its actors as `Boris Lugosi'. Theres a dirty paperback edge as well though, along way from South Pacific in his 70's era Brazzi was often astounded in Jet Set era actresses lack of inhibition to undress infront of the cameras for `fun' scenes. Such `fun' scenes are endlessly on offer in Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks, the camera never tires of purring over its voluptuous leads like a lovers gaze. Its not all loving however, and Genz and Ook are soon taking village girl's back to the cave to be stripped and ravaged by Genz `ook, ook' barks his Neanderthal pal. The token pseudonymous nature of the credits has always made any true auteurship of Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks hard to determine, but Dick Randall's handprints are all over it, the films crossbreeding of Italian Gothic and American exploitation could only have come from someone with wheeler dealings in both- theres even a Shangri-La early nudie-cutieness to the naked bathing sequences with Royce and Blondell. Faults exist, but generally Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks fulfils its promise as a successful marriage of shameless titillation and vintage trash cinema, played out by a motley ensemble of marquee value former matinee idols, familiar faces and top heavy actresses. Even today with prior knowledge of the eccentric standards set by Seventies European horror films, Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks still stands as admirably outlandish viewing. For a true understanding of mid-period Randall Eurosleaze, the 1972 production Bogeyman and the French Murders/ Paris Sex Murders is also required viewing for the same reasons.

Suave and charming Count Frankenstein (Rossano Brazzi, who surprisingly keeps his dignity and a straight face throughout) kicks depraved, perverted, sniveling dwarf Genz (the great Michael Dunn in his ignominious final film role) out of his castle for being a disgusting little degenerate creep. Genz befriends Ook the Neanderthal man (brilliantly played with grunting'n'growling primitive aplomb by Boris Lugosi) and plots his revenge. Director Robert H. Oliver, working from an outrageously lurid and ridiculous script, puts an entertainingly crude and leering emphasis on sleazy sensationalism: there's a substantial smattering of gratuitous nudity (the stunningly comely Christiane Royce warrants special kudos in this particular department), voyeurism, rape, necrophilia, softcore sex, and even a hunchback who enjoys rough sex (thankfully this latter one occurs off-screen). Marcello Gigante's laughably inappropriate swingin' lounge score is pretty funny. A big knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred climactic fight between Ook and Frankenstein's enormous hulk of a monster Goliath (brawny behemoth Loren Bwing) is likewise totally hilarious. Poor Edmond Purdom merely takes up place in an insignificant supporting part as an ineffectual constable. Heavy-handed morale: "There's a bit of a monster in all of us. Especially when there's fear." A campy hoot.

Abysmally cheesy and cheap ripoff of the Frankenstein movie legacy has poor Rossano Brazzi earning that month's rent and Chianti money; some hard working (but really unappealing) character actors doing their best (but still not very well) with thankless, horribly clichéd dialog; a couple of decent looking girls wearing a long ton of eyeliner thrown in purely so the movie trailer could feature some skin; and a drunken walk of a screen play that seems to think that the Frankenstein story wasn't enough as a basis for a movie...no, it has to throw in cavemen, dwarfs, hunchbacks,and rough sex to spice things up. Well, it was wrong.

I gave it one more star than I really wanted because it's entirely possibly that the horrible English dub (apparently recording on Edison's original wax cylinder under a tomato can) and crummy print on the copy I saw made made FCOF seem even worse than it really would be in its original release. Also I feel really bad that an actor like Brazzi would be reduced to something like this after starring in "South Pacific" and being wonderful. And Micheal Dunn's portrayal of the twisted dwarf is actually fairly compelling.

Known in Italy as Terror! Il Castello Delle Donne Maledette (Terror! The Castle of Cursed Women), this movie was released as Terror Castle, The House of Freaks, The Monsters of Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks in the U.S., while it was named Frankenstein's Castle in the UK.

According to Roberto Curti's Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1970-1979, no one can even agree on who the director of this movie is.

Suspects include Spanish actor Ramiro Olvieros (The Pyjama Girl Case), producer Oscar Brazzi (The Loves of Daphne), cinematographer Mario Mancini (who ran camera on Blood and Black Lace, as well as acting as the director of photography for The Girl In Room 2A and directing Frankenstein '80), producer Dick Randall (who produced Mario Bava's Four Times That Night, as well as For Your Height Only, Don't Open 'Till Christmas and Slaughter High) and screenwriter William Rose (who wrote Pamela, Pamela, You Are... and shows up in the film as the Devil and in Herzog's Fitzcarraldo).

Although director Robert H. Oliver was a pseudonym of Mancini, actor Gordon Mitchell claims that the director was Robert Oliver, while actress Simone Blondell remembered that the director "spoke English, he wasn't Italian." Perhaps the best answer comes from assistant director Gianlorenzo Battaglia (the cinematographer for A Blade In the Dark, Blastfighter, Demons, Witchery and so many more films - he was also the underwater camera operator for Popeye, Cozi's Hercules, Alligator, Screamers and Phenomena!) said that "the American director left the film because of disagreements with the producer, and so Mario finished it on his own. I'm not 100% sure though!"

After a Neanderthal man named Goliath (Salvatore Baccaro, billed as Boris Lugosi) is lynched by villagers, Count Frankenstein (Rossano Brazzi, who was in Krakatoa, East of Java) brings the monster back to life.

Man, let me tell you about Rossano Brazzi. In 1940, he married Baroness Lidia Bertolini. They never had children, but he did have a son with Llewella Humphreys, who was the daughter of American mobster Murray "The Camel" Humphreys. At a young age, Llewella had shown fine musical talent, so her father sent her to Europe to study. After all, her father would do anything for her. There's a story that when she went to the prom, she wanted to take Frank Sinatra. One phone call later and "Old Blue Eyes" was her date.

While in Rome, Llewella fell for Brazzi and they had that aforementioned son. When she returned to America, she changed her name to Luella Brady, an anglicization of Brazzi. Humphreys sent her and George, the baby, to live with her mother in Oklahoma, but she was so mentally unstable by this point that she was institutionalized. Man - her dad was the man who said, "If you ever have to cock a gun in a man's face, kill him. If you walk away without killing him after doing that, he'll kill you the next day," taught mobsters how to plead the Fifth and inspired Tom Hagen in The Godfather and here's the married Brazzi getting her pregnant!

After his wife's death from liver cancer in 1984, Brazzi married Ilse Fischer, a German woman who had been the couple's housekeeper for many years who had met the actor when she was a twenty-four-year-old fan.

But I digress...

Michael Dunn also shows up as Genz, an evil dwarf who indulges in necrophilia. Perhaps you know Dunn from Dr. Miguelito Loveless from The Wild Wild West or as Dr. Kiss in The Werewolf of Washington. Also invited to this Castle of Freaks party are Edmund Purdom (Pieces), Gordon Mitchell playing Igor (you may recall him as playing Dr. Otto Frankenstein in Frankenstein '80), Loren Ewing (Big John from the Batman TV show as well as, get this, the transportation department for the movie Idaho Transfer), Walter Saxer (who would later produce Herzog's films), Simonetta Vitelli (who was in four totally unrelated Sartana movies), Luciano Pigozzi (Pag from Yor Hunter from the Future) and Xiro Papas, who is, of course, Mosaic from Frankenstein '80, the vampire monster from The Devil's Wedding Night and Lupo in The Beast In Heat.

This movie is not great, but gets many points for having 19th-century villagers wearing modern blue jeans.

It really is something, what some erstwhile big-name actors will do to continue plying their craft and collect some lira! Case in point, the 1974 horror shlockfest "Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks," starring two such former matinée stars, here slumming for a paycheck. In the film, Rossano Brazzi, who had earlier starred in such wonderful pictures as "The Barefoot Contessa," "Summertime" and "South Pacific," plays Count Frankenstein (not the usual Baron; is this a promotion or a demotion? Someone, please check the comparative rankings of 19th century German nobility and find out!). When we first encounter him, the Count has just brought back to life a recently murdered Neanderthal (!) using the brain of a local village girl. When the Count evicts his dwarf servant Genz from the castle for some minor infractions, the little person marches off into the hills and finds a caveman of his own, who he christens Ook, and who he decides to use to take vengeance upon the Count, leading to a true clash of the titans: a living Neanderthal vs. a Neanderthal Frankenstein (who resembles nothing less than The Three Stooges' Larry Fine on steroids!). Fortunately, Genz is portrayed by perhaps the most revered little-person actor in screen history, Michael Dunn, himself demoted here after having appeared in such career-defining roles as the (Oscar-nominated) observer in "Ship of Fools" and Alexander in the 11/22/68 episode of "Star Trek," "Plato's Stepchildren." Anyway, while no one in his or her right mind would ever call the resulting production a "good film," and while it is easy enough to make fun of derivative exploitation fare such as this, "Castle of Freaks" yet manages to keep the viewer slack jawed and entertained. It features an oddball assortment of grotesque characters (the three aforementioned, plus a lusty hunchback) and occasional (what Radar O'Reilly would call) nudidity, courtesy of the Count's daughter (Simone Blondell) and friend Krista (who joins the Count in his studies, and is played by the yummy Christiane Royce) going skinny-dipping in Ook's cavern. The production values in the film are surprisingly decent, the Count's castle having a convincingly moldering elegance; the direction by "Robert H. Oliver" (in actuality, exploitation producer Dick Randall) is...well, let's just say that he gets the job done; and the musical score by Marcello Gigante, largely electronic, is truly outre. In all, a surprisingly engaging piece of Euroshlock. Oh...the DVD that I just watched, from Shout Factory, looks fairly damaged in sections but at least sports some nice bright colors. My psychotronic guru, Rob, tells me that the Something Weird DVD looks a whole lot better....

It goes without saying that the true Eurohorror fan's life is not complete without at least one watch of FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS, an astoundingly trashy monster movie complete with oodles of sex, violence and nudity, all shamelessly exploited by reliable American producer Dick Randall. The film plays like an updated version of those classic Universal monster marathons like HOUSE OF Dracula as a number of freaks and monsters struggle for their fair share of the limelight, there's even an actor named "Boris Lugosi" billed in the cast! The entertainment value is high despite the limitations of the crude dubbing, even cruder direction, and the rambling narrative of the plot – which sees fit to insert a prehistoric caveman into 18th century Italy without even a raised eyebrow – resulting in a film which is strangely entertaining despite the myriad flaws.

The film is colourful and makes some good use of a hill-top castle for most of the scene-setting atmosphere shots. Then there are the strange sound effects, used regularly, which always seem out-of-place and add to the bizarre appeal of the movie. But the film's strength is in the various characters in the cast; usually we get one or two main characters of interest in a film but here we get ten! These include Rossano Brazzi as a surprisingly sober Count Frankenstein, here playing the straight man in the chaos of exploitation film insanity; Michael Dunn (THE MUTATIONS) as a Peeping Tom dwarf who enjoys spying on the always-naked Laura De Benedittis and Christiane Rucker; Boris Lugosi (aka Salvatore Baccaro) as Ook, a caveman living in the vicinity (!); also on hand is Edmund Purdom, chewing the scenery once more as a policeman uttering lines like "there is a bit of a monster in all of us". What the hell?!

The entertainment value is upped for Euro fans by the inclusion of the familiar faces of Gordon Michell as a criminal henchman; Xiro Papas as a creepy, sexually deviant hunchback; and finally Luciano Pigozzi (HUNTERS OF THE GOLDEN COBRA) as devious butler Hans. Add to the brew an underground pool inhabited by naked bathers, a cardboard cemetery, and a rampage of violent death, destruction and caveman-fighting at the finale, and you have one hell of a movie. Literally.

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.