Really Awful Movies

“Hey Daddy-O. I don’t wanna go down to the basement. There’s something down there.” Substitute the word dungeon for basement in the above Ramones song and you have Castle Freak.

Castle Freak is the tale of an unhappily married couple, John and Susan, and their daughter Rebecca. John inherits a castle in the Italian countryside and the three head over to Lo Stivale for a quick flip. However, strange noises coming from below indicate that the three may not be alone. Indeed, chained to the wall is Giorgio, the titular Freak, who has been rotting there for the past 40 years.

On his first night in the castle, John has one of those nightmares that only exists in movies. You know the one where you thrash about wildly and spring out of bed like a demented jack-in-the-box, screaming and drenched in sweat. Seems he once had a son, but Johnny also had more than just a taste for the ol’ bevy and a predilection for driving drunk. The resultant car accident killed the son and blinded his daughter. His wife has never forgiven him and John has a nasty case of survivor’s guilt.

Now back to the freak. In an act of cruelty motivated by jealousy, the Duchess (and original owner) of the castle took her five-year old son and chained him in the dungeon to be beaten and whipped on a daily basis. For over forty years, Giorgio never saw the light of day, and to say this treatment took a bit of a toll is akin to saying that Kanye West is only slightly conceited. The Freak, as played wonderfully by Johnathan Fuller, is a thing of (hideous) beauty. Castrated and emaciated, gnarled and knotted with a face pulled apart at the gums, Giorgio looks like a cross between Sackhead Jason sans sack and a boiled cauliflower.

Also hideously beautiful is the scene where Giorgio breaks free of his shackles. In a moment that alludes to James Whale’s Frankenstein, Giorgio raisies his hands to the light for the first time in four decades and bites off and breaks his fingers so he can liberate himself from his shackles. For those looking for it, Castle Freak is full of nasty stuff. Face-munching, chain bludgeoning, breast gnashing and one of the sickest acts of oral (dis)pleasure ever committed to celluloid are all on the menu.

Castle Freak was directed by Staurt Gordon who reunites with his From Beyond and Re-Animator stars Jeffrey Coombs and Barbara Crampton. The film was produced by Full Moon Pictures, in whose offices Gordon saw a poster for Castle Freak. Intrigued, Gordon inquired about the poster and was told by Full Moon head honcho Charles Band that the film did not exist but Gordon could make it provided he obey two provisions: the film must be set in a castle and the film must have a freak. Gordon took elements of the H.P. Lovecraft short story The Outsider, fleshed it out a bit, and voila, Castle Freak.

I do love me some Staurt Gordon and I really like Castle Freak. Giorgio is a wonderful creation, both pitiable and risible. He’s a monster but only because he was made one. In the tradition of Frankenstein’s monster, Giorgio was deprived of love, so he craves it in his own misunderstood way. He became what he did neither through his own volition nor an innate evil, but rather as a result of circumstance. He’s violent and brutal, sure, but he really knows no other way.

Gordon fans looking for some of the director’s trademark dark humor will be sorely disappointed. Castle Freak is downbeat, creepy and more than a little poignant. It’s also well worth 94 minutes of your time.

Recommended.

***1/2 (out of five)

“Warriors, come out to play…”

The Warriors.

Based on Sol Yurick’s book, which drew from Anabasis by Zenophon, a pupil of Socrates (in the film, Coney Island is the Black Sea and gang members replace Greek mercenary soldiers) Walter Hill’s cult classic is one long chase from the top to the bottom of the New York City subway system.

A Bronx gang leader, Cyrus (CAN YOU DIG IT?) tries to organize* all the disparate gangs in The Big Apple, orchestrating a meeting up in the Bronx (no weapons) and urging gangsters to act as one and to rule the city. He’s met with boisterous cheers but suddenly, Cyrus is murdered and the killing is falsely pinned on the title gang.

And instead of splitting money for a cab, the Warriors flee for their lives back to Coney Island riding the rails, as a bounty is placed on their heads and they thwart attacks from a variety of different gangs. These range from the scary — the Furies, demonic baseball players that spawned Eminem’s “Fight Music” video — to the extremely less than menacing, a Union Square roller-skating outfit that look like gay rugby players.

A great movie, based on a great book and like The Shining, a great movie loathed by the author.

Sol Yurick says this about Cyrus (the gangster based on the character Ismael Rivera, inspired by Moby-Dick): “The actor was awful, the dialogue lame; [Walter] Hill had no idea how street kids really talked.”

Still, the dark sinister, yet incredibly campy Warriors aesthetic and yes dialogue, inspired a slew of rappers: Old Dirty Bastard, Slim Shady, Red Man, to name a few.

Yurick said this after the premiere:

“I looked for my novel on the screen. I found the skeleton of it intact. Its revolutionary content was missing; no Fourth of July…In the movie the Warriors were racially mixed; almost an impossibility. My Warriors had all been black. The hero of the movie was white…I thought on the whole, the movie was trashy, although beautifully filmed.”

And later

“What is astonishing to me is the durability of the movie…It has become, in the parlance of media when they can’t understand the why of the development of a social phenomenon, a “cult” movie…I have to admit I didn’t and still don’t understand the phenomenon.

In Hill’s defence, the action is cracker jack and tense and the dialogue politically incorrect. The music is absolutely amazing too (Barry De Vorzon, Martha and the Vandellas and Joe Walsh) This is a film whose influence is undeniable, whether it’s the catchphrases or “‘dress as your favorite gang” bar theme nights in places like Toronto and New York (one of the few nights when gang colors aren’t frowned upon in bars). The Warriors are good. Real good. The Best.

*My friends, these people whom you see are the last obstacle which stops us from being where we have so long struggled to be. We ought, if we could, to eat them up alive.”

Anabasis, by Xenophon

**** (out of 5)

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