Castle Freak
Gabriella, the Duchess Orsino, pours a saucer of milk for the cat then cuts bread and slices salami for a second dish, lighting a candle and crossing the courtyard before descending into the lower chambers of the vast castle where she has lived alone for decades since the death of her infant son Giorgio following the abandonment of them both by her husband; an exhausted old woman, finally it is too much, and she lies down and breathes her last.
Her only living relative, John Reilly travels to Italy with his wife Susan and their daughter Rebecca to take possession of the supposedly haunted Castello D’Orsino, last remnant of the squandered fortune of the family which he intends to sell as soon as is practicable, but the troubles they carry with them, Susan unable to forgive her husband for the drunken car accident which killed their son and blinded Rebecca, only leave them prey to the darker things which lurk in mansion.
In part inspired by H P Lovecraft’s 1926 short story The Outsider, Stuart Gordon’s 1995 horror Castle Freak might have worked better had the structural elements of that been suppressed even if the core which drives the story remained, the revelation that there is an escaped monster which the Duchess had kept chained and tortured in the dungeon all these years a growing suspicion that they are not alone which troubles the newcomers rather than an opening scene disclosure.
Written by Dennis Paoli and Gordon and shot for $500,000 in an Italian castle owned by producer Charles Band, Castle Freak reunited him with his Re-Animator stars Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton as John and Susan, he strangely cast in a role which requires him to morph from his customary creepy behaviour into an incongruous romantic hero in the final scenes, though she fares better in what is also an atypical role as a rational but bitter mother protecting her child.
With Elisabeth Kaza providing stability as housekeeper Agnese, accepting of her changing role and cautiously warm to the Reillys, particularly Rebecca (Jessica Dollarhide), the clumsiness of the script might have been more forgivable had it been set as a period piece, but with both parents dismissing their terrified child’s increasing conviction they are not alone and the conspicuous indifference of the provincial police it feels a ploy to slow rather than advance proceedings.
Where Castle Freak is more successful is in the surprisingly convincing makeup effects of the titular monster, obvious from early on to be the presumed-dead Giorgio (Jonathan Fuller), but any passing attempt to elicit sympathy for the man-child kept in barbaric isolation now reacquainting himself with the world is swiftly abandoned in favour of predictable tropes of the blind girl pursued down corridors, mutilated prostitutes and murdered police officers, the atmosphere necessary to carry a Gothic horror never manifesting out of the grief and guilt.
Castle Freak is streaming on the Arrow platform now
