Freakshow

This is truly an intellectual masterpiece - although I'll admit the first time through I was at a loss. After watching this seemingly disjointed set of stories, I was left with only one thought "What WAS that?".

I couldn't shake the feeling that I had completely missed the point. I put the tape back in the VCR a watched it again. This time carefully paying attention for any unifying threads. At the end of the second viewing I was convinced that I had NOT missed anything... this was just a weird movie with nothing to say.

That was it, until about 3 days later... I'm sitting at my desk and out of the blue, it comes to me "Oh, yeah!". On my way home from work I stopped at the video store and rented it out again.

I won't spoil it - I'll only say that this is indeed a profound piece of work. The very obscurity of its message serves to intensify the revelation.

I see so many brutal reviews on this 80"s horror anthology film and it makes me smile. Reviewers seem to think it is trying to be Citizen Kane or even Creepshow. If you go into this movie expecting cinematic greatness you will not find it. However, If you are looking for a fun anthology that does not take itself that seriously and lays on a healthy portion of 80"s cheese and the offbeat feel to all things 80's then you will have some fun. We are treated to some really shaky acting and just passable affects to 80's hair metal video vixens busting out into an all out rock video while dancing in their panties before they sacrifice a pizza delivery guy who lets just say, turns the tables. Add drug stealing poodles, hard partying zombies and a gigolo named Funk and I mean what else could a true film historian want. Just grab some popcorn and turn off your brain and enjoy a stroll to a simpler time, if only for an hour and a half.

My review was written in May 1989 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

"Freakshow" is a rock-bottom horror film that only a tax loss specialist could love, Prospects are rotten in all media.

Amateurishly directed and acted opus consists of four horror stories, linked by the flimsy premise of loathsome tv newscaster Audrey Landers trapped in a curiosity collection exhibit by its goofball curator Peter Read.

Tales, wholly lacking in awe or ingenuity, go from bad to worse: an endlessly padded episode of a drug addict lured to his death by a poodle with a bag of heroin in its mouth; a pizza delivery boy who survives a night at an evil mansion located at 1313 Bram Stoker Blvd.; a ripoff of a classic "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" to episode in which a paralyzed girl (from drugs again) is subjected to an autopsy while still alive and conscious; and a stupid story of ghouls rising from their graves to punish two gravediggers who are stealing the dirt from the cemetery to sell it to a golf course (!).

Level of tastelessness here is evidenced in the final segment when a goon finds out the dead and come back, and exults: "That's great! That means there'll be a Beatles reunion".

Director Constantino Magnatta embarrassingly tries to simulate music videos, with terrible rock songs frequently thrown in and girls sashaying in their underwear (one couldn't call it dancing). Heavy-handed use of spiral patterns to try and hypnotize the audience plu bookended setting of the pic in a movie theater doesn't work.

Freakshow. Sounds a bit like Creepshow. And, surprise, surprise, it's a horror anthology. But it's nowhere near as good as Creepshow. The stories are poorly constructed, the direction is weak, and the acting barely passable. Most of the budget seems to have gone on lingerie and lasers (or, more likely, the budget was too low to hire lasers and the owner loaned them to the movie in exchange for a credit). Perhaps they should have called it Cheapshow.

The film starts with a Twilight Zone-style voiceover from a bargain basement Burgess Meredith soundalike, after which the wraparound story begins: ambitious news anchor Shan (Audrey Landers) walks home after reporting on a movie theatre massacre, stopping to use the telephone at a bizarre museum where the owner proceeds to show her the exhibits, each of which tells a chilling story.

Tale one sees a desperate junkie Fidge (Dean Richards Wiancko) denied his next fix when a poodle runs away with his bag of dope. The second story revolves around a pizza delivery boy who bets his work colleagues that he can successfully deliver an order to a cursed house. Chapter three sees a young woman mistakenly declared dead after a recreational drug leaves her paralysed. And the final story features a pair of entrepreneurial gravediggers who sell cemetery soil to a golf club, upsetting the dead in the process.

As with many a late '80s horror, logic doesn't come into play that much, especially in the second tale, which inexplicably turns into a music video halfway through, with numerous hot women in sexy underwear performing dance moves to a bad rock song. None of the stories have very satisfying conclusions. As anthologies go, this is a pretty poor collection, and as such it is only likely to appeal to avid fans of the subgenre or those who can't get enough of offbeat low budget trash.

Horror lovers are almost by definition crazy about anthologies. This particular horror fanatic personally also believes that a horror anthology can only be great if the wraparound story is equally compelling, and even a kind of additional segment on its own. I can assure you "Freakshow" has a splendid wraparound story. Considering the title and the year of release (late 80s), the main influences for this film were obviously "Creepshow" and "The Twilight Zone";- not coincidentally two anthologies that were tremendously popular in the 80s. This certainly doesn't mean, however, that "Freakshow" is an inferior and uninspired rip-off. Quite the contrary, it's hugely entertaining and, in my humble opinion, vastly underrated. It can easily stand next to, say, "From a Whisper to a Scream", "After Midnight" and "Screamtime" as one of the 80s horror anthologies that deserve to be wider known and appreciated.

The wraparound story introduces an arrogant and emotionless female news reporter, who prefers to cover the story of a mass-shooting live on television rather than to prevent it from happening. Her cameraman is so disgusted by her sensationalism that he leaves her behind downtown, and during her search for a cab she gets lured in a museum called "The Freakshow", where the oddish curator takes her on a (very) personalized tour. As you can probably guess, the exhibits she sees here lead in the individual segments.

In the first story, a desperate junkie gets trapped in a sort of "Home Alone" situation where the Kevin McAllister role is played by a poodle with a bag of cocaine in its mouth. It's nothing special, but nevertheless entertaining. In segment two, the newly recruited delivery boy of an Italian restaurant has to bring a pizza - with positively no garlic - to an address on 1313, Bram Stoker Avenue. He's welcomed by a house full of vampire brides, but the boy has a secret identity of his own. The idea behind this short story is original, but poorly handled. Also, even though featuring a lot of scantily clad 80s beauties, the erotic vampire dance rituals last far too long. Besides, the vampires here wear the most ridiculous and unconvincing sets of fake teeth I have ever seen. The third and shortest segment is definitely the best. A girl who OD'd witnesses her own embalming process because her mind isn't quite as lifeless as her body yet. I'm pretty sure I've seen this concept before somewhere, probably in "The Twilight Zone", but it nevertheless remains terrifying. Last but not least, segment four stars two punk grave diggers who think they stumbled upon a profitable business by selling the dirt from underneath the tombstones as fertilizer. However, the dead don't approve of their final resting places being desecrated. The tone of this zombie story is mainly comical and silly, but it has a handful of ingenious moments and terrific make-up effects.