Freakshow

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" is an anthology horror movie.It opens with surprisingly violent and unsettling mass murder massacre of late night show cinema patrons that reminded me current case of Dark Knight Rising massacre gunman James Eagan Holmes.All this carnage is recorded by bitchy news reporter Shannon Nichols and her cameraman.Four horror stories are told her by the proprietor of bizarre museum/exhibition.The first one involves luckless junkie and scared poodle,the second one has pizza delivery guy,haunted mansion and a lot of lingerie,the third one is about paralyzed but not dead woman and the final story has two greedy gravediggers,rich widow plus some cheesy zombies.Cheap production values,bad acting and nasty beginning-welcome to surprisingly enjoyable and entertaining "Freakshow".7 horror stories out of 10.

What can be said about a film where narrative form, editing and reality are totally foreign concepts. You may watch this film stone cold sober, but by the end you will feel as though your mind is jelly and that jelly is a appetizing treat that many a dwarfish freak would eat. Cue padded wallpaper.

This is allegedly a group of short stories, but no one seemed to mention to the writer that stories need endings, and if your going to film a ten minute James Bondesque strip sequence with ten very eighties looking woman they have to get their tits out! However, despite all it's insanity and pure weirdness it is in fact a throughly entertaining film with belly laughs throughout.

"Society"

Judy Landers is what or who I remember most about this movie fun ad scary. Still not released on Apple TV or prime sad isn't it.

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.