Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1974)

People are voting emotionally.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

This is a major, I mean MAJOR guilty pleasure for me. The film is sick, twisted, depraved, and barely a horror film at all! Yet, I liked it...and, yes, I feel somewhat ashamed. But how can you go wrong with a voyeuristic, demonicly repulsive dwarf who fondles the breast of a dead girl or teaches a hulking caveman to have his first sexual liaison with a girl they kidnap for that sole purpose(BTW - he "kills" her with his girth!). Or that same caveman hulking about with his unibrow and eating raw flesh and coming basically from nowhere? how about the hunchbacked assistant Kreegin who is having an affair with Hans the butler's wife. She likes it VERY rough - pain kinda-stuff. Then there is Hans who is a sadist. Let's not forget Goliath the other hulking man who now has a new brain. This array of characters is quite ridiculous. It is cinematic nonsense, but this film is Euro-trash at its sleaziest best. Dick Randall(under the name Robert Oliver) directs the film - really is is his one big directorial job, but he produced many similar projects and wrote the screenplays for movies like Pieces, Lady Frankenstein, and The Mad Butcher(this film has the same feel of that one the most). He is going for sleaze, and boy does he find it. The monsters are really secondary to the sexual themes, scenes, fetishes, etc that abound. And then we have Rossani Brazzi as Count Frankenstein...not Baron but count. Really? There are also the two lovely, and I mean absolutely drop-dead lovely female leads who show us much of their acting "attributes" quite freely particularly when bathing in a warm mud pit of some kind. One is the Count's daughter - beautiful blonde Simonetta Vitelli. Hot! Then there is her friend Kris who falls in love with the Count and has both cavemen - Ook and Goliath - on her like white on rice. She is even hotter and played by Christiane Rucker. Where are the horror elements? They really are not there. Brazzi is OK, the girls really don't need to act, and the rest seem like they are happy to be acting in anything though some are fairly well-known like Luciano Pigozzi(the Peter Lorre of Italy) playing Hans or Italian sword and sandal strongman Gordon Mitchell playing Igor or cult favorite Xiro Papas as the revolting Kreegin or classy Edmund Prudhom as the prefect. Then there is Michael Dunn in all his sick glory as the conniving dwarf. Dunn can play this type so well. The sets are fairly impressive for a film like this, but the dubbing is excruciatingly bad. Again, this is not for everyone. It really isn't a horror picture but more of an exploitation picture that only could have been made in the 70s. Once again I reiterate this is my favorite decade for films. People could make what they wanted the way they wanted. I saw this as part of Elvira's Movie Macabre collection. She helps it as well with her bounteous "presence" or presents depending on how you look at it. She also has some great lines to go with what is going on in the movie.

I had been wanting to view this notorious film ever since catching its trailer on the "Extra Weird Sampler" DVD from Image a couple of years ago; however, now that I have, I found the experience not nearly as rewarding in a 'so bad it's good' way as I had anticipated. With so much that is wrong here, it is almost a pity the end result is not more entertaining; in fact, I would go so far as to say this is the nadir of the Italian Gothic Horror genre! Former matinée' idol Rossano Brazzi is Count(!) Frankenstein who experiments on Neanderthal beings (apparently, they can still be found in certain European caves!) with the help of his henchmen – lecherous dwarf Michael Dunn (a long way from his Oscar-nominated role in SHIP OF FOOLS [1965]), top-hatted(!) Gordon Mitchell, Luciano Pigozzi and the obligatory hunchback (who has the hots for Pigozzi's unattractive wife)! For what it is worth, here we get the luxury of two cavemen (who naturally get to grips practically at first sight!): one has a prominent dome-shaped forehead and the other is played by an 'actor' under the hilarious assumed name of Boris Lugosi! Edmund Purdom, another veteran presence, has little of substance to do as the local Police Chief (in the classic tradition of Universal horror movies, the townsfolk are forever on the point of picking up their torches to storm the Frankenstein castle!) but he does get to utter the would-be profound closing line: "There is a bit of the monster in all of us"!! Also involved, needless to say, are two girls – one is Frankenstein's daughter (played by the attractive offspring of hack film-maker Demofilo Fidani) and the other her best friend, who catches the eye of both the Count and one of the Neanderthals! – with a penchant for skinny-dipping in the steaming waters of the caves. After being banished from the castle for setting the Police onto Frankenstein's grave-robbing antics by way of his tiny footprints, Dunn takes to the caves himself and proceeds to instruct the Lugosi character (who seems to have nothing on his mind but the profuse consumption of raw meat!) into the ways of love-making; his first attempt, however, results in the horribly mangled body of a local girl!! As I said at the start, the film is certainly among the goofiest of its kind ever made (a poor extra named Mike Monty playing a "Paisan" is even credited twice during the end credits!) but, unfortunately, not that much fun while it is on – the fact that helmer Randall was more typically employed as a producer, and whose sole directorial effort this proved to be, may have had something to do with it.

Terror! Il Castello delle donne Maledette, or Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks, Frankenstein's Castle, Monsters of Frankenstein or The House of Freaks as it's also known under amongst other deceptively lurid titles, starts as Maria Frankenstien (Simonetta Vitelli), her fiancé Eric (Eric Mann) & her friend Krista (Christiane Rucker) arrive at her childhood home the Frankenstein Castle. There they are greeted by Maria's father Count Frankenstein (Rossano Brazzi) who has been conducting experiments on local Neanderthal cavemen, throw in some grave robbing, some mild nudity, a hunchback & a dwarf & you have a mess of a film with virtually no plot...This Italian production was directed by Robert Oliver & is total crap. The script by Mario Francini, William Rose, Mark Smith & Roberto Spano (it took four people to write a film this bad?) is a mess, there's no recognisable coherent storyline in it & it just seems a loosely connected series of incidents & character's which makes for a very tedious 90 odd minutes. The Frankenstein character is present in this film in name only as he doesn't stitch any body parts together, he doesn't play about with any brains or 'create' a creature. I have no idea what the thinking behind the Neanderthal cavemen are all about, it's just plain odd & throw in stupid annoying dwarf into the mix & one has to wonder what the makers of this nonsense were thinking. Was this meant to be a comedy? If it was it isn't funny apart from the hilarious English dubbed dialogue. Is it meant to be scary? Well, it's not scary at all & has virtually no horror elements that I see. Other than either horror or comedy I can't see what else the makers were trying to do with this film & since it fails miserably at both I wasn't impressed.Terror! Il Castello delle donne Maledette is a mess of underdeveloped ideas that go nowhere & awful character's. Despite it's many lurid & exploitative English titles this is very tame stuff, there's some brief nudity but no blood or gore to speak of. The most exploitative it gets is when it is implied a dwarf rapes a woman, it is not shown on screen though so don't get too excited. Also, what happened to the body Frankenstein stole from the graveyard? It gets mentioned quite a few times but it's never revealed why Frankenstein stole it or what he did with it. Another problem with this film is that it is just so boring, virtually nothing happens & the photography is so bland & dull it's just a chore to sit through.Technically the film is basic with shaky & jerky camera pans & zooms, rubbish special effects & lowly production values where an entire village is represented by about seven people. Some of the interior castle scenes look quite good & are quite atmospheric but that's down to where it was shot rather than any great effort on the filmmakers part. It's hard to tell about the acting since all the cast are dubbed into English but the English voice actors are terrible & the dialogue just sounds ridiculous & fragmented.Terror! Il Castello delle donne Maledette is awful apart from some unintentionally funny moments, a decent castle setting & a few naked bodies, overall I thought it was tedious & pointless in the extreme.

It's Italian, it's horror...but it's not very good. The movie is cheap looking and the story is just terrible. For an horror movie it certainly isn't original and the movie is severely lacking on multiple levels.Perhaps the biggest problem with the movie is that it doesn't have a real main characters. Who exactly was supposed the hero in this one? And who exactly were the good and bad guys? It makes the movie confusing and messy to watch. It also is terribly boring all, since rarely ever something interesting happens.The movie is filled with nudity and voyeurism. The movie is basically about the servants peeping on naked women and the movie doesn't focuses enough on the horror aspects of the movie.The musical score by Marcello Gigante is just plain awful and truly laughable at times.Both the editing and cinematography are also severely lacking. The movie is incredibly simple and cheap made and its horrible put together with the editing. The cinematography looks very amateur like and it seemed that they didn't used proper lighting or a focus-puller.This Italian take on the Frankenstein franchise, in which for some odd reason also Neanderthalers are involved, is a terrible one, in which basically nothing interesting ever happens.2/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/