Grief and Forgiveness in CASTLE FREAK
By Nat Brehmer
Stuart Gordon gave the world one of the greatest horror comedies ever made with his debut film, Re-Animator (1985). He followed that up immediately with his second H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, From Beyond (1986), and the quirky adult fairy tale, Dolls (1987). Both Re-Animator and From Beyond starred Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton in the leading roles, and those roles reversed from film to film. In Re-Animator, Combs cemented himself as a horror icon as Herbert West, while Crampton’s Meg was a damsel in distress by the third act, also tied to one of the most infamous scenes in horror history. In From Beyond, she got to play the mad scientist, while Combs was in many ways the damsel. That is a unique thing about many of Gordon’s movies. He had a regular cast of returning actors and loved to use them in as different roles as possible. This no doubt comes from his theatre background and is such a unique thing he brought to the world of independent horror.
Many of those early Stuart Gordon films were made for producer Charles Band’s Empire Pictures. When Empire gave way to Band’s direct-to-video studio Full Moon in 1989, Gordon returned to direct The Pit and the Pendulum (1991). This was a loose Edgar Allan Poe adaptation and very different from the quirky horror comedies he had done previously. Gordon’s Pit and the Pendulum was a Gothic tragedy about the hypocrisy of the Spanish Inquisition, with a terrific performance by Lance Henriksen. It is one of the best movies Full Moon ever produced, and it completely sets the stage for Castle Freak (1995). Like Pit and the Pendulum, Castle Freak stands apart not only from Gordon’s early movies but by and large from Full Moon’s output as a whole. Far removed from the likes of Puppet Master and Demonic Toys, Castle Freak is a dark, gothic family drama. It is an intimate portrait of a decaying family that, yes, also happens to feature a freak contained in the underbelly of an expansive castle.
The story follows John Reilly (Combs), his wife Susan (Crampton), and their blind teenage daughter, Rebecca (Jessica Dollarhide), as John inherits an Italian castle after a distant relative passes away. The ice between the parents is so thin it is already breaking. This is a family that desperately needs a change of pace, something to “fix” their broken marriage, but at the same time, the last thing they need is to be locked in with one another. They cannot communicate, and so they are naturally both pushed over the edge when stuck together in a country where they not only don’t know anybody, but don’t speak the language and thus can’t really communicate with anyone else. What happened between them can’t be fixed simply by a change of scenery. In fact, what happened between them can’t really be fixed, period.
One night, John was driving drunk and got into an accident that killed his five-year-old son and cost Rebecca her eyesight. They lost a child, the most heart wrenching loss a parent can go through, and they can’t go through it together because she blames him for it and he knows it’s completely his fault. He killed their son. If the lingering specter of their son wasn’t enough, Rebecca’s blindness is a constant reminder of what he did. This is such an engaging movie even without the presence of the Castle Freak but knowing that the Freak is there in the castle, first caged in the basement and then moving through the walls and hidden corridors, it adds a great sense of tension to an already incredibly tense story. As a horror film, it can be a dour, grim watch.
The titular Freak is of course responsible for most of the movie’s most brutal moments, of which there are many. What’s interesting, though, is that nothing the Freak, Giorgio, is doing is out of any real sense of malice. He eats a cat because he is abused and starved. He bites off his thumb to escape his shackles because if he stays where he is, he is literally going to starve to death. The person who was keeping him a secret was also the person keeping him alive, and when she died, his days were numbered from that moment on. Most of Giorgio’s horrific actions are the result of simply mimicking things that he has witnessed.
He attempts to simulate intercourse with a sex worker after watching John have sex with her, even though Giorgio himself has no genitals. He attacks and kills many people because he is abused; this is what has been done to him all his life, and it is the only language that he knows. When the police converge on the castle toward the end of the film and Giorgio’s killing spree begins in earnest, even that is reasonable from his perspective, because he is simply defending the only home he has ever known. The only time Giorgio feels truly unsympathetic to the viewer is in his predatory gaze toward Rebecca, particularly toward the end.
Like any great Gothic narrative, Castle Freak deals in extreme emotions. They aren’t heightened for the sake of it, but rather are simply due to the gutting circumstances, giving the film a truly uncomfortable realism. Susan blames John for the death of their son and explicitly states that she wishes he had died instead, and that she cannot give him a moment of peace because it is her duty to punish him because God would not. She doesn’t just want him to die — it is the only thing left that she wants.
When we are introduced to these characters, forgiveness does not seem possible. Whether it’s Susan forgiving John or John forgiving himself, it is a foreign language to them. They couldn’t speak it even if they wanted. This gives the characters an amazing arc, which becomes clear after John hits his lowest point. He cannot take back the accident that blinded his daughter, killed his son, and destroyed his family, for which he was absolutely responsible. He cannot have any of those things back. But if he can save his family from something else, from this new horror, maybe then he can be redeemed, in his own eyes, let alone the eyes of anyone else.
The casting of Giorgio, the Castle Freak, is perhaps the greatest example of Gordon’s theatre troupe casting mentality out of the director’s entire career. On paper, the role is simply a silent monster that would usually go to a stuntman. That’s not to say that many stuntmen haven’t turned in great performances as those monsters, but Gordon didn’t just cast an actor, he cast Jonathan Fuller, who was the romantic lead in Gordon’s previous film, The Pit and the Pendulum. That physicality and emotion brought the role to another level and is, alongside the performances of Crampton and Combs, a huge reason why the movie works as well as it does.
Castle Freak often gets listed as one of director Stuart Gordon’s H.P. Lovecraft adaptations, but it really isn’t. There’s actually only one shot in the film that is an homage to a Lovecraft story. When the Freak recoils at his own reflection, only to reach out and touch the glass and understand that he’s looking into a mirror, that is a direct reference to the same scene happening at the end of Lovecraft’s story “The Outsider.” Other than that, the script is wholly original, written by Gordon’s frequent collaborator Dennis Paoli.
Castle Freak is unlike anything else in the Full Moon catalogue. It has the distinction of being the first Full Moon feature to win a coveted Fangoria “Chainsaw Award” for best limited release/direct-to-video film. That honor is highly earned. There is no question that it is one of the best Full Moon titles in the company’s long history, as well as one of the best direct-to-video movies ever made. 🩸
About
Nat Brehmer is the author of Puppet Master Complete: A Franchise History and wrote for the franchise’s official video game, Puppet Master: The Game. As a blogger and horror journalist he has written for Bloody Disgusting, Dread Central, Wicked Horror, Fangoria, ReMIND Magazine, and many more. He currently lives in Florida.
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