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Freakmaker (1972)
By lngway2go | June 4, 2008
(aka Mutations)
Director: Jack Cardiff
Producer: Robert D Weinbach
Screenplay: Robert D Weinbach, Edward Mann
Starring: Donald Pleasence, Tom Baker, Julie Ege, Jill Haworth, Brad Harris, Michael Dunn, Scott Antony
The Freakmaker is probably one of the more interesting efforts to merge the horror and science fiction genres from the 1970’s. The seeds of this intriguing piece of cinema have obviously been sown together from another classic period for horror cinema, the 30’s. The effectiveness with which Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) and the classic mad scientist elements from James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) are quite startling.
Professor Nolter (Donald Pleasence) is giving a bio-chemistry lecture to his students where he explains his theories on the subject of mutations. It is his belief that all humans are mutations, and there is a need to induce and create mutations of our own choosing in order to improve the human race. After the students leave the class it is apparent that they are already onto professor’s mad scientist tendencies, believing his theories to be somewhat…out there.
While walking home one of the professor’s students, Bridget, passes a midget who is putting up a poster for a traveling circus and Freak Show. She fails to notice, but the man putting up the poster doesn’t fail to notice her. When she enters the park, the man begins to follows her. Along with another midget they continue to follow her silently until she spots what is happening. She runs from them, and their little legs give chase. She is finally accosted by Lynch (Tom Baker) as he springs from the bushes to grab her.
Lynch is one of the owners of the circus and Freak Show, and he is a giant of a fellow but has heavily deformed features. He has a severe hatred of his own deformity and those like him, even going to the extremes of refusing to consider himself like one of the many Freaks in the sideshow. His hideously deformed face is covered for the majority of the film, and when with it’s uncovered it’s hard to tell that the man behind the make up is Tom Baker (Doctor Who). Lynch’s impressive height helps align him somewhat to Frankenstein’s monster in James Whale’s original Frankenstein. In The Freakmaker, Lynch is not the the mad scientist’s creation, but rather is being offered a cure from his deformity by giving his servitude to Professor Nolter. Much like Frankenstein’s monster, you can’t help but feel for Lynch, as he struggles with his appearance in a world where appearance is everything if you want to be accepted as a full fledge member of society.
After Lynch kidnaps the girl he takes her to the circus, and then eventually to the professor who is using human bodies in his medical experiments. The Professor is experimenting on speeding up the growth of plants, and even going as far as to make attempts to merge plants and animals to create a self sufficient human who could, in theory, take its food from the sun. Poor Bridget is about to be his latest experiment.
Fellow students and friends of Bridget, Tony Crydon (Scott Antony), Lauren (Jill Haworth) and Heidi (Julie Ege) begin to wonder where Bridget could have disappeared to when they go to pick up the visiting Professor Brian Redford (Brad Harris) from the airport. The arriving professor has come to meet Professor Nolter, and be a witness to his genius.
In the Professor’s next class he brings out the big guns, literally. He uses a big ray gun to age an orange so that it rots before the class, he then reverses the process to the classes amazement. He tells them of his theory of merging plant and animal in an effort to incorporate the best elements of both species. After the class he takes Professor Redford to his house and shows him the extend of his experiments. The professor is impressed, but slightly disturbed by the depth of the experimentation, and he does not yet know anything about the human experiments.
When the group of students take the visiting Professor Redford to the circus, they cannot resist going to have a gander at the freaks on display. The Freakmaker takes it cue from Freaks, and rather than relying on special effects, which would have been costly, they’ve hired real life ‘freaks’ to appear in the film. The freak show includes a whole host of human mutations; the human skeleton, the monkey woman, pretzel man, popeye, alligator skin girl, and the human pin cushion. Tonight’s show though, features the special appearance of the lizard woman, a first time appearance.
By this time we are obviously ahead of the game though, for we know full well that the Lizard Woman is none other than Bridget - Professor Nolter having used her to create another mutation. To see the Lizard Woman there is an extra fee and when the students approach the midget selling tickets they notice a necklace he is wearing, a necklace which is very similar to Bridget’s. When they confront the midget they are turned away and refused entry to the newest freak.
The use of real life freaks has its draw backs… The acting of the sideshow freaks isn’t exactly what you could call good. It’s fine, if you like your acting on the same kind of level as early John Waters, otherwise it leaves a lot to be desired. The rest of the cast do a capable job, so it’s not really that big of a deal, but the scenes where the freaks have dialogue amongst themselves it’s almost as if you are watching a different film.
Later that evening Tony is sure there is something fishy going on. He heads back to the circus to investigate and discover just what is going on, and what their involvement with Bridget is. When he enters the circus though, Lynch spots him and gives chase. Will Tony be able to escape before he’s turned into a weed? Um, I mean a vastly improved human mutation!
There are many instances during The Freakmaker where the special effects have a very z-grade flavor, especially in the latter half of the film. And disappointingly, during many of the scenes of experimentation on the human subjects very little is actually shown. It is during these scenes that some kind special effect would have given the film some extra depth, but we are left empty handed. Most films of this ilk would have continued on in this disappointing vein, but The Freakmaker is luckily different. If you are able to over look the lack of effects in places, and the poor effects in others, you won’t be able to help but be impressed with the effects employed during the laboratory scenes. It is here that we bare witness to some of the professors ’successful’ experiments. There are a vast array of weird and wonderful plants on display, from plants that bleed blood to plants that feed on animals. These effects give a real false impression of the size of the budget, because it really is hard to imagine such impressive effects being employed with such success when taking into consideration the films relatively small budget.
Not only are the effects impressive, for the most part, but so is the overall look of the film. It is more than apparent that the film had an impressive technical crew working behind it, a crew that have successfully taken a film that could easily have fallen fowl of it’s failings. But no, The Freakmaker has risen above the odds and reached a level few films of its nature have reached. It’s hard to see why this film hasn’t been more widely seen, or even talked about. It’s not perfection, but it sure has managed to rise to the occasion.
Topics: Science Fiction |