Film Review: FREAKED (1993)

Actor Alex Winter is best known for his work in The Lost Boys (1987) and the two Bill & Ted films so most people don’t realized that he’s also a writer and director.  After writing and directing several short films he and Tom Stern co-directed the oddity Freaked (1993).  Winter stars as Ricky Coogan, a famous child actor down on his luck who is now prompted to be the spokesperson for a toxic waste company in South America.  With his most trusted friend Ernie (Michael Stoyanov) and activist Julie (Megan Ward), Ricky finds himself at the laboratory of Elijah Skuggs (Randy Quaid) who has been using the toxic waste to create and experiment on people whom unwillingly show up at his property.  Ricky, Ernie, and Julie soon find themselves Skuggs next freaks in his crazy menagerie of toxic created monstrosities that are kept in a barn out of public view.

Refusing to bow down to Skuggs rules and live the remainder of his life as a victim of Skuggs’ cruel experiments, Ricky hatches a plan to get all of his fellow freaks together to return them to normal and escape from Skuggs’ laboratory.

Winter also writes with Stren and Tim Burns this odd comedy that’s similar in tone to his Bill & Ted films.  The film was ignored upon initial release but has garnered a huge cult following due to the unusual story and eccentric cast of characters played by such names as Mr. T, Bobcat Goldthwait, Brook Shields, and William Sadler, to name a few.  The makeup effects are quite good for the time although heavy stylized for the this type of film.

Freaked is not a film for everyone as it is a product of its time with commentary on toxic waste usage and teen stardom but for people who love The Toxic Avenger this film is right up your alley.

Film Review: SIDESHOW (2000)

Nothing is more terrifying than a carnival full of fantastic sideshow freaks and oddities as audiences will discover in Sideshow (2000).  A group of high school students visit a traveling carnival and revel at the freaks contained within but when they receive a cryptic message of their future from a fortune teller their paths become intricately linked to the carnival whose darker secrets lie just below the surface. 

Abbot Graves (Phil Fondacaro) is the carnival ring leader who controls the fate of the high school students who disappear one by one becoming permanent parts of the freakish sideshow where their wildest desires become deadly nightmares.  

Written by Benjamin Carr and directed by Fred Olen Ray this is a fun and entertaining indie film that may lack the overt gore and horror of other films but makes up for it with its charm and Fondacaro who steals every scene he’s in.  Fondacaro is given a lot of room to explore his devilish character and the special makeup effects are effective.

Sideshow doesn’t break any new grounds as a horror film but it is an entertaining ride that you won’t soon forget and will have you wanting to buy a backstage pass to see the freaks once again.

Book Review: SCI-FI MOVIE FREAK by Robert C. Ring

Every sci-fi movie fan should have a book that chronicles some of the best that the genre has to offer but sadly Robert C. Ring’s Sci-Fi Movie Freak is not one of them.  There is no doubt that Ring’s book chronicles a lot of sci-fi films and most notably a lot of classics which have indeed been overlooked over the years (and some even forgotten).  Ring’s book is broken up into 5 main chapters which include “Best of the Best,” “Vital Viewing,” “Further Essentials,” “Lesser-Known Gems,” and “The Failures.”  This amounts to chapters that more-or-less all sound the same except it’s a manner of opinion which would be in the “Best of the Best” verses “Vital Viewing” verses “Further Essentials” chapter.  A more definitive grouping could have been more helpful such as a sub genre designation.  Sci-fi is such a diversified genre that there could have been an infinitely better way of categorizing the films into chapters especially since it is a reference book. 

Ring does put the films in chronological order within each chapter, which is actually a good thing as the reader gets to watch the progression of the genre from one film to the next up until modern day.  He also touches upon a lot of genuine classics but I’m not exactly sure about his tone towards some of the films he’s decided to highlight.  His thoughts on It Came From Outer Space (1953), which is in the “Further Essentials” chapter are, “There are plenty of moments of cliché and simplicity, however like the sappiness contained in the opening…that mar the experience for the modern viewers.”  He also describes RoboCop (1987), “Though RoboCop has shortcomings as a story, it is a smartly made film.  It is packed with stock bad guys and pushes through key elements with a lack of logic…”  I sometimes wonder why he bothered to include these entries in the first place rather than pick other films in their place.

I also question some of his choices of inclusion as sci-fi films such as 28 Days Later (2002), 28 Weeks Later (2007), The Host (2006), or The Return of the Living Dead (1985), to name a few.  These films obviously don’t really fit into the sci-fi mode and Ring doesn’t really explain why he’s chosen to include these films.  This leaves the reader pondering what his criteria is for judging the films.

I do have to give credit to Ring for including a good sampling of animated sci-fi films which usually go absent in these types of books but he does highlight Iron Giant (1999), Akira (1988), Metropolis (2001), and Fantastic Planet (1973), to name a few.  For some odd reason Ring felt compelled to included TV specials in his analysis of the genre with Family Guy: Blue Harvest (2007) and The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) which seems more to populate the book with additional Star Wars reference films (he lights four out of the six films already plus the spoof Spaceballs).  

For me, there was more wrong with the book than right and with there being plenty of other books on the genre out there this is a book that can be passed by.

Book Review: HORROR MOVIE FREAK by Don Summer

There are a thousand books out there that cover every facet of the horror film so why should you pick up Don Summer’s Horror Movie Freak?  Well, if you’re like me and you’ve already read those thousand other books then there is no reason to pick up this one as there is nothing new in this book that you haven’t already read before, but those new to the horror genre or don’t have a very large obsession with the genre but wanted to know more than Summer’s book is actually a very good starting point.  

 

Summer’s book is a very good primer for opening up the vocabulary for horror film enthusiasts as it covers a wide range of sub genres and time periods as well as foreign films and low budget oddities as well.  This is a well rounded book that strives to cover it all.  The chapters are broken up into easy to reference headings such as “Monsters,” “Asian Horror,” “Classics,” etc. Summers even opens the book with a chapter called “Why We Love Horror Movies” which goes a long way to explaining why audiences have continuously gravitated towards these films.  Within each chapter there is a list of notable films which are briefly plot detailed but more importantly explain why they are included in the book over other films.  This goes a long way in explaining why Summer includes some while not others although he does provide a list of notable mentions at the end.

The book doesn’t dismiss the age of the remake either as a chapter at the end is dedicated exclusively to all manner of the infamous remakes from the notable classics such as John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and Dawn of the Dead (2004) to the derided remakes of The Eye (2008) and Pulse (2006). Scream Queens are touched upon (or those women in horror who have made a lasting impact in the genre) as well as a special section entitled “Ten Days of Halloween,” which list the best films for horror fans to watch just before the best holiday of the year.

Each of the entries for the films is brief and a quick read followed by a huge collection of posters and productions stills from the film providing a very lavish book that every horror fan will cherish.  There is even a copy of George A. Romero’s original classic Night of the Living Dead (1968) on DVD at the back of the book.  This is a film that should be included in every one’s video collection (whether a horror fan or not).

All in all this book is a perfect jumping on point for new horror fans or those wanting to open up their horror film vocabulary while hard core fans will find little use for this book.  Thankfully, Summer keeps the book entertaining and fast paced so even if you are a hard core fan (such as myself) you may still come across something that you didn’t already know.