Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks

Two vaguely related storylines provide a flimsy excuse to link a series of exploitation scenes involving violent murder, kinky sex, and sexual violence.

The flimsy plot threads involve a standard mad-scientist type, here cunningly named Count Frankenstein, performing experiments on a bizarre "missing link" he has captured in the local countryside. Meanwhile his former henchman, a misbehaving dwarf, befriends yet another hulking missing link creature and, partly to bring suspicion upon his hated former employer as well as to appease his own lust, commits rape and murder with assistance from his new friend.

Apart from the ugly cook who enjoys rough sex with one of her freakish co-workers, Count Frankenstein's visiting daughter, her fiance and a university friend are on-hand to provide the bulk of the nude glimpses and sex scenes. At one point the daughter and the female friend share a mineral mud-bath in a cave. Since this scene fails to move the plot along, has no affect on the on-going story, and does not even lead to sex (despite some initial hints that suggest it might be proceeding down that path) we must assume it was included solely so it could be shown out-of-context in the trailer to suggest that more could be seen in the actual film.

Mildly amusing and somewhat intriguing, but by no means any good.

The daughter of Dr Frankentein : Simonetta Blondell pays a visit - along with her boyfriend and a friend : Christiane Rucker- to her father Doctor Frankenstein : Rossano Brazzi. While the mean Doctor is creating a monster named Goliath : Loren Ewing. Meantime , on the contryside inhabits a Neardenthal Man : Sal Boris or Salvatore Baccaro attacking villagers , the latter befriends a nasty midget : Michael Dunn, a helper who was dismissed by Count Frankenstein and is seeking vengeance. Later on , a police inspector, the prefect Edmund Purdom is investigating the kidnap of young girls and subsequent murders.

Disjointed Psychotronic B movie with chills, thrills, nudism and disconcerting events. It results to be a mixed bag in which various monsters in Universal style are unexplainingly jointed. There shows up a Neardenthal Man, a monster named Goliath created by doctor Frankenstein, a lascivious dwarf , the ordinary hunchback, among others. All of them are reunited with no much sense and along the way causing destruction, wreak havoc and deaths. Here appears some familiar faces of the Italian B genres such as : Gordon Mitchell as Igor, Salvatore Baccaro under pseudonym Boris Lugosi , and Luciano Pigozzi nicknamed as Alan Collins considered to be the Italian Peter Lorre . The motion picture was regularly written, produced and directed by Dick Randall. He was a regular producer who financed a lot of exploitation films , such as : "Pieces" , "Supersonic Man", "Angkor Cambodia Express", "Pleasure Island" , " Slaughter High" , "The Mad Butcher" , "La Casa Della Paura" , among others . Rating 4/10.

Count Frankenstein (Rossano Brazzi, best known as the star of the screen version of SOUTH PACIFIC) is busy at work at his castle home, sending out his gravediggers to get corpses for his experiments, and tinkering around with a tied-up cave man named Goliath (check out that unibrow). The doc's beautiful daughter Maria (played by "Simone Blondell") shows up with her fiance Eric (Eric Mann) and friend Krista (Christiane Royce aka Rucker) whom the count takes a liking to. One of his assistants is the dwarf Genz (3'4" Michael Dunn), a real sick-o type who fondles dead bodies, spies on the women bathing and having sex, and is eventually kicked out on the castle. He teams up with Ook (Boris Lugosi aka Salvatore Baccaro), yet another cave-dwelling Neanderthal man outcast, and the two plot to get back at the doctor. In one scene the duo kidnap a girl from town, tie her up, rape and kill her. Genz tells Ook, "I'm going to teach you the pleasures of life!" Meanwhile, Goliath (Loren Ewing) escapes and starts killing and townspeople with torches show up for the finale.

Helen Keller must have been serving on the MPAA ratings board when they gave this nudity and sickness-filled effort a PG rating. All in all though, it's a pretty silly combo of tried and true exploitation elements from the period and nothing much surprising happens.

Score: 3 out of 10

This is a mishmash of old Universal horror cliches done up European style by the notorious Dick Randall, who is known for marrying Jayne Mansfield and producing a string of wildly eccentric exploitation films mostly in Europe. This movie has a horny dwarf, a Neanderthal man in feather boots played an actor calling himself Boris Lugosi(!) and a Frankenstein monster who looks like Bozo the Clown. And it's always fun for fans of Eurotrash cinema to spot regulars like Gordon Mitchell and Luciano Pigozzi giving it their all. This Gothic goofiness should satisfy all fans of 70s Eurohorror.

Even die-hard fans of the 60's Italian Gothic horror films of Bava, Fredda, et. al. would have to admit that those films aren't known their careful, logical plotting. But in the 1970's when these films were freed from the constraints of censorship (and good taste) and fell into the hands of less talented directors, they REALLY went off the rails, veering between downright silly and completely insane (sometimes both at the same time). And nobody suffered more during this period than Frankenstein's monster.

In this film "Count Frankenstein" (apparently he was demoted from Baron) takes time off from his building his monster to woo his busty adult daughter's even bustier friend. Meanwhile he has fired his lecherous hunchback dwarf assistant after catching him feeling up female corpses (did I mention this was originally rated PG?). The disgruntled and vengeful dwarf then does what any disgruntled, vengeful dwarf would do in a movie like this--he finds a group of Neanderthal men living in a nearby cave and befriends a particularly large one named "Oog". The pair plot their revenge (although not before taking time off to watch the Count's daughter and her friend skinny-dipping). As you might imagine the end is a ridiculous battle between caveman and Frankenstein's monster.

This film is similar to "Lady Frankenstein" but not as good. Lead Rossano "South Pacific" Brazzi is frankly not as good of actor as Rosalba Neri/Sara Bay (he probably doesn't look as good naked either, but fortunately we never find out). It also doesn't compare to "Flesh for Frankenstein" lacking that film's self-consciously artistic NYC irony, but all these Italian Frankenstein films are similar enough to give lie to claims of "F. for F." co-director Paul Morrisey (the guy who replaced the tripod in Andy Warhol's home movies) that his Italian collaborators made no significant contribution to that film. On the other hand, this movie is better than "Frankenstein '80" (although its PG rating precludes the rape-by-Frankenstein's-monster angle of that one). It's also better I than "Frankenstein All'Italia" (I'm not sure though since that one's only available in Italian, and I only watched it because of my strange crush on the late, obscure Italian actress Jenny Tamburi). As Italian Gothic Frankenstein sex movies go than, this one is fair to middling. You can take that as as a recommendation or not.