#5 - Castle Freak (1995)
(dir. Stuart Gordon)
"Castle Freak" is such a great name for a movie. I was not at all surprised to learn that the movie started off as just a title and a poster. Full Moon basically gave Stuart Gordon free reign to do whatever he wanted with the movie, as long as it contained some kind of castle and some kind of freak, so he wrote a story that is loosely based on Lovecraft's "The Outsider". Well, "loosely" is an understatement - there are about 5 minutes of the film that come from that story, and the rest is completely new. It doesn't have a particularly Lovecraftian feel to it, and I wouldn't have known that it was based on anything he wrote at all if I hadn't watched some of the special features on the disc.
When a distant relative in Italy dies, American John Reilly inherits an old and somewhat run-down castle. He brings his family there for a visit before he sells the property, but they soon discover that the castle wasn't as empty as they thought. The former Duchess' deformed son, who has been chained up in the basement for 40 years, manages to escape and begins to terrorize the family. From there, things start getting a little out of control... Gordon is not afraid to make the viewer intensely uncomfortable, but there is a good mix of humor here that keeps things fun.
This isn't quite as good as some of Gordon's earlier Lovecraft adaptations (e.g., Re-Animator or From Beyond), but it does have a lot in common with those classics: Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton as the leads, a score by Richard Band, some great practical effects, and Gordon's signature sick sense of humor. The production values in general are much higher than I would usually expect from a direct-to-video release, and I had a really good time watching it.
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