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[DVD Review] ‘The Freakmaker’ Has Moments But Falls Short
1972’s The Freakmaker (AKA The Mutations) is one of those movies that I really wish was better than it is. The film has a lot of good things that work in its favor. The film is directed by Jack Cardiff, the wonderful cinematographer that worked with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and John Huston. The movie stars Donald Pleasence and Tom Baker, two of my absolute favorites. And it’s partly influenced by Tod Browning’s Freaks. Yet with all these positives working in favor of the film, it ultimately falls a bit short.
Pleasence stars as Professor Nolter, a professor at a London university specializing in genetic science. When Nolter isn’t teaching, he uses human guinea pigs to experiment with intent to crossbreed plants with humans. What purposes this serves I’m not really sure and we never find out.
Assisting Nolter is Lynch (Baker), a large man dubbed the “ugliest person in the world.” Lynch earned this title due to a hideous face deformity. Because of the issues with his face Lynch is part of a traveling circus freak show. The freak show is filled with the likes of the bearded lady, the pretzel man and the alligator woman. Lynch doesn’t see himself as a freak. He’s helping Nolter with hopes that Nolter will soon be able to fix his face. Although you never really get the sense from Nolter that he even intends to help Lynch. He seems to have his own motives. Again, what those motives are we never really know.
The Freakmaker serves no purpose. There’s little to no story. You watch some freaks at a circus and that’s about it. There are some mildly entertaining effects along the way, the best being when Nolter turns some poor man into some half plant-half man thing. They’re not great effects, but they are fun and practical.
The Freakmaker would have worked better had it went weirder and crazier. You can get by without much of a story if you offer up something truly bizarre. That never happens here because there are similar movies that are far more interesting. For example the best part of this film is a dinner scene which is something that is pulled straight out of Freaks. So while that scene is fun, we’ve seen it before.
The film is available on DVD straight from Cyclone, the company that produced it. The DVD isn’t the best looking DVD, but it’s passable. I have to think that maybe the original elements aren’t in the best of shape. It does come with some interesting special features. There is a making of that gives you some insight into the behind the scenes aspects. Also included are three interviews with Robert Weinbach, Cardiff and Brad Harris. My favorite feature is an image gallery of lobby cards. I’m a big fan of the old lobby cards and The Freakmaker had some good ones.
I’d say The Freakmaker is a mostly unnecessary film that is ok. You can find some fun in it with some enjoyable moments here and there; it’s just nothing you haven’t seen before.
The Freakmaker is now available on DVD from Cyclone Productions/Vidcrest. Purchase directly from CycloneHorror.com and receive a combo pack that includes The Last Horror Movie.
Night School, director Ken Hughes and writer Ruth Avergon‘s tale of a headhunting slasher on the streets of Boston, arrived in the early Golden Age of the slasher film and never quite broke through the endurance test that other films in the subgenre, like Friday the 13th, managed to pass with flying colors. Blame it on a more cerebral tone, a crowded market, whatever you like, but saying it’s a shame that the film didn’t break through doesn’t begin to cover it.
Night School isn’t just an underrated slasher, or an underseen one. For my money, it’s one of the best films the subgenre has ever produced, full stop, and Vinegar Syndrome’s new 4K UHD restoration, arriving just in time for the film’s 45th anniversary, is must-have proof. Stacked with special features highlighting the craft of the film and its place in slasher history, and headlined by a gorgeous restoration showcasing the wonderfully textured production, this is Night School as it’s meant to be seen for slasher devotees everywhere.
So, what makes the film so effective? It starts very simply, with the revelation that a killer with a very cool knife and a motorcycle helmet as a mask is murdering young women in Boston, taking off their heads, and dropping those heads in the nearest body of water (no matter how small).
Solving the case falls on Judd Austin (Leonard Mann), a detective with an academic background who traces all of the victims in one way or another back to a local night school. There, suspicion falls on a womanizing professor (Drew Snyder) who sleeps around on his research assistant and romantic partner, Eleanor (Rachel Ward), whose own death could be right around the corner.
I’m doing my best to stay as spoiler-free as possible here, not just because I think plenty of slasher fans still need to see Night School, but because the film is quite determined to be a whodunit in the classic Italian giallo sense. The kills are brutal and elaborate, the killer deliberately covered head-to-toe in leather and a gleaming black helmet, the knife and the headhunting a disturbing signature. Avergon’s script is well-versed in the trappings of exactly this kind of story, complete with red herrings galore. And yet, by the time it’s all wrapping up, there’s also the sense that the answer was right there in front of you the entire time, something the very best films by legends like Mario Bava and Dario Argento could also achieve.
But on to the restoration: Like the best of the gialli, Night School is also a beautifully engineered film full of colors and delicate camera compositions and sound design. The opening kill, which takes place on a playground carousel outside of a daycare, is rich in exactly this kind of thing, from the cityscapes that lead into the scene to the sound of a motorcycle slowly rolling forward, its engine already dead. Cinematographer Mark Irwin, best known for his many collaborations with David Cronenberg, paints the film in rich reds, absinthe greens, and haunting, chilled blue-white light on wet Boston streets, all of which are preserved beautifully by the restoration team at work on this one.
It’s a movie that very deliberately evokes a specific place – the aging streets of Boston in the 1980s, and the halls of relatively low-level academia – and then takes that place into haunted territory, saturating every frame with color and shadow that suggests a killer lurking just out of view.
Night School is not a massively gore-heavy film, but it does deliver the slasher goods with a series of tense, often unpredictable kills and body discoveries that range from the darkly comic to the flat-out jaw-dropping. That’s thanks to the sound design, the score, the editing from Robert Reitano, and more, all of which add to the film’s giallo soul.
In every case, the scene’s geography is outstanding, and it’s easy to see where the simplest possible kill shot might land, but the film never goes for the obvious. Throw in a surprisingly (for 1981, anyway) feminist bent to the storytelling and some very progressive moments for an early slasher film, and this one fits right in with Black Christmas and The Slumber Party Massacre as a film with depth you can just keep unpacking.
That depth, helped along by a load of featurettes and two new commentary tracks featuring members of the crew, is what stands out the most in this new 4K set. Night School may be a niche film recognized mostly by horror addicts and the slasher faithful, but it deserves to be something more, a landmark on the roadmap of slasher cinema history. It’s one of the best in the genre, and this restoration highlights, underlines, and shouts that from the rooftops.
Night School is now available in 4K UHD from Vinegar Syndrome.
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