The Freakmaker

Sometimes, a creative type makes a better side-man than a star. For instance, the work Jimmy Page did as a guitarist for The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin is far more interesting than anything the guy did in his solo albums. I'd say the same thing about Jack Cardiff. As a cinematographer, he contributed beautiful work on films like The African Queen and The Red Shoes. As a director, he helmed drab, workmanlike pictures like Girl on a Motorcycle and this mess of a horror film. Despite some imaginative moments and a loopy performance by Tom Baker (just before he donned the long scarf and floppy hat of Dr. Who), The Freakmaker is the kind of junky horror movie that seems to get made just because the genre is "commercially viable."

A mad scientist (played by Donald Pleasence with visible scorn for the material) is experimenting on plants, particularly man-eating plants, and, taking a page from Dr. Moreau's playbook, creates a bunch of half-plant, half-man mutations (The Mutations was the original title of the film when it played in theatres back in 1973). He strikes up a devil's bargain with the deformed Lynch (Tom Baker) to provide him with bodies for his experiments, dangling a carrot of plastic surgery to get the freakish lug to do his dirty work for him.

That synopsis actually makes the film seem like it could be kind of fun. But it's not. Rather than play up the demented elements of the story with a skewed visual style and scenery chewing performances, the film is composed in a flat, TV-movie style -- unforgivable, considering this is the guy who was behind the camera on The Red Shoes, one of the most eye-catching movies ever made -- with a lot of dialogue that is directly lifted from Tod Browning's Freaks.

Subversive Cinema does their darndest to polish this turd by serving it up with a nice transfer, two audio commentaries, and a few other special features. The producers' commentary is slightly more entertaining than the Cardiff commentary, but they seem to be under the impression that they made a great movie. This movie is not one of those "so bad it's good" movies...it's just bad. There are also trailers -- which do a good job of making the movie look like something a horror fan would want to check out -- a stills gallery, and interviews with Cardiff, Harris, and Weinbach that repeat a lot of the information from the commentaries.

The only good thing I can say about this movie is it made me want to watch Tod Browning's Freaks again, which is just a great movie all around. Maybe Weinbach lifted so much material from the script for this movie thinking it would elevate The Freakmaker and that's why he's so convinced he really did some good work. But out-and-out copying would get you an "F" if you tried to turn it in as your English homework and I'm applying the same standard here. -- Christopher Hyatt