We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
CASTLE FREAK (2020)
It took me a long time to warm up to director Stuart Gordon’s 1995 H.P. Lovecraft-inspired horror film Castle Freak – in fact, I even have a greater appreciation for it now than I had when I wrote about it just seven years ago – but one person who clearly always had a spot in her heart for the concept is Castle Freak cast member Barbara Crampton. Crampton was such a Castle Freak fan, she even produced a remake (or “reimagining”, as she preferred to call it) of the film twenty-five years after starring in the original.
Gordon’s take on Castle Freak had drawn inspiration from the Lovecraft story The Outsider, a simple story about a man who has been trapped in a castle for as long as he can remember. Finally escaping from the place, he realizes that the people he comes across are terrified of him because he has a monstrous appearance. Gordon and screenwriter Dennis Paoli turned that into a story of a man who was kept imprisoned by his mother for more than forty years and subjected to torture and mutilation. When he finally escapes, a bloodbath ensues. For the reimagining, director Tate Steinsiek and writer Kathy Charles decided to work in elements of Lovecraft’s “elder god” Cthulhu mythology, including the Necronomicon, the god Yog-Sothoth, and ideas from the story The Dunwich Horror. So what was basically a very simple slasher-esque story has been turned into something more complicated, with a “cosmic horror” twist that I really wasn’t into... But I can’t deny that it did make this Castle Freak even more Lovecraftian, in a way, than its predecessor was.
Gordon and Paoli’s story had centered on a family that inherited a castle in Italy from an aunt they didn’t even know they had. There was John, his wife Susan, and their teenage daughter Rebecca – and they were a miserable bunch, as John and Susan’s marriage was crumbling and John was recovering from alcoholism after being behind the wheel in a car crash that took the life of their son J.J. and caused Rebecca to go blind. In the Steinsiek and Charles version, Rebecca (Clair Catherine) is a twenty-something who was blinded in a post-party car crash where her boyfriend John (Jake Horowitz) was driving. That hasn’t ruined their relationship, though. And when Rebecca learns that she has inherited a castle in Albania from the biological mother who gave her up for adoption, John goes with her to check it out... And invites some of their friends there for a housewarming party, despite Rebecca understandably wanting to leave their partying days behind. Yeah, John is not cool.
As in the original film, there is a hideous freak lurking in the castle that likes to creep and perv on people while they have sex... and this freak eventually emerges from the shadows to start knocking people off. Actually, the freak in this movie is a “freakette”, a female... and the gender swap is far from the biggest change they brought to this character.
Some of the new elements that were brought to the Castle Freak “reimagining” were interesting, but the execution of the story was quite lacking in comparison to the original film. Gordon’s film had a very dark haunted house tone to it, but much of the newer version has a generic look and feel to it. Not even the scenes where the freak confronts victims are as thrilling as they should be. Seeing how lackluster a version of Castle Freak can be has boosted my appreciation of the original film even higher. Sometimes you don’t realize how good and effective something is until you see something else try to follow in its footsteps and fall on its face. I’m not saying the 2020 Castle Freak is bad, it just can’t live up to what came before, despite the effort that went into making this something bigger and more dazzling.
The following review originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
AMITYVILLE: AN ORIGIN STORY (2023)
The Amityville brand has gone completely out of control in recent years. Low budget filmmakers have been taking advantage of the fact that anyone can slap “Amityville” into the title of their movie, flooding the market with titles like Amityville in the Hood, Amityville in Space, Amityville Karen, Amityville Cop, Amityville Vampire, Amityville Shark House, and The Amityville Vibrator. I’m not saying these movies are bad. I haven’t seen them. But it’s clear that the Amityville name has drifted far away from the stories that made us take notice of that name in the first place. So even though we’ve heard the story of George and Kathy Lutz moving into a haunted house and we know the DeFeo family was murdered in that house, it was a smart idea on the part of MGM, the company that owns the rights to the core Amityville franchise, to put together Amityville: An Origin Story. A docuseries that takes us back to where this all began: 112 Ocean Avenue on New York’s Long Island.
Over the course of An Origin Story’s four episodes, director Jack Riccobono reminds us what made Amityville such a scary place. Through interviews with Lutz and DeFeo family friends, as well as Christopher Quaratino (formerly Christopher Lutz), who was a small child when his family briefly lived on Ocean Avenue, this series digs deep into both the DeFeo family murders and the haunting experiences the Lutzes claim to have had in the house the DeFeos were killed in. There’s even stock footage of an interview with convicted killer Ronnie DeFeo.
While some will accuse of the Lutzes of fabricating the haunting story, this docuseries doesn’t give a whole lot of air time to skepticism. In fact, it often seems intent on proving the haunting in an effort to creep out the viewer. The episodes were also edited with an aim to unnerve – so this isn’t the most snappily edited documentary you’ve ever seen. Lingering shots of rooms and items are supposed to set your nerves on edge, but if you’re not creeped out you’ll just be wishing they had cut these moments so the episodes would be a bit shorter. (Each one is around 50 minutes long.)
The series even covers potential explanations for the haunting, including the possibility that the house was built on a Native American burial ground – and therefore there’s an angry spirit that wants to take possession of males who live in the house to get revenge – or that George Lutz may have drawn evil spirits into the house by practicing Transcendental Meditation in an ill-advised way. It tells of the paranormal investigators that checked out the house, including the Warrens, who are now best known for inspiring the Conjuring franchise. And it covers the book deals individuals signed. The movie deals. The world tour George and Kathy Lutz went on to tell the story of their haunting.
Skepticism mainly comes up in the wake of the book publications and the release of the first two movies. We’re shown that the family who moved into 112 Ocean Avenue after the Lutzes never experienced anything out of the ordinary. There’s a fascinating bit of archive footage where a young girl who was friends with one of the murdered DeFeo daughters shows off the infamous “Red Room” in the basement, revealing it to be an innocuous storage space. The most interesting comments come from Quaratino, who says strange things did happen in the Amityville house, but George Lutz enhanced the story with plenty of fiction. Which Quaratino, clearly not a George Lutz fan, is not happy about at all.
A bit could have been trimmed from Amityville: An Origin Story, but overall its four episodes were an interesting viewing experience. And in these days when “Amityville” doesn’t mean much anymore, this is a good refresher on why the village first caught the world’s attention.
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