She Freak
|
She Freak |
|
|
|
|
| DVD |
Scares/Tension  |
Skin |
Gore/Violence  |
Movie Overall  |
|
||||
|
|
1967 Starring:
The film starts out with with some horrified onlookers seeing a freak in a circus show. The camera then flashes back to the story of how the (as yet unseen) freak became that way. This was obviously lifted from the 1932 classic Tod Browning film, "Freaks", but aside that there is little resemblance between the two movies. The opening credits roll on for almost 5 and a half minutes while footage taken at a California state fair is shown. In fact, this is one of director/editor Byron Mabe's favorite ways of segueing from one scene to another. Most of the film is just people milling about the carnival, riding rides, putting up the attractions, tearing down the attractions... In other words, unless you really like carnivals, the movie is kind of boring. There is a story however, and it entails a girl, Jade Cochran (Claire Brennen) who will "lie, beg, cheat or steal" to get out of the dusty West Texas town she is stuck in. She waitresses at a greasy spoon and gets hit on by her married boss. When an advance man for a circus comes in and orders lunch, Jade gets a lead from him for a possible job at the circus when it comes to town. Her boss overhears this and later fires her for wanting to become a "carnival slut". So when the carnival rolls through town, Jade lands a job as a waitress, serving the carny folks during their brakes. One of the girls is a stripper who befriends Jade and she ends up staying with her in her motel room. The stripper, Moon (Lynn Courtney), tells Jade about all of the potential, marry-able men in the carnival. The best option is Steve St. John (Bill McKinney, who actually had a long career in movies with this being his one of his first), who owns and runs the freak show. We quickly find out that Jade is horrified by the freaks which for obvious reasons becomes a problem as she flirts with Steve as much as possible. Before too long, they are dating and a definite "item". One problem however, is that Jade is also shacking up with Blackie Fleming, the ride supervisor. Blackie is your typical dark and dangerous type and as Moon told Jade, "He thinks he's God's gift to women". Maybe not all women, but Jade unfortunately cannot keep away from him, even after she and Steve become man and wife. Obviously trouble ensues, and we soon learn the secret of how the horrible freak from the beginning of the movie became the way she is. They also show her finally and what we see is a legless, scarred Jade playing with snakes in a pen filled with hay. It is actually a pretty good makeup job with the exception of the fake looking lidless eye. She is also very creepy when she motions with her fingers for you to come closer. A pretty good scene at the end, but man, what a long time it took to get there! There is maybe 40 minutes of actual action or dialogue in the film. The rest is just filler to make the film feature length. On the disk itself, there is a commentary track with the producer and writer of She Freak, David F. Friedman. He does say that he saw Tod Browning's Freaks when he was 9 years old and that out of the at least 10,000 movies he has seen in his life, that is one of a half dozen or so that made a lasting impression. Friedman, who is known primarily through his collaborations with H.G. Lewis on 2000 Maniacs, Blood Feast, Color Me Blood Red and others, is a pretty interesting guy and his memory of the production of She Freak is quite good. He does note that this is one of his favorite films he made because of his long love for carnivals. Before being involved in movies he worked at carnivals and in more recent years has also been involved with them. The video goes from out of focus and grainy to amazingly clear. It just depends which scene you are watching. The sound is Dolby 2.0 mono and was even throughout, if not a little flat. The extras are the previously mentioned commentary track with David Friedman and also some newsreel footage from the 30's of carnival barkers hawking their freaks and oddities. There is also some newsreel footage of a couple of sets of Siamese twins talking with the men that they love. The newsreel segments is only 8 minutes and 28 seconds long however, and I was wishing that Something Weird could have added some more to it because it was fairly interesting. This is a fairly typical type release for Something Weird Video, and has it's moments, but I am glad I rented it instead of buying it. Although it does sell for around $15, which is a pretty good price for a SWV release. |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
14 May 03 |
