THE FREAKMAKER
(AKA THE MUTATIONS, 1972) DVD
Starring Donald Pleasance, Tom Baker, Brad Harris, Michael Dunn
Directed by Jack Cardiff

Subversive Cinema

“You may think you are normal, but you are all the product of mutation.”

Something of a mutation in itself, The Freakmaker combines old-fashioned mad-scientist-tampers-with-nature thrills with the most prurient of exploitation interests – that of human oddities, both real and imaginary. The end result is a minor but undeniably unpleasant horror film that rates a look for fans who seek out the oddest efforts from the sick, sick Seventies. Donald Pleasance stars as a university professor fascinated by the possibilities of combining plants and animals to create hardier and more adaptable species – or at least, that’s what he tells his students. In the comfort of his creepy Victorian home, Pleasance’s real desire – to create a race of animal-vegetable supermen with radiation – gets worked out in his home laboratory, which is festooned with all manner of carnivorous plants (warning to fuzzy animal fans: several cute bunnies meet untimely ends in the lab scenes). Tom ( Doctor Who) Baker is the horribly deformed co-owner of a carnival (Michael Dunn, Dr. Loveless from the original “Wild, Wild West,” is his partner) who provides Pleasance with unwilling test subjects, with the failures going to Baker and Dunn’s sideshow. When one of Pleasance’s students winds up as the next experiment (another failure, of course, which turns knockout redhead Olga Anthony into a goggle-eyed, green-skinned “Lizard Woman”), her pals (which include sexy but unintelligible Swede Julie Ege from Hammer’s Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires and movie Hercules Brad Harris as a visiting American professor) break out the amateur detective kits, but not before Pleasance turns wise guy Tony (Scott Anthony) into a giant, two-legged Venus flytrap that gobbles down a stewbum, and straps Ege to his operating table for her own hot dose of atomic Miracle-Gro. Suffice it to say by the time The Freakmaker reaches its fiery conclusion, the surviving cast members have learned firsthand that while it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature, it’s even worse to mess around with Donald Pleasance. But you already knew that.

It’s tempting to write off The Freakmaker as another cheap ‘70s horror movie – producer Robert D. Weinbach’s script (co-written with Edward Mann) certainly doesn’t deliver more than that with its pulpy dialogue and a subplot cribbed from Tod Browning’s Freaks. But there’s quite a bit that also shines in Freakmaker, starting with the direction by Academy Award-winning cinematographer Jack Cardiff. Since he doesn’t have much to work with storywise, Cardiff focuses on pace and (naturally) atmosphere; the film’s colors, in particular, underscore the theme of perverted nature by saturating everything in a mix of earth tones (the cast’s costumes, the London-in-autumn locations) and sickly electric greens and purples (Pleasance’s lab). When combined with the matter-of-fact images of real circus freaks (including a Human Skeleton, an Alligator Woman, two men with incredible bone disfigurements, and the jaw-dropping Popeye, who… well, I’ll let you discover that one on your own) and the plant-human mutations (which are impressive, given the budget), the overall feeling one gets from Freakmaker is unhealthiness, of things and people and places slimy and fearful to the touch, and that’s more effective than any gallon of stage blood (of course, the fact that it’s real humans that you’re feeling this way about only adds to the overall queasiness). Avant-garde jazz composer/arranger Basil Kirchin’s electronic score, which combines dissonant brass and strings with distorted sounds from nature (including the laughter of autistic children) adds another layer of creepiness, as does Pleasance’s calm and seemingly rational performance and some startling time-lapse photography of plant growth that’s used as the film’s opening credits. Now, granted, Freakmaker isn’t some lost artwork waiting for its museum debut – when it comes down to brass tacks, it’s still a monster movie, with all the required jump-outs and gross-outs – but the production value and touches of creativity help it to stand out amongst the rest of its hairy and gory cousins from the decade.

Subversive’s DVD is widescreen and offers two commentary tracks – one with Cardiff, and a second with Weinbach and Harris. All three are also interviewed in a short featurette about the film’s genesis and production, and all seem to have pretty fond memories of the short but enjoyable shoot. A brief gallery of lobby cards and the original trailer (along with spots for other recent Subversive DVD titles, including the staggering Candy Snatchers, The Gardener, and Metal Skin) round out the extras. ________________________________________________________

- Paul Gaita