User reviews

Count Frankenstein (Rossano Brazzi, best known as the star of the screen version of SOUTH PACIFIC) is busy at work at his castle home, sending out his gravediggers to get corpses for his experiments, and tinkering around with a tied-up cave man named Goliath (check out that unibrow). The doc's beautiful daughter Maria (played by "Simone Blondell") shows up with her fiance Eric (Eric Mann) and friend Krista (Christiane Royce aka Rucker) whom the count takes a liking to. One of his assistants is the dwarf Genz (3'4" Michael Dunn), a real sick-o type who fondles dead bodies, spies on the women bathing and having sex, and is eventually kicked out on the castle. He teams up with Ook (Boris Lugosi aka Salvatore Baccaro), yet another cave-dwelling Neanderthal man outcast, and the two plot to get back at the doctor. In one scene the duo kidnap a girl from town, tie her up, rape and kill her. Genz tells Ook, "I'm going to teach you the pleasures of life!" Meanwhile, Goliath (Loren Ewing) escapes and starts killing and townspeople with torches show up for the finale.

Helen Keller must have been serving on the MPAA ratings board when they gave this nudity and sickness-filled effort a PG rating. All in all though, it's a pretty silly combo of tried and true exploitation elements from the period and nothing much surprising happens.

Score: 3 out of 10

"Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks" is rancid 70's euro-exploitation at its absolute finest! Not a single line in the screenplay makes any sense, the females look hot & willing, the males are all sick perverts and the supposedly horrific make-up effects are so cheesy they cause you to laugh instead of to cringe. The residents at Count Frankenstein's castle are not only freaks, they're crazed sexual deviants! He has an army of lunatics surrounding him, all assisting in his macabre scientific research, and each of them is worthy of his/her own horror spin-off! There's the horny caveman lying on Frankenstein's operating table, the hunchback who has aggressive sex with the main butler's wife and – of course - the depraved midget Genz, who fondles dead girls' bodies and has peepholes all around the castle to stare at people having sex! Count Frankenstein is a bit of a sleaze-bag himself. When his gorgeous daughter returns home, he immediately falls in love with her sexy friend and even involves her in his demented experiments. Genz the dwarf gets banned from the castle, but he teams up with a roaming Neanderthaler in the woods and teaches him the 'art' of raping innocent women. Everything comes neatly together in the end, when the townspeople no longer tolerate the abnormalities going on at the castle and form an angry mob. As you can tell, there's a whole lot going on in this crazy flick, but it's unbelievably incoherent. This wacky production features none of the tense Gothic atmosphere of all the previous Frankenstein tales and I don't think director Robert Oliver ever intended to focus on suspense. This film is all about shlock, sleaze and the ravishing naked bodies of Simonetta Vitelli (as Frankenstein's daughter) and Christiane Rücker (as Frankenstein's mistress). The cameras follow them each time they take a bath or go swimming, preferably with Genz the sniveling dwarf spying on them. The horror-sequences are scarce, short and actually quite irrelevant. The photography and use of music are horrendous, but they acting performances are surprisingly tolerable. Rossano Brazzi doesn't seem to be very interested in playing the titular character, but the freaks and particularly the girls do a fine job. Utter trash, but vastly entertaining cult material.

The Italians were the kings of the Horror genre from the 60s to the 80s, and, as far as yours truly is concerned, the combination of this genre, era and country is as great as cinema can possibly get. The rise of Italian Horror/suspense cinema started with atmospheric Gothic tales (such as the brilliant films by the ultimate master Mario Bava, Antonio Margheriti and Riccardo Freda) in the late 50s and early 60s. In the 70s, a time when the Giallo genre had replaced the Gothic tale as the dominant sub-genre Italian suspense cinema, some (but by no means all) of the Italian Gothic Horror films that were still being produced were very low-budget and sleazy, but nonetheless elegant Exploitation efforts.

TERROR! IL CASTELLO DELLE DONNE MALEDETTE aka. FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS (1974) is a super-cheesy slice of 70s Italian B-movie Gothic Horror which will certainly not give anybody the creeps, but which is incredibly entertaining nonetheless. Directed by the American Dick Randall, the movie puts a lesser emphasis on the typically Italian elegance and atmosphere, and, sometimes looks more like one of the many contemporary Spanish Gothic Horror films (which is probably due to the low budget). Sleaze-fans should not be scared off by the PG rating (as according to IMDb), since this little trash gem contains plenty of female nudity, perverted characters and some very cheesy gore effects. The film doesn't take itself too seriously, and the demented characters alone make it worth a look for my fellow Euro-Exploitation fans.

Count Frankenstein (Rosanno Brazzi) lives in a castle with a bunch of freaky helpers including a necrophiliac midget, a hunch-back who has rough sex with the housekeeper when her sadistic husband (Luciano Pigozzi) is not around. His hot daughter (Simonetta Vitelli) comes to visit with her fiancé and an equally hot friend (Christiane Rücker). Both of the women have exhibitionist tendencies. What follows is a sleazy and incredibly entertaining succession of very absurd horrors.

While FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS is below-par in terms of style and elegance by the high Italian Gothic Horror standards it is still very stylish for a rather nonsensical B-Movie of the kind in international comparison. The most well-known faces in the cast are former strongman and B-movie regular Gordon Mitchell (in the role of the undertaker) and the Peter-Lorre-lookalike Luciano Pigozzi, a great supporting actor who was in all sub-genres of Italian cult-cinema, including several films by Mario Bava and Umberto Lenzi.

Overall FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS is a sleazy, very cheesy, and often unintentionally funny trash-gem that is incredibly entertaining and should not be missed by true lovers of European Trash flicks. However, one should definitely be acquainted with the many great Italian Gothic Horror films before watching fun trash like this one. For Italo-Cult buffs like myself this film is often hilarious and vastly entertaining.

With a trash cast consisting of Edmund '2019: After The Fall of New York' Purdom, Gordon 'Frankenstein '80' Mitchell, Luciano 'Rather a lot of films' Pigozzi and Mike 'Strike Commando' Monty, you'd come to this film expecting a lot, and leave feeling kind of let down. How can a film featuring a necrophile dwarf get it so wrong?

Well for starters it probably should have spent more time concentrating on the horror angle than all the other stuff it fannies about with in the first hour of the film. To set the scene: Count (?) Frankenstein lives in a huge castle with his band of freaks who like to do grave robbing with him, including sidekick Luciano Pigozzi, a hunchback guy who's having it off with Luciano's wife, then there's big Gordon Mitchell, and a dwarf who looks like Nicholas Cage in miniature form who gets up to all sorts of mischief, including fondling exhumed girl corpses and donking up Frankenstein's newly acquired dead Neanderthal.

These cavemen have been plaguing the countryside for ages, and the local villagers are blaming Frankenstein for that and the girl's body going missing. It's up to Edmund Purdom as local policeman to sort all that out. Plus, just to increase the cast and pad out the film more, Frankenstein's daughter, boyfriend and her top heavy pal come to visit, which gives the film and excuse for nudity and most of the staff of the house peeking in on naked ladies (through the eyes of a portrait, naturally).

The plot trundles along lamely while we watch Luciano Pigozzi scheme against the dwarf, and the dwarf gets exiled and ends up shacking up with another Neanderthal, played by The Beast from The Beast In Heat, a man who has no need for make up to play either. The movie then concentrates on the more important plot points like whether or not rabbit should be eaten raw or cooked. I suppose some skinny dipping does keep from falling asleep, mind you.

Things are all gearing up for a Neanderthal Frankenstein monster versus regular Neanderthal battle at the end, but the film completely forgets to include any horror, unless savage throttling counts as horror. Worse still, Gordon Mitchell is barely in it and has nothing much to do, and although Luciano Pigozzi at least stands out as the scheming servant, Edmund Purdom just sort of runs around pointing at the things.

Not the best Gothic horror then. Shame. It's too well made to be stupid in that sense either.

The daughter of Dr Frankentein : Simonetta Blondell pays a visit - along with her boyfriend and a friend : Christiane Rucker- to her father Doctor Frankenstein : Rossano Brazzi. While the mean Doctor is creating a monster named Goliath : Loren Ewing. Meantime , on the contryside inhabits a Neardenthal Man : Sal Boris or Salvatore Baccaro attacking villagers , the latter befriends a nasty midget : Michael Dunn, a helper who was dismissed by Count Frankenstein and is seeking vengeance. Later on , a police inspector, the prefect Edmund Purdom is investigating the kidnap of young girls and subsequent murders.

Disjointed Psychotronic B movie with chills, thrills, nudism and disconcerting events. It results to be a mixed bag in which various monsters in Universal style are unexplainingly jointed. There shows up a Neardenthal Man, a monster named Goliath created by doctor Frankenstein, a lascivious dwarf , the ordinary hunchback, among others. All of them are reunited with no much sense and along the way causing destruction, wreak havoc and deaths. Here appears some familiar faces of the Italian B genres such as : Gordon Mitchell as Igor, Salvatore Baccaro under pseudonym Boris Lugosi , and Luciano Pigozzi nicknamed as Alan Collins considered to be the Italian Peter Lorre . The motion picture was regularly written, produced and directed by Dick Randall. He was a regular producer who financed a lot of exploitation films , such as : "Pieces" , "Supersonic Man", "Angkor Cambodia Express", "Pleasure Island" , " Slaughter High" , "The Mad Butcher" , "La Casa Della Paura" , among others . Rating 4/10.

Working under the pseudonym of Robert H. Oliver, prolific exploitation producer Dick Randall has a crack at directing with the wonderfully titled Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks; although Randall's inexperience in this particular discipline is evident from the film's poor pacing and frequently awkward visuals, the final result delivers such a hefty dose of cheesy Gothic nonsense and random silliness that it's hard not to enjoy just a little bit.

The daft plot throws in everything one might expect from the genre—a perverted, vengeful dwarf, a hunchbacked assistant, a mad scientist's lab, a thunder storm, buxom beauties, and villagers armed with pitchforks and flaming torches—and then goes one better by introducing Neanderthal cavemen into the mix!! Rather surprisingly, the film delivers very little in the way of gore, but Randall compensates somewhat for the lack of blood by providing exploitation fans with some sleaze instead, including frequent female nudity, voyeurism, rape, adultery, and even a spot of corpse fondling (courtesy of the deviant dwarf).

It's Italian, it's horror...but it's not very good. The movie is cheap looking and the story is just terrible. For an horror movie it certainly isn't original and the movie is severely lacking on multiple levels.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the movie is that it doesn't have a real main characters. Who exactly was supposed the hero in this one? And who exactly were the good and bad guys? It makes the movie confusing and messy to watch. It also is terribly boring all, since rarely ever something interesting happens.

The movie is filled with nudity and voyeurism. The movie is basically about the servants peeping on naked women and the movie doesn't focuses enough on the horror aspects of the movie.

The musical score by Marcello Gigante is just plain awful and truly laughable at times.

Both the editing and cinematography are also severely lacking. The movie is incredibly simple and cheap made and its horrible put together with the editing. The cinematography looks very amateur like and it seemed that they didn't used proper lighting or a focus-puller.

This Italian take on the Frankenstein franchise, in which for some odd reason also Neanderthalers are involved, is a terrible one, in which basically nothing interesting ever happens.

2/10

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I had been wanting to view this notorious film ever since catching its trailer on the "Extra Weird Sampler" DVD from Image a couple of years ago; however, now that I have, I found the experience not nearly as rewarding in a 'so bad it's good' way as I had anticipated. With so much that is wrong here, it is almost a pity the end result is not more entertaining; in fact, I would go so far as to say this is the nadir of the Italian Gothic Horror genre! Former matinée' idol Rossano Brazzi is Count(!) Frankenstein who experiments on Neanderthal beings (apparently, they can still be found in certain European caves!) with the help of his henchmen – lecherous dwarf Michael Dunn (a long way from his Oscar-nominated role in SHIP OF FOOLS [1965]), top-hatted(!) Gordon Mitchell, Luciano Pigozzi and the obligatory hunchback (who has the hots for Pigozzi's unattractive wife)! For what it is worth, here we get the luxury of two cavemen (who naturally get to grips practically at first sight!): one has a prominent dome-shaped forehead and the other is played by an 'actor' under the hilarious assumed name of Boris Lugosi! Edmund Purdom, another veteran presence, has little of substance to do as the local Police Chief (in the classic tradition of Universal horror movies, the townsfolk are forever on the point of picking up their torches to storm the Frankenstein castle!) but he does get to utter the would-be profound closing line: "There is a bit of the monster in all of us"!! Also involved, needless to say, are two girls – one is Frankenstein's daughter (played by the attractive offspring of hack film-maker Demofilo Fidani) and the other her best friend, who catches the eye of both the Count and one of the Neanderthals! – with a penchant for skinny-dipping in the steaming waters of the caves. After being banished from the castle for setting the Police onto Frankenstein's grave-robbing antics by way of his tiny footprints, Dunn takes to the caves himself and proceeds to instruct the Lugosi character (who seems to have nothing on his mind but the profuse consumption of raw meat!) into the ways of love-making; his first attempt, however, results in the horribly mangled body of a local girl!! As I said at the start, the film is certainly among the goofiest of its kind ever made (a poor extra named Mike Monty playing a "Paisan" is even credited twice during the end credits!) but, unfortunately, not that much fun while it is on – the fact that helmer Randall was more typically employed as a producer, and whose sole directorial effort this proved to be, may have had something to do with it.

This is a mishmash of old Universal horror cliches done up European style by the notorious Dick Randall, who is known for marrying Jayne Mansfield and producing a string of wildly eccentric exploitation films mostly in Europe. This movie has a horny dwarf, a Neanderthal man in feather boots played an actor calling himself Boris Lugosi(!) and a Frankenstein monster who looks like Bozo the Clown. And it's always fun for fans of Eurotrash cinema to spot regulars like Gordon Mitchell and Luciano Pigozzi giving it their all. This Gothic goofiness should satisfy all fans of 70s Eurohorror.

This is an incredibly goofy monster/horror movie with some softcore porn and a fairly nasty rape/murder scene so don't let kids watch it, but it's great fodder for the riffers at Cinematic Titanic. The movie is so bad it makes you laugh even without all the jokes, and the jokes make it hysterically funny.

FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS is a genuine howler of a movie, an Italian "Sexy Horror" thriller made at the tail-end of the Euro Horror explosion and sleazy to a very enjoyable tee. Rossano Brazzi plays "Count Frankenstein", carrying on the family traditions of monster making using spare parts dug up from the local cemetery by his goon squad of misshapen, demented assistants. When the boneyard runs short of choice pickings he is not adversed to using the freshly murdered corpses of various supporting cast members.

The main thing to recommend this movie is it's audacity and utterly bizarre cacophony of weirdness that it hurls at the viewer. Almost nothing in the film is done in good taste, the assault on one's sense of propriety topped off by a scene where a mutated Neanderthal type & the lab midget kidnap a buxom young lass, tie her up, and enjoy the fruits of their labors. The film bombards viewers with a seemingly endless array of nude female bodies undressing, bathing, skinny dipping, and being ravished by the various goons in the gallery.

Little Person performer Michael Dunn -- best known for playing little Alexander on that weird STAR TREK episode with the telekinetic Platonians -- steals the show as the horny, vengeance minded dwarf. But the cast is actually filled with some top ranked Euro Genre talent: Luciano Pigozzi (best known for his work with Antonio Margheriti), frequent Euro Horror monster Xiro Papas, the always mousy Edmund Purdom, sexy Simone Blondell, and most fascinatingly Gladiator/Muscleman Matinée Idol Gordon Mitchell, who probably helped to finance the movie once the market for Spaghetti Westerns dried up.

I mean look, what can you say about a movie titled FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS?? It's smutty, sleazy, non-pornographic monster movie mayhem, with a heavy emphasis on atmosphere & fleshy thrills over any sense of coherency. There's a Frankenstein monster (albeit without the Universal makeup look: Get over it, Frankenstein's monster can look any way someone wants), the sex-crazed dwarf, the Neanderthal (played by one Salvatore Baccaro, billed here as Boris Lugosi but best remembered by fans of Italo Sleaze as MONKEYBOY!! from Luigi Batzella's BEAST IN HEAT), women taking hot sauna baths together, some interesting gore effects, and drippings of Euro Horror atmosphere. The complete lack of morals sets it on a different plane than the Hammer horror films that it apes, but it's all in good fun, the low budget making it seem all the more patently absurd.

The reason why I call it a "howler" is that it's practically impossible to keep a straight face while watching a movie like this. One ends up howling with laughter not so much at how "bad" it is but how absurd the whole concoction seems. You also can't make 'em like this anymore, there is zero political correctness to be found, the attractive young women are all objectified into sex mavens and Count Frankenstein is mean to the little dwarf. If you can suspend your insistence on big-budget entertainment this is actually a sick, riotous little time killer that should make a fantastic party movie, provided of course all of your friends are a little sick.

6/10 for having the nerve to show it to us.

Not on the basis of this film, which proves once and for all that Italy is NOT the place for your horror film needs.

In "Il Castello della paura" (or "Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks", as I saw it), Dr. Frankenstein is building a horrible monster out of spare body parts (hmmm...where have I heard that one before?), while Italian men slap their women around, a dwarf runs amok, a caveman rips off the names of TWO horror legends and many scantily-clad (or non-clad) women get their big break in movies.

Sheesh. Give me a big, huge break, PLEASE. Haven't I suffered enough with the B-movie sludge from my youth, that I had to watch this when I was older and knew better? And the "talent"! There are actually names here you'd recognize! Brazzi, Dunn and Purdom had made great things before but, after this stinker, not since.

And, excuse me...BORIS LUGOSI? Whose bright idea was it to take a guy who just plays a grunting caveman and give him the first and last names of two horror greats...and he does basically NOTHING?? The name reminds me of other "actors" like Bermuda Schwartz and Joy Bang...but I'm off the track, where was I?

Oh yeah, this. This is the dumbest, dullest and most lethargic horror movie I've seen (well, since "Hellraiser II") and if the Italian movie industry ever makes any more horror movies, I hope they do us a favor and keep them local.

No stars for this monster mish-mash.

Even die-hard fans of the 60's Italian Gothic horror films of Bava, Fredda, et. al. would have to admit that those films aren't known their careful, logical plotting. But in the 1970's when these films were freed from the constraints of censorship (and good taste) and fell into the hands of less talented directors, they REALLY went off the rails, veering between downright silly and completely insane (sometimes both at the same time). And nobody suffered more during this period than Frankenstein's monster.

In this film "Count Frankenstein" (apparently he was demoted from Baron) takes time off from his building his monster to woo his busty adult daughter's even bustier friend. Meanwhile he has fired his lecherous hunchback dwarf assistant after catching him feeling up female corpses (did I mention this was originally rated PG?). The disgruntled and vengeful dwarf then does what any disgruntled, vengeful dwarf would do in a movie like this--he finds a group of Neanderthal men living in a nearby cave and befriends a particularly large one named "Oog". The pair plot their revenge (although not before taking time off to watch the Count's daughter and her friend skinny-dipping). As you might imagine the end is a ridiculous battle between caveman and Frankenstein's monster.

This film is similar to "Lady Frankenstein" but not as good. Lead Rossano "South Pacific" Brazzi is frankly not as good of actor as Rosalba Neri/Sara Bay (he probably doesn't look as good naked either, but fortunately we never find out). It also doesn't compare to "Flesh for Frankenstein" lacking that film's self-consciously artistic NYC irony, but all these Italian Frankenstein films are similar enough to give lie to claims of "F. for F." co-director Paul Morrisey (the guy who replaced the tripod in Andy Warhol's home movies) that his Italian collaborators made no significant contribution to that film. On the other hand, this movie is better than "Frankenstein '80" (although its PG rating precludes the rape-by-Frankenstein's-monster angle of that one). It's also better I than "Frankenstein All'Italia" (I'm not sure though since that one's only available in Italian, and I only watched it because of my strange crush on the late, obscure Italian actress Jenny Tamburi). As Italian Gothic Frankenstein sex movies go than, this one is fair to middling. You can take that as as a recommendation or not.

This is the most screwed up and divergent version of "Frankenstein" that I have ever seen. It bears almost no similarity to the Mary Shelley novel or other film versions I've seen and is a pretty terrible film.

The Baron is played by the Italian actor Rossano Brazzi--who just seemed all wrong for the film. Michael Dunn (best remembered as the dwarf from the "Star Trek" episode 'Plato's Children') plays a dwarf who is mostly there to get yelled at and bullied by practically everyone. And, there is a giant--called a 'Neanderthal Man'! But what really is important in this film is to watch people take their clothes off for no particular reason. However, the version from archive.net (which, in a rare case is not linked to IMDb's site) is porn-free (I did NOT say "Born Free") as all the nudity has been sliced out--but you can still see quite a bit of friskiness! Nothing is to recommend this low-budget mess. While not as bad as "Dracula Versus Frankenstein", it is pretty bad and not worth your time unless you are also a glutton for punishment.

This film begins with a large Neanderthal being attacked by angry villagers and apparently killed. The scene then shifts to a castle where "Count Frankenstein" (Rassano Brazzi) and some of his servants are digging up a recently buried corpse in a cemetery to further his experiments. Not long afterward three visitors arrive at his castle which include his daughter "Maria" (Simone Blondell) , her fiancé "Eric" (Eric Mann) and Maria's best friend "Krista" (Christiane Royce). Needless to say, Count Frankenstein is quite pleased to meet them and intends to make their stay as comfortable as possible. The only problem is that there is some infighting among the Count's servants which not only threatens the peace but also the safety of everyone inside the castle as well. And let's not forget that the local villagers remain fearful of everything in the vicinity. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a rather bizarre horror movie which moved at a rather slow pace and also seemed badly edited at times. Additionally, although I liked the performance of Michael Dunn (as "Genz") and the presence of the aforementioned Christiane Royce, the plot seemed too muddled for me to rate this film any higher than I have. Below average.

First of all I have to say I love Italian horror. Secondly I love Hammer House Of Horror. This movie was a mix of both and for me it didn't work. It was a dreadfully poor copy of a movie or movies seen before and lacked in the Italian gore I love, crazy music and characters that strip naked for no good reason. It also lacked the story, quality and characters of Hammer. I watched it with beer and it didn't help it. Let this one go there is better out there. FAR BETTER. I watched the RARO Italian version of this poor substitute for a movie and learn'd even the director wouldn't put his real name to it! This version was digitally remastered and the picture quality was fantastic the sound was good. Remastering couldn't help the acting or story.

When I was 11 or 12, I remember liking these kind of films late at night on TV, but time has moved on and so has film-making tastes.

I find it very hard to watch these poorly directed poorly dubbed movies any longer.

Brazzi plays mad Dr. Frankenstein, Dunn is an evil dwarf and Lugosi (no relation to Bela) is a Neanderthal man. Add a monster named Hulk, and some nude women for sexploitation value, and you have the plot.

In other words, there IS no plot!

The film is typical 70's shlock Italian horror. Old dark castle, lot's of zooming to eliminate the need for an actual production crew with multiple camera set ups, and really bad dubbing that over shadows the bad acting!

This mix makes for one smelly cocktail. Unless you're 10 or 11, then you may very well love it.

This is better then the original Frankenstein. Most you probably never saw the original Frankenstein. It a silent movie from 1910 that is twelve minutes long. The 1931 version of Frankenstein is better. It has better actors. It also has a better story line. It is scarier. But still this a good movie. Something that as the same story line as the book Frankenstein and has some nudity does not make it porn. It is not porn. This is an i.t.a.l.i.a.n movie. And you are forgetting i.t.a.l.i.a.n.s are very lead back about nudity a lot more then some countries are. This movie is pretty scary. The acting is pretty good. And the story line is great. If you like really scary movies then you should see this movie.