What we have here ladies and gentlemen is an uncanny treat that manages to delight, disgust and dumbfound in equal measure. Castle Freak is the tale of, you guessed it, a freak who lives in a castle. That’s it. Yes there is a bit of plot thrown in to sustain the movie’s 90 minute running time, but to be honest it is simply a well meaning distraction from the pure grubby joy of watching a rank, withered mutant stalking around an old castle, getting up to mischief and generally fucking with people’s shit. You really have to take your hat off to director Stuart Gordon of Re-Animator and Dagon fame for his purity of vision and frank disregard for extraneous nonsense like narrative tension or suspension of disbelief.

I for one literally cheered out loud when Jeffrey Combs appeared and exclaimed to no one in particular, “I can’t believe I’ve inherited a castle!”. I thanked the lord Jesus Christ for the flash back that divulges that he has killed his son and blinded his teenage daughter in a drink driving incident, a mistake for which his wife won’t forgive him. I was frankly ecstatic when Combs falls off the wagon and has some really creepy, pissed up sex with a local prostitute in the castle’s wine cellar. But nothing compares to the scene in which Castle Freak himself captures the brass from a comatose Combs and tries to have sex with her, only for it to be revealed in a sort of reverse Crying Game moment that Castle Freak has no penis! It is a scene that would be oddly touching and poignant if it wasn’t so hilarious, made more so by the fact that he seems to have a fully functioning pair of testicles – talk about adding insult to injury!

Everything about Castle Freak is perfect, from the bad dubbing through to the rushed and crudely edited ending. It also has one of those great, jaunty scores that makes you want to sing the title of the film along to the music #Castle Freak, Castle Freak, Here He Comes, The Castle Freak…#. Yes it’s absolute trash but it’s lovingly made trash that is under no illusions that it is anything but the demented offspring of a bastardised genre. And let’s be honest, who doesn’t enjoy a good old fashioned tale of a cock-less grotesque tormenting a disintegrating family in a gothic chateau?