Surprisingly incoherent and boring

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

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).

This is a major, I mean MAJOR guilty pleasure for me. The film is sick, twisted, depraved, and barely a horror film at all! Yet, I liked it...and, yes, I feel somewhat ashamed. But how can you go wrong with a voyeuristic, demonicly repulsive dwarf who fondles the breast of a dead girl or teaches a hulking caveman to have his first sexual liaison with a girl they kidnap for that sole purpose(BTW - he "kills" her with his girth!). Or that same caveman hulking about with his unibrow and eating raw flesh and coming basically from nowhere? how about the hunchbacked assistant Kreegin who is having an affair with Hans the butler's wife. She likes it VERY rough - pain kinda-stuff. Then there is Hans who is a sadist. Let's not forget Goliath the other hulking man who now has a new brain. This array of characters is quite ridiculous. It is cinematic nonsense, but this film is Euro-trash at its sleaziest best. Dick Randall(under the name Robert Oliver) directs the film - really is is his one big directorial job, but he produced many similar projects and wrote the screenplays for movies like Pieces, Lady Frankenstein, and The Mad Butcher(this film has the same feel of that one the most). He is going for sleaze, and boy does he find it. The monsters are really secondary to the sexual themes, scenes, fetishes, etc that abound. And then we have Rossani Brazzi as Count Frankenstein...not Baron but count. Really? There are also the two lovely, and I mean absolutely drop-dead lovely female leads who show us much of their acting "attributes" quite freely particularly when bathing in a warm mud pit of some kind. One is the Count's daughter - beautiful blonde Simonetta Vitelli. Hot! Then there is her friend Kris who falls in love with the Count and has both cavemen - Ook and Goliath - on her like white on rice. She is even hotter and played by Christiane Rucker. Where are the horror elements? They really are not there. Brazzi is OK, the girls really don't need to act, and the rest seem like they are happy to be acting in anything though some are fairly well-known like Luciano Pigozzi(the Peter Lorre of Italy) playing Hans or Italian sword and sandal strongman Gordon Mitchell playing Igor or cult favorite Xiro Papas as the revolting Kreegin or classy Edmund Prudhom as the prefect. Then there is Michael Dunn in all his sick glory as the conniving dwarf. Dunn can play this type so well. The sets are fairly impressive for a film like this, but the dubbing is excruciatingly bad. Again, this is not for everyone. It really isn't a horror picture but more of an exploitation picture that only could have been made in the 70s. Once again I reiterate this is my favorite decade for films. People could make what they wanted the way they wanted. I saw this as part of Elvira's Movie Macabre collection. She helps it as well with her bounteous "presence" or presents depending on how you look at it. She also has some great lines to go with what is going on in the movie.

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.

Suave and charming Count Frankenstein (Rossano Brazzi, who surprisingly keeps his dignity and a straight face throughout) kicks depraved, perverted, sniveling dwarf Genz (the great Michael Dunn in his ignominious final film role) out of his castle for being a disgusting little degenerate creep. Genz befriends Ook the Neanderthal man (brilliantly played with grunting'n'growling primitive aplomb by Boris Lugosi) and plots his revenge. Director Robert H. Oliver, working from an outrageously lurid and ridiculous script, puts an entertainingly crude and leering emphasis on sleazy sensationalism: there's a substantial smattering of gratuitous nudity (the stunningly comely Christiane Royce warrants special kudos in this particular department), voyeurism, rape, necrophilia, softcore sex, and even a hunchback who enjoys rough sex (thankfully this latter one occurs off-screen). Marcello Gigante's laughably inappropriate swingin' lounge score is pretty funny. A big knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred climactic fight between Ook and Frankenstein's enormous hulk of a monster Goliath (brawny behemoth Loren Bwing) is likewise totally hilarious. Poor Edmond Purdom merely takes up place in an insignificant supporting part as an ineffectual constable. Heavy-handed morale: "There's a bit of a monster in all of us. Especially when there's fear." A campy hoot.