Really glad I found this movie, very funny

Horrendously gross but also too funny to pass up, especially if you love creature features, “Freaked” is one of the best underrated finds i’ve had the pleasure of seeing. Co-written and directed by “Bill and Ted’s” Alex Winter, the film was originally going to be a low budget horror film featuring the band Butthole Surfers before going through a number of rewrites on its way to being picked up by 20th Century Fox. Bad test screenings killed the film- it only played on 2 screens- a shame since it achieved cult status ever since.

Packed with wall to wall cameos, Winter stars as former child actor turned pompous pitchman Ricky Coogan. Being interviewed by Skye Daly (Brooke Shields), he details how being hired to shill a toxic pesticide for mega corporation Everything Except Shoes turned him into a disfigured monster. As he and his buddy Ernie (Michael Stoyanov) touch down in Latin America, they meet an environmentalist named Julie (Megan Ward) and all three decide to take in the freak show of mad carnival barker Elijah Skuggs (Randy Quaid). But Skuggs doesn’t just find freaks so much as he creates them and soon all three are joining his motley crew of uggos.

Winter and co-director Tom Stern have a sketch-comedy-centric sense of humor, no surprise since they both collaborated on MTV’s “The Idiot Box” before this. They throw so many broad gags at you in the opening moments- aiming at everything from soulless corporations to slapstick shtick on an airplane- that it sets the tone of the fantastical right away.

Their anarchic spirit is the film’s best source of laughs, plus the make-up and other effects done by three different companies are a hoot. Ricky is turned into a half-man-half humpback gargoyle; puss squirts from his misshapen forehead for great added emphasis. Ernie and Julie are turned into siamese twins. They also meet a bearded lady, a worm man, a dog man, a cow man, a man who’s been turned into a sock puppet, and Skuggs also has a pair of giant eyes, Rostafarian no less, as henchmen. As if this weren’t funny enough, Mr. T, Keanu Reeves, and Bobcat Goldthwait play some of these creatures; T by far stealing much of the show.

“Freaked” doesn’t have a great command of pacing; it always seems like Winter and Stern are more concerned with laughs than moving the film along so even for an 80 minute movie, the plot, which involves escaping Skugg’s backwoods carnival of horrors, lacks urgency. But give it time and there’s usually a good laugh (this movie is apex mountain for “milk men” gags), sight gag, or incredibly disgusting new creature on the way. The Butthole Surfers supply much of the soundtrack, which also works, and there’s a lot of fun to be had with it. Some compared the sardonic humor in “Freaked” to “Waynes World”, which is pretty apt, but more so it’s kinda like “Nothing But Trouble”, only done the right way.

For more reviews, check out Craig James Review on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtQoj2LBSsES1QTa8a6bpRA