"Freaked" (1993), Dir: Tom Stern and Alex Winters
$12,000,000 in Budget vs. $29,296 in Gross
There was a time where the movie Freaked was a very hard to find. I had first seen it at a friend's house as a child. We rented it from a video store and had such a jolly good time watching it that the very next weekend we went to rent it again, only to find someone else had. From there, pretty much every time we went to the store to rent this stupid movie, it was gone, eventually leading us to believe it had been stolen. And yes, this was pretty much everyone's story of the movie Freaked back in the good old days of VHS. Finally, the good folks at Anchor bay found the movie and re-released it on DVD about 20 years after its horrid theatrical run to a late but moderate cult following.
Freaked is the brain-child of Alex Winter, better known as Bill from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and one of those punks from Death Wish 3. Winter and the other creatures -- um, creators Tom Stern and Tim Burns had all been involved in the short-lived MTV sketch show "The Idiot Box." The movie was originally conceived as a low-budget horror flick featuring the band The Butthole Surfers, but was then re-imagined to star Winter in a much more surrealist comedy, sporting a brand of humor similar to Mad Magazine. When originally shown to test audiences, Freaked (at the time, entitled Hideous Mutant Freakz) rated very poorly. Deemed "too weird," its near non-existent theatrical run cost the studio greatly, losing Fox almost $12 million dollars in budget. Now that's a lot of potatoes!
As for the movie itself, we are introduced to sleazy former child-star Ricky Coogan, who has just recently had been summoned by the sleazy Everything Except Shoes Corporation. The head of E.E.S., Dick Brian (played by the great William Sadler) wants Ricky to be their spokesperson for their controversial fertilizer Zygrot 24, which has proved to be lethal by most countries of the world. They offer Ricky $5 million dollars to go to South America and get a first hand look at the chemicals' effects. Being the greedy person Ricky is, he accepts. On his way, Ricky brings his best friend Ernie (Michael Stoyanov or better known as "The Unfunny Brother" from Blossom) to the fictional country known as Santa Flan, where their destinies will change forever...
However, as soon as they arrive, they are stopped at the airport by a large group of protestors ready to pelt Ricky Coogan with cow sh%$. Led by a beautiful but self-righteous Julie (played by the 90s super babe Megan Ward), the activist manages to catch Ricky's eye, so Ricky pretends to be one of the protestors and manages to convince her to go for a drive. It doesn't take long before Julie discovers Ricky isn't who he says he is and is in fact the very person she came to pelt with sh@$. As they drive on to, um, somewhere, Julie notices an old billboard for a freak-show, insisting they go check it out. When the group arrives at what looks like a carnival wasteland, they meet Elijah C. Scuggs (Randy Quaid in his best role ever), the self-deemed "freak master." Suddenly Scuggs kidnaps the three, using some stolen barrels of Zygort 24 to transform them all into hideous mutant freaks. Former child-star Ricky Coogan now becomes the freak-show's lead attraction, The Beast Boy.
The most impressive thing about Freaked is its production value. A lot of money went into the effects and especially the make-up effects. The movie even hosts some of the first C.G. I recall seeing. Freaked also features some pretty bad actors in their best roles. Role call! First, we got Randy Quaid as Scuggs (who I have a feeling was the inspiration for Professor Scudworth in the short-lived Clone High), Mr. T as The Bearded Lady, Bobcat Goldthwait as Sockhead, Derek McGarth (the professor from My Secret Identity) as a giant worm, underrated actor John Hawkes (I never realized he was in this until I started researching this article) as a talking cow, and Keanu Reeves (or better known at the time as Ted) in an uncredited role as Ortiz The Dog Boy.
But describing the humor as being like Mad Magazine is pretty accurate. Sometimes Mad Magazine was spot on and other times, well, they were trying way too hard and unfortunately came up pretty dry. A lot of the jokes in Freaked fell upon it being a product of the 90s with references to The Blue Lagoon (technically an 80s reference, but a recurring 90s joke), Bob Vila, and Jake & The Fat Man (another 80s show, but 90s joke). Audiences of today would definitely not make a connection with these jokes and didn't really back then either. I guess that was the joke, but like Mad Magazine, very dry at times. Then again, some of the humor is actually quite genius in my opinion, like when all the freaks try to escape dressed as milkmen, or when we meet the pot-smoking Giant Rasta Eyeballs. There's also the lamenting hammer that used to be a wrench, and Stuey Gluck (played by Alex Zuckerman), the ugliest fan boy in the world. Definitely enough worth watching.
The most hilarious part of the whole movie, though, is William Sadler's delivery on one of the movie's best lines: "Gentlemen, might I add that all those who oppose us will stand knee-deep in the blood of their children." So good. Never gets old. Unfortunately for the movie itself, it kinda does. Probably one of the best looking comedies I have ever seen with some really great moments, but overall it's legend is more interesting than its execution. I would love to see another comedy of this magnitude some day, but with humor worth the $12 million spent.
And for your viewing displeasure, a clip that pretty gives you all the characters and gives you an idea of the overall tone of the film...
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