The late, great Donald Pleasance (of Halloween fame) plays a scientist named Professor Nolter who is currently studying human mutations and meat eating plant life. He's an odd duck, to say the least, but he really puts his all into his work. Nolter hopes to some day make something out of his studies so that he can stop making a living as an English professor and dedicate himself to his beloved arcance science full time.

What Nolter's university pals don't realize is that he has a full fledged secret laboratory deep within his huge home, where, with the help of his facially disfigured assistant Lynch (Tom Baker of Dr. Who fame!), he uses his laser and his secret serums of dubious origin to turn people into giant plant-human hybrids. In short, he makes freaks. Lynch also has a hand in running a circus sideshow, an endeavor he undertakes with some help from a dwarf friend of his named Burns (played by Michael Dunn).

While on the surface Lynch and Nolter might seem to have an innocent enough relationship, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Nolter uses Lynch to acquire live human guinea pigs for him to test his strange experiments on. More often than not this results in some sort of genetic mutation, which in turn, Lynch is able to use in his carnival freakshow. It's a win-win situation for these two miscreants until they get sloppy in their work and start kidnapping Nolter's own students! You'd think Nolter would know not to smoke his own stash, so to speah, but no, the temptation is too great. To make matters worse, the freaks that Lynch holds captive in his sideshow are starting to get restless – they know what the pair are up to and they're not happy about it at all…

The cover art on this DVD release states that this is the "70s version of the cult classic, Freaks!" and that's not far off from the truth. Directed by Oscar winner Jack Cardiff, this film borrows very heavily from Todd Browning's 1932 film and throws in some bits and pieces from a few other influential horror films that came before it as well, just for good measure. This gives Donald Pleasance plenty of room to go over the top and chew some scenery and it gives the relationship between he and Lynch some interesting room to grow but doesn't result in a particularly interesting or original story. This one just takes a little bit too long to get going for its own good despite the presence of some great, if very unrealistic, make up effects (the bug-a-boo eye guy is one of the coolest creatures to ever hit the carnival circuit) and plenty of interesting man eating plant type critters.

The most interesting part of The Freakmaker (also widely known under the alternate title of The Mutations) is the very unusual look that the film has. The colors are all over the place in this film, with plenty of strange shades of red and green and yellow painting the film in an eerie light. On this level, the film is very successful as it has atmosphere to spare and plenty of creepy charm and great sets (the laboratory and the sideshow itself are great).

While the cast and effects technicians all do a fine job, ultimately the film moves just a little too slow and borrows a little too heavily from other, better film to achieve cult classic status. It's a fun movie with a few interesting moments and it is very definitely worth seeing if you're a fan of seventies horror films or of Donald Pleasance, but is it a masterpiece? Nah. Not really, just a fun time killer.

The DVD

Video:

The 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen presentation that Subversive have given to The Freakmaker is very impressive indeed. Aside from the odd bit of print damage showing up in the form of a speck here and there and a few scenes with some moderate grain, the image is in great shape and the colors come through very, very nicely. Black levels stay strong from start to finish and there are no problems with mpeg compression, though I did see a bit of line shimmering in a few spots. Flesh tones look good and there's a pretty solid level of both foreground and background detail present in the image. Nicely done.