Alex Winter is a douchebag. Not in real life. In real life, he seems to be one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. But in Freaked he is a massive douchebag, and also the main character.
He plays Ricky Coogan, a celebrity who is about to accept a huge payday to promote something that isn’t really that good for people. He gets first-hand experience of just how bad it can be when the crazy Elijah C. Skuggs (Randy Quaid) uses it to turn Ricky into a horrible freak, after making him witness the splicing of his friend (Ernie, played by Michael Stoyanov) and a young woman (Julie, played by Megan Ward) into one conjoined individual. All three are then thrown in alongside past victims of Skuggs, including the likes of Sockhead (voices by Bobcat Goldthwait), the Bearded Lady (Mr. T), Ortiz the Dogboy (Keanu Reeves), and a few others. Will Ricky and co. ever be able to free themselves, and reverse the effects of the mad freakmaker, or will they just have to learn to live with their new bodies?
As well as having a central role onscreen, Winter also co-directs here (alongside Tom Stern) and helped to write the script (with Stern and Tim Burns). Everyone behind the camera does a great job to deliver something very funny and wildly imaginative on a budget that probably wouldn’t cover the wardrobe costs on a Bill & Ted movie (and they aren’t exactly megabudget blockbusters). It would be easy to give all of the praise to Winter, who seems to have helped things along by making use of every connection and favour that he could (ensuring a number of fun cameos dotted throughout), but no individual makes a film alone, and everyone who worked on this deserves to get their share of kudos.
The practical effects are wonderful throughout, whether they are making people look as wild and weird as possible or just creating an extra visual gag (the cowboy, played by John Hawkes, is wonderful), and Kevin Kiner provides an enjoyable and appropriate musical score.
The performances are generally over the top, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad. Staying in line with the whacky sensibility of the material, everyone feels just right in their roles. Winter is a lot of fun, Stoyanov and Ward work well together, and Quaid keeps things lively with his demented “ringmaster” turn. As well as the people already mentioned in the collection of freaks, Derek McGrath does great work in the role of Worm, Jeff Kahn is Nosey, and Lee Arenberg is The Eternal Flame (another character complemented by an effect that allows for the gag to keep working). There are others, all doing well, but I decided not to go through the whole cast here. Oh, I should also mention Alex Zuckerman though, who plays a young Coogan fan/stalker named Stuey Gluck.
Still not as well-known as it should be, as far as I am concerned anyway, Freaked is the kind of film destined to retain a relatively small, but very loyal, fanbase over the years. I am happy to count myself as a member of that fanbase, and I would love to see more people discover this little comedy gem, especially if it involves some kind of anniversary disc release that allowed fans to own it with a few nice supplementary features.
8/10
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