Film Reviews:

She Freak

(Byron Made, US, 1966)

A cheesy, very low-budget remake of Tod Browning's seminal Freaks, from David F. Friedman producer of Two Thousand Maniacs and Blood Feast. This monotonous feature is only worth watching for the amusement value it provides. Cafe waitress Claire Brennan dreams of bigger and better things. So she joins a circus, marries the owner and gradually alienates all the circus employees (including the very unfreaky 'freaks') as she begins to take over the running of the business.

There are long, tedious sections without any dialogue whatsoever and what post-production dubbing there is is pretty dreadful from both technical and script perspectives. There's LOTS of padding footage throughout of circus folk doing what circus folk do, including a silent SIX minute sequence of people putting up tens... and taking them down again! The film stock grade changes constantly and the sound recording is so bad at times that it makes it impossible to hear the dialogue. Billy Allen's totally inappropriate music is also worth noting.

Eventually, we get what we expect and the lead finally gets her comeuppance as she is attacked by the circus freaks. It all ends exactly as Browning's Freaks, with the mutated Brennan as one of the circus' exhibits, a showman recounting the tale we have just witnessed. Worth watching only if you've a lot of spare time in your life and fancy a few laughs. Otherwise, if it's tales of challenged humans your after then make it Tod Browning's far superior original.

Rob Dyer