''Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks'' ( it, Terror! Il castello delle donne maledette) is a 1974 Italian horror film.

Plot summary

Neanderthal Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While the ...

man is lynched by villagers and Count Frankenstein brings the monster back to life. Trying to avoid detection from the authorities and the locals, his creation escapes and wreaks havoc.

Cast

Rossano Brazzi Rossano Brazzi (18 September 1916 – 24 December 1994) was an Italian actor. Biography Brazzi was born in Bologna, Italy, the son of Maria Ghedini and Adelmo Brazzi, an employee of the Rizzoli shoe factory. He was named after Rossano Ve ...

as Count Frankenstein * Michael Dunn as Genz * Edmund Purdom as Prefect Ewing *

Gordon Mitchell Gordon Mitchell (born Charles Allen Pendleton; July 29, 1923 – September 20, 2003) was an American actor and bodybuilder who made about 200 B movies. Biography Charles Allen Pendleton was born in Denver, Colorado, and began working out in ...

as Igor * Loren Ewing as Goliath *

Luciano Pigozzi Luciano Pigozzi, also known professionally as Alan Collins (10 January 1927 – 14 June 2008), was an Italian character actor. A long-time staple of Italian genre cinema, Pigozzi was noted for his resemblance to Peter Lorre and appeared in s ...

as Hans * Xiro Papas as Kreegin * Salvatore Baccaro as Ook (credited as Boris Lugosi) * Eric Mann as Eric * Laura De Benedittis as Vald *Robert Marx as Koerner *

Christiane Rücker Christiane Rücker (born June 12 1944) is a German actress.Gerhardt & Abel p.138 Selected filmography * '' Holiday in St. Tropez'' (1964) * ''How to Seduce a Playboy'' (1966) * '' The Blood Demon'' (1967) * '' Carmen, Baby'' (1967) * '' Take Off ...

as Krista (credited as Christiane Royce)

Production

Italian film critic and historian Roberto Curti stated that production details of the film were "shady if not contradictory". These include the identity of the director of the film. Among the different hypotheses of who directed the film included Spanish actor Ramiro Olvieros and producer Oscar Brazzi, cinematographer

Mario Mancini Mario Mancini (born Leonard Inzitari; June 21, 1966) is a retired American professional wrestler who mainly worked in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) as a babyface jobber from 1984 to 1991. He is WWE legend The Undertaker's first opponent ev ...

, producer

Dick Randall Sir Richard John Randall (13 October 1906 – 15 November 1982) was a senior Australian public servant. He was Secretary of the Department of the Treasury between October 1966 and October 1971. Life and career Dick Randall was born ...

and screenwriter William Rose. The Italian copyright agency SIAE certified that director Robert H. Oliver was a pseudonym of Mancini. Actor

contradicts this, saying that the director was Robert Oliver, while the actress Simone Blondell recalled only that the director "spoke English, he wasn't Italian" Among the crew, assistant director Gianlorenzo Battaglia denied Mancini directed the film, stating that "the American director left the film because of disagreements with the producer, and so Mario finished it on his own. I'm not 100% sure though!" The film was shot in late 1972 and finished in early 1973.

Release

''Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks'' was distributed theatrically in Italy by Nettunia Film on 19 February 1974. It grossed a total of 51,005,000

Italian lire The lira (; plural lire) was the currency of Italy between 1861 and 2002. It was first introduced by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1807 at par with the French franc, and was subsequently adopted by the different states that would eventually f ...

on its domestic release. The film was released in the United States on Aquarius Releasing and Box-Office International Pictures in January 1975. The film was released in the United States under various titles including ''Terror Castle'', ''The House of Freaks'', ''The Monsters of Dr. Frankenstein'' and ''Dr. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks''. It was released in the United Kingdom as ''Frankenstein's Castle''. Curti described the film as having a minor cult status in the United States when it aired on ''

Elvira's Movie Macabre ''Elvira's Movie Macabre'' (titled on-screen as ''Movie Macabre with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark'' in its original run), or simply ''Movie Macabre'', is an American hosted horror movie television program that originally aired locally from 1981 ...

'' in the 1980s.

Reception

In a retrospective look on the film, Curti described it as "One of the trashiest horror movies produced in Italy in the 1970s" Louis Paul wrote a negative review of the film in his book ''Italian Horror Film Directors'', opining that the film "little more than low-budget horror at its worst".

Footnotes

References

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External links

* * * {{Frankenstein, state=collapsed 1974 films Italian horror films 1974 horror films 1970s Italian-language films Frankenstein films Fiction about neanderthals Gothic horror films Films shot in Italy 1970s Italian films