Regardless of Where You Stand on the Great Ding Dong Debate, Stuart Gordon's Castle Freak is Good Mean Fun

Welcome, friends, to the latest entry in Control Nathan Rabin 4.0. It’s the career and site-sustaining column that gives YOU, the kindly, Christ-like, unbelievably sexy Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place patron, an opportunity to choose a movie that I must watch, and then write about, in exchange for a one-time, one hundred dollar pledge to the site’s Patreon account. The price goes down to seventy-five dollars for all subsequent choices.

When an insanely generous patron hired me to write up the complete filmography of frightmaster Stuart Gordon I was excited because, frankly, I desperately need the work and the income. I’m also a big fan of Gordon and welcomed the opportunity to do a deep dive on his work and have an excuse to watch ALL of his movies, even the weird low-budget obscurities. 

But I was excited for a much stupider reason as well. As a passionate fan of the essential and hilarious bad movie podcast The Flop House I was excited to finally be forced to watch Castle Freak because of the treasured place it occupies in the podcast’s history and mythology. 

For YEARS Castle Freak was brought up regularly within the context of host Stuart Wellington not knowing whether the titular abomination ripped off his own ding dong or whether he lost his genitalia through some other means. 

I consequently saw Castle Freak less as a movie than as an inside joke shared by The Flop House and its fans. Inside jokes are special, important and funny to people who are in on them and pointless and nonsensical to everyone else. That’s what makes them so great! And so annoying! 

I associate Castle Freak so strongly with The Flop House and its great Ding Dong debate that I was a little disappointed that it’s not mentioned on the film’s otherwise fascinating Wikipedia page. 

I was relieved, consequently, to discover that Castle Freak’s IMDB trivia page contains the following factoid: “This film is a running joke on the popular podcast 'The Flop House.' The film was the source of a year-long controversy, dubbed by fans as 'Ding-Dong Gate,' centered on co-host Stuart Wellington's insistence that Giorgio rips off his own genitals. The debate was seemingly put to rest when director Stuart Gordon responded to a tweet from a young Flophouse fan to confirm that no, Giorgio did not rip off his own ding-dong. Regardless, the film is referenced nearly every episode of the podcast, alongside two other Wellington favorites, "Head of the Family" and "The Invisible Maniac.”

That is no longer true, of course, and it probably never was but it is nevertheless reassuring to know that other people cannot think about this movie outside the context of The Flop House super fandom. 

Castle Freak’s bizarre, extraordinarily life began, wonderfully enough, with a poster for a movie that did not yet exist. Stuart Gordon was hanging out in Full Moon mogul Charles Band’s office when he noticed artwork of an unholy abomination being chained to a wall and whipped by a woman accompanying the title Castle Freak. 

Gordon asked him about it and Band helpfully explained that this was a poster for a movie involving a castle and a freak. That was literally as far as Band had gotten in conceptualizing the film but it worked. 

Band offered his most brilliant and accomplished collaborator an opportunity to turn the lurid fantasy of Castle Freak into a reality. Gordon’s Cast Freak just had to fit three requirements. First, it needed a castle. Secondly, that castle should be haunted by a freak. Finally, Gordon had to agree to make the follow up to Fortress, his most expensive and commercially successful movie, for an insultingly small amount of money, about a half million dollars. 

Gordon took on Castle Freak more or less as a challenge. He said yes to Band’s idea if he could cast whoever he wanted and had total creative control. 

In an unsurprising but exceedingly welcome turn of events, the actors he wanted to cast in lead roles were Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton from The Re-Animator and From Beyond. In an equally predictable development, Gordon chose to shoot the film in the same castle where he filmed Pit and the Pendulum. The owner? Charles Band, of course.  

Gordon was getting the band back together. That, amusingly enough, meant getting back together with the Bands. Albert and Charles Band Executive Produced Castle Freak while Richard Band composed the score. 

For the final piece of the puzzle Gordon had his Re-Animator, From Beyond and Pit and the Pendulum screenwriter Denis Paoli throw together a script that draws heavily from Gordon’s eternal muse H.P. Lovecraft, with a soupçon of Edgar Allen Poe thrown in for good measure. 

In Castle Freak an uncharacteristically restrained Combs plays John Reilly, an American overwhelmed with guilt after his drunk driving blinded his daughter and killed his son. Estranged wife Susan (Barbara Crampton) cannot begin to forgive him for his unforgivable sin. Daughter Rebecca’s blindness serves as a perpetual reminder of her father’s transgressions. 

When our recovering alcoholic of an anti-hero inherits a European castle he’s eager to sell it and everything it contains. Unfortunately one of the castle’s more unusual components is the titular abomination, a monstrous creature who has devolved into a feral, sub-human state after decades of torture, abuse and daily whippings.

Castle Freak affords Combs an opportunity to play a grubby b-movie version of Jack Torrance. Like Jack Nicholson’s iconic villain, Jack is a bitter, depressed loser with a toxic relationship with his wife who backslides into alcoholism and flagrant bad behavior when terrible things begin happening in the haunted house that he has been put in charge of. 

The tendency with a role like that would be to go big and broad and theatrical like Nicholson did to really broadcast the character’s crumbling mental state. Combs instead opts for a more nuanced, subtle approach that pays rich dividends. 

Combs and Crampton deliver powerful performances that ground the ghoulish insanity in very real, very human emotions like grief, guilt, shame, depression and blinding, all-consuming hatred. 

Castle Freak plays to Gordon’s strengths as a filmmaker and a storyteller. Gordon has a theatrical background so he knows his way around confined spaces. That also helps explain why he chooses to work with the same people year after year and film after film in a way that benefits everyone, audiences most of all.

In Castle Freak Gordon makes a little go a very long way. We don’t get a good look at the Castle Freak’s hideous visage until the film is nearly over. Up until that point we feel his sinister, malevolent presence and the effects of his savagery without seeing him in his his entirety. 

When we do finally see the Castle Freak it’s worth the wait. Gordon once again got grade A make-up and effects work on a D level budget. With Castle Freak, what we don’t see is as terrifying as what we do.

The Castle Freak is a monster but he is also a victim. He’s been abused and mistreated and abandoned his whole unbearable existence. He is the hate that hate made, the violent return of the repressed.

Also, he no longer has a ding dong. That can’t be easy because he’s something of a perv. 

Being a Full Moon production, Castle Freak is pretty damn perverted itself. There’s a wonderfully gratuitous sex scene featuring a woman who is apparently a big star in her native Italy that is hot despite one of its participants being Jeffrey Combs, who is a fine actor but not someone you necessarily want to see have sex. 

I quite like Castle Freak. It’s a rock solid horror film by a true master who could work miracles on tiny budgets that’s notable for reasons beyond its place as a uniquely beloved, weirdly resonant running joke on a popular podcast. 

I’m on Subtack now! Check out  https://nathanrabin.substack.com/ for my brand spanking new newsletter, Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas!

Buy the 516 page Sincere Movie Cash-In Edition of The Weird Accordion to Al AND get a free coloring book for just 20 dollars, shipping and taxes included, at  https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop and get a free copy of The Weird A-Coloring to Al: Cynical Movie Cash-in Edition free! 

Pre-order The Fractured Mirror, the Happy Place’s next book, a 600 page magnum opus about American films about American films illustrated by the great Felipe Sobreiro over at https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

The Joy of Trash, the Happy Place’s first non-"Weird Al” Yankovic-themed book is out! And it’s only 12.00, shipping, handling and taxes included, 23 bucks for two books, domestic only at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop

Buy The Joy of Trash, The Weird Accordion to Al and the The Weird Accordion to Al in both paperback and hardcover and The Weird A-Coloring to Al and The Weird A-Coloring to Al: Colored-In Special Edition signed from me personally (recommended) over at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop

Or you can buy The Joy of Trash here and The Weird A-Coloring to Al  here and The Weird Accordion to Al  here

Help ensure a future for the Happy Place during an uncertain era AND get sweet merch by pledging to the site’s Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace 

Y’all know my steez: I make my living largely through Patreon so if you would consider throwing in even a dollar a month over at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace