Retroactive Thinking: 20 Years Of Being ‘FREAKED’

When I was a kid, my cousin David and I would spend one week every Summer at my grandparent’s house. Dave was… to put it kindly, occasionally a piece of shit. He has since apologized for the way he used to treat me, and we have since become close friends. I do occasionally feel like he was the source of my poor choices of friends in my past. He was my cousin, so I loved him dearly, and I considered him my best friend… however, he was always picking on me and beating me up. This could explain why it took until college to actually start befriending people who liked being around me. Anyways, I’m sidetracking.

These weeks at my grandparent’s house were where I discovered many things that I loved. I remember one particular Summer, Sci-fi aired Alligator and Alligator II: The Mutation and we taped it off the TV and watched it every day for the rest of the week. It was during one of these visits that we caught a commercial on TV that would change both of our lives (he said a little too dramatically). It was a commercial for Cinemax’s premiere of FREAKED. We had never heard of it, but the 30 second spot was jam-packed with pure insanity. We knew that no matter what we did that day, we had to be back at the house in time to watch this movie.

Freaked was (for many years) the last thing Alex “Bill S Preston Esq.” Winter ever worked on. It is without a doubt the weirdest thing a major film studio has EVER financed and a piece of anti-comedy glory.

Freaked is the story of  RIcky Coogin (Alex Winter), a rich, snobby, former child star. Mega-Corporation E.E.S. (Everything Except Shoes) hires him to travel to South America to promote the chemical Zygrot 24. He brings his best friend Ernie (Michael Stoyanov) to join him. When their plane lands they are greeted with protestors including the beautiful Julie (Megan Ward) who they trick into joining them on their trip.

She asks them if they can visit the local freak show. Sadly the next show isn’t until the following night, but the host of the freak show Elijah C. Skuggs (Randy Quaid) invites them to see some of the more private creatures in his shed. Once they enter, they are turned into freaks (using Zygrot 24) and put into the Freakshow.

This is really all the plot you need to know. Story is secondary in this film. Freaked is about anarchic Marx Brothers comedy blended with the anti-comedy style of Winter (writer/director/star), Tim Burns (writer) and Tom Stern’s (writer/director) old MTV sketch show Idiot Box.

The film was originally conceived as a demented horror film called Hideous Mutant Freekz starring the Butthole Surfers (whose music still appears in Freaked). Eventually the idea was the scrapped for something more in tone with The Idiot Box. Joe Roth (head of 20th Century Fox at the time) loved the idea and immediately gave the duo a 12 million dollar deal  under the condition the profanity is toned down to allow it to get a PG-13 rating. Everything was set for one of the best and most bizarre comedies of the 90’s… and then Joe Roth got fired.

Immediately after being fired and replaced with Peter Chernin, the film’s budget was completely pulled causing them to lose soundtrack rights (which sucks since the music is one of the best parts of the movie), the title changed form Hideous Mutant Freekz to Freaked and released on 2 screens (Despite a great response at the Toronto Film Festival).

The film was a financial flop that if not for cable channels like Cinemax playing it, it would have faded into obscurity. The film’s cult status was so strong that in 2005 a double-disc DVD was released and more recently a Blu-Ray version.

Sadly, despite the cult status, the film basically destroyed its writers/directors for many years. Tom Stern and Tim Burns wrote the first draft for American Werewolf in Paris (which Stern was to direct), however after the Freaked flop they were removed from the project. Despite receiving the principal writer credits to the film, both claim that nothing related to their original script remains. Their film was a comedy/horror in the same tone as the original American Werewolf in London and while I have professed my love of this sequel I wish I could have seen their original vision.

Furthermore, his other script Bad Pinocchio (later titled Pinocchio’s Revenge) was revamped from a horror/comedy into a psychological thriller (an unwatchable thriller at that) after Stern was kicked off the project. It wasn’t until he developed a friendship with Jimmy Kimmel that he found success directing The Man Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and Crank Yankers.

Meanwhile Winter remained relatively obscure for years following Freaked. While he did direct the well-received Fever in 1999 it wasn’t until the documentary Downloaded and the announcement of a possible Bill & Ted 3 that he returned to the public eye.

Regardless of how much the film may have hurt the careers of the people behind it, Freaked remains one of my top 10 favorite movies. I have forced many a friend to watch the insanity and it remains a film that represents to me that you can make anything you want, even if it’s the most bat-shit crazy 80 minutes ever put to cellophane.

This Halloween, take some time to watch a comedy that only b-horror fans would actually appreciate. 20 years later the special effects still remain impressive, the humor is still fresh and no film has come close to topic the insanity that is this film.