"All the More Appalling in COLOR!"
Published February 17, 2004
If She Freak stints on the sideshow grotesquery, it does contain a brief "hooch" dance by Courtney, which provides much inadvertent hilarity by including the sounds of hooting and hollering on the soundtrack then cutting to shots of a comatose audience on folding chairs.
A total cheapie, in other words, with two under-rehearsed fight scenes (and poorly synchronized slugs), repetitious lounge rock on the soundtrack and beaucoup shots of ferris wheels and rubes eating cotton candy. One of the fights - between Blackie and an unnamed roustabout - ends with the latter receiving a screwdriver in the middle of an obvious rubber hand, the only really "gruesome" moment in the movie. Of course, the Jade/Blackie/St. John triangle leads to murder, but that's not the pic's Big Climax. That's reserved for the moment when all the real freaks in St. John's troupe (a bunch of bug-eyed actors in fright wigs) show up out of nowhere to enact their revenge on the mercenary Jade. They transform her into what she most loathes - which brings us back to the present and our much-anticipated glimpse of the titular She Freak.
The big reveal, courtesy of Harry Thomas (who also designed the makeup for Frankensteins Daughter), is admittedly tasteless fun: Jade has been transmogrified into a half-snake/half woman only capable of hissing at the aghast rubes. She fondles a large snake and gestures to the audience to come join her. Cut to a disbelieving bumpkin snickering at the creature on display: The End. Watching it today, you can readily imagine a nation of disgruntled drive-in patrons shouting, "That's it?!?!" in unison from the back seats of their beaters.
Because I've had a longstanding fascination with sideshow, I probably enjoyed She Freak more than a lot of viewers - if only because of the limited glimpses it offers of the tent show milieu. Better still: as a DVD bonus, the folks at Something Weird also include a short unedited collection of newsreel footage showing real life sideshow performers and barkers from the thirties. Shot from a distance with poor sound (I suspect the filmmakers were shooting with voiceover narration in mind), it nonetheless manages to capture more of the sideshow/carny world than all 80-plus minutes of Freak.
During the last fifteen minutes of my Valentine's viewing, my wife came into the living room and caught the flick's conclusion. "That was awful," she declared. "Was the whole film that bad?" No, I assured her; she'd seen the best part. . .
- "All the More Appalling in COLOR!"
- Published: February 17, 2004
- Type:
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Horror
- Writer: Bill Sherman
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I remember seeing SSSSS in an actual movie theater: Strother Martin was mainly known to the audience for his scene-chewing supporting role in Cool Hand Luke - but one viewing of this cheapie horror flick was enough to wipe out any memory of the fact that he'd ever once appeared in a decent movie.
The boyfriend who got transformed into a snake was played by Dirk Benedict, who went onto bigger (if not necessarily better) things with Battlestar Galactica and The A-Team. . .
SSSS was definitely a disturbing flick but I'd put it on the level with Kingdom of the Spiders starring Captain Kirk, er William Shatner.
I'm appalled that neither of you mentioned, Heather Menzies, who played Martin's daughter, she was so dang babilicious, and she was also one of the Von Trapp girls from the Sound of Music.
No, no, no - now the best spider flick was "The Giant Spider Invasion" starring Alan Hale, Jr. - that's right, The Skipper!
Best William Shatner horror flick has got to be "The Devil's Rain," one of the most mind-numbingly awful films in the history of cinema....
Ah, The Devil's Rain - one of John Travolta's first movies, too!
And you're right, Joe, we shouldn't forget Heather's winning performance in SSSSS. . .
I rented the original "Freaks" a few years ago, having read so much about it, including director Todd Browning's fascination with freaks, since he worked on a carnival in the 1920s I believe?
The movie really freaked me out (pun intended). Yes, it's dated, but still very creepy.
Browning had worked for traveling carnivals before becoming a movie director: the circus milieu also shows up in some silent films he directed starring Lon Chaney (The Unknown and The Unholy Three). But Freaks is the film that totally pulls you into the world of sideshow - and keeps you there. It's a remarkable and disturbing achievement that pretty much destroyed the director's career. . .
That's fascinating....I didn't know that. Browning was definitely a great director in his day (Dracula, Mark of the Vampire, I think....). Hell, all of those old-time horror directors were as interesting as the films they made...
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After reading your blog was reminded of a great drive-in double feature I saw as a kid - "The Boy Who Cried Werewolf" and "SSSSSS."
"Boy Who Cried Werewolf" has as one of its final scenes, the werewolf attacking a van filled with hippies (van had flowers painted on the side).....Final scene in "SSSSSS" shows film's star as a human snake at a carnival sideshow. He ended up that way because a rather demented Strother Martin kept injecting him with serum. Always had a hard time describing this film to elementary school chums - I would hiss, trying to say the name "SSSSS." They would ask "What?" I would hiss the name again. They would ask again "What?!!"