Watch She Freak For Free

Memorable, crazy movie

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

**ENTIRE PLOT GIVEN IN FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH* Evil and beautiful Jade Cochran (Claire Brennan) starts working with a traveling carnival. She immediately plays up to the boss and gets him to marry her. She doesn't want him...just his money. She starts an affair with hunky ferris wheel operator Blackie Fleming (Lee Raymond). Her hubby finds out, fights Blackie and is killed. Blackie is sent to jail and she takes control of the carnival. She fires her hubby's best friend--a small person. So the other freaks take revenge on her at the end. I should mention we NEVER see or hear of any of the other freaks before this point so their "revenge" at the end comes out of nowhere! Yup--it's an uncredited (and lousy) redo of the 1932 classic "Freaks"! The film is badly acted and was (obviously) shot as a silent with sound later looped in. There's countless filler material of people attending the carnival and the carnival being set up AND taken down later. All of this pointless footage easily adds up to about 20 MINUTES--in a 90 minute movie! The story moves slowly and there's a very tame (PG rated these days) strip act that eats up another 10 minutes! Raymond has a nice body and is shirtless twice but that's hardly worth sitting through the entire film. The "shocking" final shot has some fairly effective makeup (at first) but when you get a good long look at it at the end it's obvious how bad it is. Boring, stupid and needless. Unless you HAVE to see every movie ever made with circus footage you can safely skip this one.

She Freak (1967) 1/2 (out of 4) Exploitation master David F. Friedman was a big fan of Tod Browning's FREAKS and decided to remake it but the end results are quite horrid for several reasons. As in the original film, we're warned about a "freak" who was once normal but before seeing her we get the backstory. Claire Brennen plays a small town waitress who gets a job in a traveling sideshow where she decides to go after the big boss man, which eventually costs him his life. The carnival sideshow freaks decide to take revenge. This is a very painful 85-minute movie to sit through because it moves extremely slow and after a while you can't help but want to turn the thing off. There are a few good moments but there's no denying that the greatest thing about this movie is the fact that it makes FREAKS look even better than it already is. It's funny that FREAKS was hidden from the public for decades because of its controversial nature and it's even funnier to think that this film here is a lot tamer than that 1932 film. The only "freaks" on display here is a sword swallower as well as a woman who puts a snake in her mouth. The rest don't show up to the final scene. The entire film centers on Brennen as she never gets what she wants. It's just too boring. We get countless scenes of the circus being put together, which is fun for a minute but this film just drags the scenes out. What does work is Brennen who is fairly good for this type of film and of course that ending when we see what's happened to her. The make up job was quite good and makes for a smile. Character actor Bill McKinney made his debut here.

Opening as it does with an encomium for Bobby Cohn, one of the leaders of the North American Carnival Industry, 1967's "She Freak" at times comes off more as a tribute to life on the midway than a grisly horror film. In it, we are introduced to Jade Cochran (lamely portrayed by Claire Brennen), whose waitressing job in a jerkwater greasy spoon is so dispiriting that her new gig cleaning tables at a traveling carnival seems like a step up. Jade soon sets her sights on the owner of the carnival's freak show, despite her aversion to those poor people, and with her curvy figure, toothy smile and blonde good looks (indeed, Brennen here looks very much like the young Joni Mitchell), has no trouble roping him in. But anyone who has seen Tod Browning's 1932 masterpiece "Freaks" and knows of Olga Baclanova's fate in it (or who has seen the trailer reel that precedes every movie from Something Weird) can guess what happens next. "She Freak" is only 83 minutes long, but at least half its running time consists of padded footage of roustabouts setting up the carnival or tearing it down, or of customers walking around or Jade wandering about. Unlike "Freaks," which shocked and amazed audiences with its large cast of real-life biological sports, "She Freak" offers basically only one of "Nature's mistakes" in the form of Shorty (!), a Stetsoned little person. Still, somehow, the picture manages to barely hold one's interest, and features beautiful color photography (well captured on this surprisingly pristine-looking DVD from those miracle workers at Something Weird) and even some interesting directorial touches from Byron Mabe. Basically, though, the film is junk. Viewers interested in seeing a superior updating of "Freaks" would be better off checking out the British film "The Freakmaker" (1973), which is much more, uh, freaky and a lot more fun.

The fact that this movie is a rip-off of Tod Browning's "Freaks" should not be construed as a reason to see it. The photography and acting are bottom drawer, the direction is listless and unimaginative, and writing is rarely sly (or at least it's hard to get any good dialogue out of these actors' mouths). There isn't even all that much exploitation footage here.What is kind of interesting is the picture of carnival life in the 60s (a period of decline for that art form) it provides. Roustabouts, geeks, carneys, all are presented with some sort of versimilitude. With a stronger lead actress and a more competent cast/director, this film could at least have been a memorable shock-fest. Instead, it's ultimately forgettable.