The horror-comedy genre is a tough thing to get right. When done correctly you get great, memorable films like “Shaun of the Dead,” “House,” and Peter Jackson’s classic “Dead Alive.” When done half-assed or with little care for the subject matter, you end up with junk like the “Scary Movie” series or, worse yet, this forgettable farce, “Freak Out.”
Star/co-producer/co-writer Dan Palmer is quoted in a recent issue of Fangoria saying, “…the biggest insult I get is whenever anyone compares ‘Freak Out’ with ‘Scary Movie,’” which is understandable considering how awful the “Scary Movie” franchise is. Too bad “Freak Out” is far worse and completely devoid of laughs or scares.
“Freak Out” tells the tale of nerdy, horror-fan Merv Doody (James Heathcoate); the fact that the main character’s last name is “Doody” should clue you into the comedic depth creators Christian James and Dan Palmer are capable of. After returning home from with an armload of horror films from the local video store, Merv happens upon an escaped mental patient in his house. With the help of his equally dim-witted and painfully unfunny friend Onkey (Palmer), the two attempt to create their own slasher-movie maniac a la Micheal Meyers of “Halloween” fame. Unfortunately for them (and the audience), their “killer” is a gay vegetarian who is obsessed with Larry Hagman and faints at the sight of blood.
For a film that touts itself as “the most offensive and hilarious horror comedy of the year,” the majority of its offensiveness and hilarity is seemingly unintentional. While Palmer and James attempt to offend with endless fart jokes, they are far more offensive with their portrayal of gays as little more than punch lines. The majority of the film is spent doing “Oi, guvenor, isn’t our killer gay, he’s so gay, isn’t it funny how gay he is, it’s funny that he has a lisp and loves Larry Hagman.” Equally offensive (especially to hardcore horror fans like myself) is the dreaded use of the fake movie titles. When Merv goes to the video store, he picks up films that don’t exist, yet he goes home to a roomful of great horror-film posters. Why the creators neglected to name drop classic films and replaced them with silly titles like “Arse Piranhas” is beyond me. Possibly the most offensive thing about “Freak Out,” though, is the blatant lies printed directly on the DVD package where it states that it features “Gratuitous nudity and gross-out gore”; one set of bare breasts and a twenty-second supermarket slaughter hardly fulfils the promise made by this film’s packaging.
With the exception of their mildly amusing take on the overly used “shower scene,” every joke falls flat on its face. In particular is the horrible costume changing montage, which will elicit groans and a frantic search for the remote to see if anything else is on, because even “Scary Movie 4″ would be better than this.
Filmed over the course of a five-year period using one camera and a budget hovering around $10,000, low video quality is to be expected. With a widescreen presentation featuring a 1.85:1 aspect ratio enhanced for 16×9 TVs, at times “Freak Out” looks far better than the subject matter deserves, which isn’t saying much. While the picture quality jumps consistently from awful to tolerable and then back to awful, you’ll undoubtedly be too busy searching for another film to watch even to notice.
Both of the offered audio tracks, one in Dolby Digital 5.1 and the other an unnecessary Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround, are on par with their video counterpart. While most lines of dialogue are delivered clearly, some of the audio comes across a bit muffled, but for the horror equivalent of a Benny Hill episode, who cares?
I’ll be honest, this two-disc set does boast an impressive amount of special features: A commentary featuring director/writer/producer Christian James, actor/writer Dan Palmer, and actor/producer Yazz Fetto; another commentary with James, Palmer and actors Heathcote, Nicola Connell, and Chilli Gold, moderated by BBC Radio 1 movie critic James King; “Making Out”: a behind-the-scenes featurette; “Geek Out,” another featurette showcasing deluded Internet movie critics (ugh, who cares what they think) expressing their views on the movie ; “Bum-Feeling 101,” a sketch featuring the characters of “Freak Out”; “5 Minute Film School,” a rip-off, …er, homage, to Robert Rodriguez’s splendid “10 minute film school” series; yet another featurette with “Honey, I Blew Up The Looney”; “The Video Store,” a collection of spoof films; seventeen deleted scenes; and a Zaniac music video. Truthfully, after literally being put to sleep by both commentaries, I refused even to spend another moment with this boring film and never wasted a second of my time on the included second disc. After all, I went out and bought James Gunn’s brilliant “Slither” over two weeks ago, and I still haven’t gotten a chance to see it on the small screen because I’m too busy protecting all of you loyal readers from films like “Freak Out.”
Horror-comedy, or as I lovingly refer to it, “splatstick”, is by far my favorite genre of film, and with great movies like the “Shaun of the Dead,” “Evil Dead 2,” “Slither,” and “Return of the Dead” readily available, why anyone would want to blow 110 minutes of their time on “Freak Out” is beyond me. Do yourself a favor and skip this lame duck and pick up Anchor Bay’s long-awaited and recently released “Cemetery Man.” It actually features all the laughs, nudity, and gore that “Freak Out” only promises.
1/10 Stars
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