18. Freaked
When I was a kid my cousin Dave and I used to hang out at my grandfather’s house for at least a week every year. We’d watch movies, go to the CD store and just talk about forming a band (Dave played the drums). One day I showed up and we had the TV on cinemax, that day we saw the trailer for Freaked, a film neither one of us had ever heard of. We decided we NEEDED to see that movie when he aired that night.
There we were at 10:30 at night sitting on the couch, exciting but not fully prepared for what we were about to witness. It starts off with an insane claymation opening credits sequence followed by one of the most confusing opening lines in cinema “We repeat, the flying gimp has been destroyed, you may return to your homes”.
The film just gets weirder and more bizarre from there. When the movie concluded Dave and I were speechless. Neither of us had laughed so hard at a movie as we did at that point. We both knew this was already one of our favorite films ever made. Packed with more weird creations than Jabba’s Palace the film is an eye-opening slapstick comedy.
I appeared on an episode of the Greatest Movie Ever! Podcast where I was forced to defend this movie. It’s hard to defend any comedy (specifically something as anti-comedy as this film) beyond ‘well I laughed’. I can’t put my finger on what makes this particular movie better or worse than another movie, there’s something about the “I Don’t Give a Fuck” style of humor. This film knew it was going to be a cult classic before a single camera started filming. Alex Winter and Tom Stern brought their demented sense of humor found on their MTV show Idiot Box to the big screen, sadly 20th Century Fox wanted nothing to do with this movie and quickly squished it.
Both Stern and Winter became obscure writers/directors until recently, Winter never really came out into the spotlight until the recent few years with some directing projects and discussing Bill & Ted 3 while Tom Stern wrote two scripts that were totally rewritten to his displeasure (Pinnochio’s Revenge & An American Werewolf in Paris) before getting work with The Man Show and Andy Milonakis Show.
Few films have had this level of Anarchy. It’s only comparable to films you’d find in the Troma library. The film remains one of my all time favorite films. When I meet someone who also is familar with the song and can quote with me I have an immediate bond with them.
Styrofoam Cup
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