"Freakshow" is an anthology horror movie.It opens with surprisingly violent and unsettling mass murder massacre of late night show cinema patrons that reminded me current case of Dark Knight Rising massacre gunman James Eagan Holmes.All this carnage is recorded by bitchy news reporter Shannon Nichols and her cameraman.Four horror stories are told her by the proprietor of bizarre museum/exhibition.The first one involves luckless junkie and scared poodle,the second one has pizza delivery guy,haunted mansion and a lot of lingerie,the third one is about paralyzed but not dead woman and the final story has two greedy gravediggers,rich widow plus some cheesy zombies.Cheap production values,bad acting and nasty beginning-welcome to surprisingly enjoyable and entertaining "Freakshow".7 horror stories out of 10.

I was lucky to have gotten a PAL VHS copy from the United Kingdom of this criminally underrated and obscure gem last Christmas. I do not own a PAL VCR or a multi-region VCR, but the gentleman who sold it to me was nice enough to transfer the tape to a blank DVD+R for easy viewing. I was not expecting this to be the greatest movie ever made, but let's just say that I was pleasantly surprised. That's not to say it's 100% flawless.The film starts off with an audience watching a movie at a theatre. Afterwards, we see said audience leaving the theatre. A psychopathic misfit guns down the entire audience and takes his own life afterwards. First on the scene is ace reporter Shannon Nichols (Audrey Landers, TV's Dallas), who was previously called by the killer about his plan. During her report, however, it becomes clear that she is more concerned about ratings than the tragedy at hand, hence why she did not call the police on the killer. After being ditched by her boss and cameraman, she is left to fend for herself on the streets. That is, until she stumbles upon a Freakshow exhibit. She is then greeted by the mustached curator Dr. Caligari Borges (Peter Read, Dementia 13) and is invited to take a tour of the gallery, which allows her to imagine four gruesome tales of terror.Our first story is not much horror and probably my least favorite story in the movie. Fidge De Sola (Dean Richards, Roadkill) is a homeless junkie. Having gone cold turkey for a certain amount of days, Fidge is desperate for a new fix. He meets The Doctor who has just what Fidge needs to get high. Unfortunately, Fidge is out of cash and kills The Doctor by microwave to get his fix. Guess what? The Doctor's poodle ends up taking the dope. After that, it's Fidge mostly chasing the poodle for his fix, tripping over things and making himself look like an idiot.The second story, and my favorite story in the film, revolves around Wilbur, a new worker at The Al Capone Pizzeria. He is sent into action when ordered to make a delivery to a house on 1313 Bram Stoker Blvd., which is supposedly haunted. On the way, Wilbur is called chicken by his Italian co-workers and agrees to a bet with his co-workers that he'll make the delivery. When Wilbur enters the house, he meets a coven of beautiful vampire women, and after a nice eighties music video-like segment of the vampire women dancing in lingerie, Wilbur gets quite the Halloween surprise.The third story revolves around a young drug addict named Sybil. After freaking out at a party thanks to a new street drug she has taken, she ultimately collapses and is put into a coma-like state. Everyone thinks she is dead and she is forced to undergo her own autopsy. This story plays like a Twilight Zone-episode, and comes off as the darkest story in the film. The ending, though justified, is predictable.Our fourth and final story, and my second favorite story in the film revolves around Angie, whose husband has just died from a heart attack and left her a Mercedes and a Golf Course as her inheritance. During her husband's funeral, she meets two gravediggers, Funk and Bloater. They make a deal to bring the dirt from the graveyard to add it to the golf course. Things seem to go fine...or so they think. It soon turns into Night of the Living Dead meets Caddyshack as the zombies from the graveyard invade a carnival at the golf course, seeking their dirt. This story tends to be more on the horror comedy level. While this story is good, the ending is stupid and abrupt, although it could have been much better and more justified too. The part where the priest uses the golf clubs as a cross to repel the zombies would have made for a great plot resolution.Originally shown at the Cannes Film Market in 1989 and given a very limited release in Canada that same year, Freakshow has never been released on VHS or DVD in the United States, apart from bootleg copies. While the film is not exactly up there with Creepshow, Tales from the Crypt or The Offspring, it is still a very fun movie to watch. The acting is not exactly top notch but for a film of this type, it is decent. The worst acting is probably in the first story and the best actor in the film is probably Peter Read, who pulls off his role as Dr. Borges quite well. Why he hasn't acted since the mid-1990s is beyond me. Great soundtrack too.Somebody get this out on DVD, and soon.Grade: B+

Terrible, terrible movie, full of some of the worst 'horror' stories I've ever had the bad judgment to decide to sit through - I kept thinking "well, just one more, it can't possibly be as bad as the last one", and it was. And in case you're wondering, the acting stinks as bad as the writing. If you like bad movies - chances are you probably still won't like this. It's literally painful to watch the actors stumbling around delivering lines like they just woke up.In one story, a new employee at a pizza delivery place is told to go deliver a pizza to a ... Haunted House. That is, he's told this after a lot of padding to the script. There's a girl who gets her breasts touched by a guy. And again later what may or may not be the same girl again groped by what may or may not be the same guy. Two employees getting into a knife fight in the middle of work. A woman with a REALLY bad Italian accent who obviously is supposed to own and/or run the place standing back watching mildly until everything's over then saying "oh, hey, stop that" - finally, FINALLY we get to the new guy and he's sent to "1313 Nosferatu Lane" (or something like that - a horror name or author, I've forgotten - just something horribly cheesy with 1313 in it) with the pizza to deliver. And then the guys from the pizza shop, who for some reason hate him for not being Italian (even though we're still not sure if they are) call him up and tell him he's chicken and dare him to go to the house he's already going to, etc etc. So he goes in, long, lonnnnnnnng sequence follows in which you keep expecting something horrible to happen. Instead, there's a long, loooooooooong sequence involving girls in lingerie. Badly fitting, mismatched lingerie. No nudity, for those of you about to run out and buy it for that. Just a bunch of stupid dancing in ugly lingerie for so very, very long, while a sort of damp hand with some bad press-on nail job holds the kid captive so he can't run away from the chicks dancing around him in their lingerie.Yeah.Anyway, they hit the kid's head against things every so often, and eventually, despite the fact that I never see anybody touch him except the hand of this one monster (the press-on nails monster) we never actually see, he becomes a vampire.I think.Actually he has fangs and some horns sticking out of his face. The girls have fangs yet remain pretty girls.So anyway, he trots on back to the pizza place, comes in looking perfectly normal, mentions a bunch of girls where he went, and conveniently one of the girls then rings up and invites the rest of the guys over, and they, hearing a sexy voice, go running towards what one assumes is their doom.And we get one last shot of nerd new boy hissing with bad fangs and horns growing out of his face.Look, I don't know. Just don't watch it, okay? Thank me later for saving you a valuable portion of your life.

This is truly an intellectual masterpiece - although I'll admit the first time through I was at a loss. After watching this seemingly disjointed set of stories, I was left with only one thought "What WAS that?".I couldn't shake the feeling that I had completely missed the point. I put the tape back in the VCR a watched it again. This time carefully paying attention for any unifying threads. At the end of the second viewing I was convinced that I had NOT missed anything... this was just a weird movie with nothing to say.That was it, until about 3 days later... I'm sitting at my desk and out of the blue, it comes to me "Oh, yeah!". On my way home from work I stopped at the video store and rented it out again.I won't spoil it - I'll only say that this is indeed a profound piece of work. The very obscurity of its message serves to intensify the revelation.