Very disappointed :(

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Freakmaker opens with a lot of time lapsed film about plant life, it almost feels like a nature show, but then the creepy 70s horror music starts. We then see Donald Pleasance playing a Mad Doctor that is obsessed with trying to splice together Human DNA with plant material. The Doctor reminds me of the Evil Dr. in Eyes Without a Face, complete with living in a secluded mansion with a pack of mad barking dogs. He has an assistant, Mr. Lynch, that is deformed and keeps promising him a cure if only he will help the Dr. with his freakish research. Mr Lynch is played by Tom Baker who goes on to play the Doctor in the Doctor Who series. The Mad Dr. also keeps some sort strange plant in his laboratory that he feeds live Rabbits to. Freakmaker seems to borrow a lot from Tod Browning's 1932 Freaks. Mr. Lynch runs the carnival and gets his victims for the Dr.'s experiments from the Carnival. The Carnival has a side show showing various "Freaks", I am pretty sure these were real people with birth deformities. I am sure this must have been a controversial decision to use real people with deformities instead using make up, but I don't think this movie is one of the Video Nasties from the 70s. I wonder how it managed to get past the censors? There is even a dinner scene very similar to Freaks where they declare "he's one of us". Eventually the Freaks decide to turn on one of their own, also similar to a scene in Freaks. Even though Donald Pleasance and Tom Baker give good performances in their roles, there really just isn't much of a plot here. The special FX are pretty silly looking with a giant rubber suited "Mutation" that looks like a giant human Venus Fly Trap. Most of the film is slow moving but it is still entertaining in that strange psychedelic 70s way.

Not really enough money or effort put into this one. It appears that everyone thought simply that the presence of various 'freaks' Donald Pleasence, a bit of nudity and some man eating plants should see them through.Actually this almost works, unfortunately Mr Pleasence is in particularly one note form and although the speeded up photography for the plants is fine the later costumes for those that have turned into half human, half plant are not half as effective. There are some decent moments and good ideas but it is all so uphill. Undeniably quirky, though and probably worth it for the fairground scenes.

Donald Pleasance stars as Professor Nolter in this sci-fi/horror as a mad-scientist who, in between lecturing at a local university, is conducting bizarre experiments as he tries to bridge the gap between human beings and plant life. To aid him in his devilish research he uses Lynch (Tom Baker), a hideously deformed man who runs a carnival freak show, to obtain for him young men and women to perform his experiments on using the seemingly empty promise of altering the way Lynch looks for the better.I saw this one last night on Sky Cinema and have to say I was a little disappointed. The premise, although outlandish (though horror is geared towards the outlandish is it not?), seemed quite interesting. Unfortunately, this movie was poorly executed and rather slow-moving which made the movie difficult to watch. ‘The Mutations' has some interesting parts though and is worth watching if only for the ‘Freak Show' part way through featuring some quite disgusting acts.The acting seemed rather wooden from everybody, including Donald Pleasance, which hampered the film even more. The only performance really noteworthy was from Michael Dunn in the role of Burns, the loveable guardian to the other acts in the freak show. What really was interesting was how to begin with the `freaks' (I really do hate using that term to describe these people as in fact they are just in some way handicapped) seemed like they were menacing characters but over the course of the movie we were exposed to more humanity coming from then than any other character in the film – one of director Jack Cardiff's few achievements in this movie.In the end ‘The Mutations' becomes a barely average sci-fi/horror movie with little redeeming moments and many silly looking costumes. The direction was standard fare for films of this quality and it seems a shame that a great actor like Donald Pleasance was tied up in this, especially as his performance was undeniably lacklustre. The final ten minutes or so seemed hashed together very quickly and were thoroughly unsatisfying though did feature one good effect. I personally don't recommend this film but fans of sci-fi B-movies may enjoy it as it seemed to be made with heavy influence from the similar movies of the fifties and sixties. Though not exactly alike I would personally recommend ‘The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)' over this movie. My rating for ‘The Mutations' 5/10.

Original is not a word to describe THE MUTATIONS . To sum up its plot it`s a hybrid between a mad scientist film and FREAKS. Unoriginality is not enough to condemn it of course , but what makes THE MUTATIONS a truly terrible film is the fact that it`s so sickening.When Tod Browning made FREAKS in the 1930s disabilty and deformatity were I imagine treated differently in those days. Not so in the 1970s when the concept of a traveling " freakshow " wouldn`t have drawn an audience. Indeed it`s highly unlikely any council would have allowed it to take place on the grounds of taste due to a public outcry. There`s no way I`d pay to go and see that and I feel disgusted I watched a film where people with real deformaties are used in the name of entertainment. Perhaps the saddest one was " The skeleton woman " who looked like she`d just been rescued from a Nazi death camp.*****SPOILERS ( though how can I spoil your " enjoyment " of this filth is beyond me ) ***** I`ve outlined a good enough reason not to watch it , but may I also point out that this film is also extremely sloppy and underdeveloped in terms of script and production too. For example the hero gets turned into a man eating plant and for no reason consumes a drunken passerby. I say for no reason because he can still control his human emotions which he demonstrated in the previous scene by talking to his girlfriend and demonstrates it again at the end by attacking the villain in his lab. And this action scene seems to have been directed, edited and had make- up artists by people who were too untalented to have worked on the worst school play production . Still it could have been worse , if the rest of the film is anything to go by the production crew might have dug up a decomposed corpse and used that for the villain`s death scene. And get ready for a final shock plot twist at the end though how can anyone be shocked by the final scene when we`ve already seen exploitation of the worst sort leaves me pondering.You`re probably asking yourself why I decided to watch THE MUTATIONS all the way through instead of switching it off in disgust ? Make no mistake this film did disgust and disturb me. Well it did star a pre-fame Tom Baker as Donald Pleasence`s henchman . I can watch anything with Baker in it and to see him play a nasty piece of work does have a certain novelty value Check out VAULT OF TERROR ) , but even that didn`t stop wanting to swith off the TV frequently. And for my sins I had to get into a warm soapy bath afterwards and scrub myself clean , That`s how much THE MUTATIONS disgusted me