Frightfest review – The Freaks of Fancy

The Freaks of Fancy1928.  Four nearly-qualified medical students – Gloria (Rachel Brownstein), Cely-An (Holly Lovelady), Geoffrey (Adam Carruthers) and Michael (Matthew Jackman) – are invited by the controversial Dr Reed Wakefield (Gordon Lawson) to spend a weekend at his mansion on an island in the middle of a possibly monster-haunted lake where an attempt at the water speed record led to tragedy a year ago. With the looming presence of housekeeper/minion Clancy (Stella Coxon) and a lot of unsettling medical art direction – bottled specimens, hanging shark jaws – as omens, it’s obvious that there will be less charleston and cocktails and more unethical experimentation and Lovecraftish hallucinogenic mutation on the menu.  Still, there’s a reel or so of uncomfortable bickering – played in a high melodrama style which reminded me occasionally of Thundercrack! or The League of Gentlemen.

Shot in various tints of monochrome, this evokes the period of filmmaking in which it’s set – we get a few glimpses of Expressionist cinema (a still from The Golem, some plot developments from Dr Caligari) and stock footage of first world war casualties to sketch in the context.  Of the principles, Lovelady gets the meatiest role – as a cynical flapper with Louise Brooks bob and Irma Vep eyeshadow – but everyone tries for an insistent, on-edge tone which works up an air of doom and gloom before the horrors come along in the climax.  There have been quite a few rubber mask and seaweed-dripping wetsuit attempts at depicting Lovecraftian ambhibious monsters lately, but writer-director Elliott Leon takes a quite different, unusual approach which plays up in-camera trickery and glimpsed nastiness.  It takes a while to get there, but the climax is suitably nightmarish.  It has an ambitious orchestral score, augmented by classical and roaring 20s selections.