The New Beverly Cinema in LA just had a midnight screening of the film Freaked.  I went because a bunch of my friends were going, and I had no idea what to expect.  Literally – I didn’t know what the movie was about or what it was like.  It’s fun going into a movie with so few preconceptions, especially when it’s this movie.

Freaked is a cult film from 1993, starring Alex “I Was Also In Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” Winter as a Hollywood teen idol douchebag who decides to go South America and do PR work for an evil corporation, defending a terrible chemical called Zygrot 24.  However, he ends up in evil Dennis Quaid’s freak show, and he exposes Alex’s character to Zygrot, turning him into a hideous freak, along with his douche-pal and a snotty liberal protester girl.  Can they get themselves, and the other Freak Show victims, to freedom?

First of all, wow, this movie has awesome special effects.  They aren’t cheesy and inexpensive, like in a lot of cult films – the freak costumes must have cost a well-spent penny.  There’s a worm-man, a literal cow-boy, a guy who’s a giant nose.  It all looks very impressive and creepy and stylized.

Freaked is full of great, early 90′s alt-comedy style jokes.  It’s very much an extension of The State and early MTV sensibility, which makes sense, because the creators were all part of The Idiot Box.  Though it loses its footing towards the end, gags like Rastafarian eye balls who shoot freaks trying to escape, or just the idea of Sockhead, a man with a sock puppet for a head, voiced by Bobcat Goldthwait, more than make up for any pokiness.

In the end, Freaked is really just a very expensive comedy sketch fashioned into a movie, but I forgave the lack of character development, because the jokes are funny, numerous and unexpected.

Oh, and here’s where to get Parliament Funkadelic’s song for the film, called “Hideous Mutant Freekz.”

Have you seen Freaked?  What did you think?