“FREAKS ONLY” is a series where I churn through gross movies for total weirdos. Welcome to the party.

Rating: 🧪👹

Freaked is not a good movie. Well, I don’t know. Maybe not in an objective sense. I’m of two minds about it - two heads, if you will. One head tells me it’s a poorly-aged, no-brained missive from the MTV era; a knuckle-dragging comedy unremarkable beyond its out-there conceit. The second head tells me Freaked is one of the funniest films I’ve seen in ages despite its many flaws; a juvenile counter-culture gonzo blast of weirdo 90s invention unlike anything else ever made. For the sake of my own amusement, I’m agreeing with the second head. I think I love this stupid movie.

Originally conceived as a low-budget horror showcase for Texas weirdo rockers The Butthole Surfers (retained for the film’s great soundtrack), Freaked eventually mutated into something else entirely. In its final form, the movie is a post-Bill & Ted vehicle for Alex Winter; an ostensible offshoot of his short-lived MTV show The Idiot Box. You’ve heard this story before. It’s the same trajectory that brought us films like Jackass: The Movie and the untouchable Freddy Got Fingered. Freaked definitely has more in common with Freddy - both feature too-cool comedians pushing a production budget and the limits of good taste to see what they could get away with. The difference is that Freddy snagged a wide release, while executives took one look at Freaked and pulled it entirely, leaving the film to die a cold, lonely death. Their mistake and our loss.

So, what’s possibly outrageous enough to justify removing a $13 million dollar film’s advertising budget, releasing it on two American screens to an opening weekend of $6,957, and then eventually attempting to destroy one of the only film prints in existence? Well…I don’t know. Freaked is bizarre, but it’s not that bad. The atmosphere is Tod Browning’s Freaks for the vidiot generation; a skewed, irreverent reminder that it’s good to be weird. Or maybe that the real weirdness was inside us all along. Or maybe that our true selves come from within, and not the physical vessels which we occupy? Listen, it’s a movie where you laugh at a giant worm man. Just go with it.

Freaked follows former child star Ricky Coogin (Alex Winter) as he sells out on promoting Zygrot 24, a toxic fertilizer which causes extreme mutations when handled. He flies to South American country Santa Flan to push the gene-scrambling sludge, only to end up at an off-road freak show. He and his companions are captured by the show’s proprietor Elijah C. Skuggs (Randy Quaid), and mutate into the carnival’s latest attractions. Ricky himself becomes half man and half gremlinish monster, complete with wicked claws and pus-squirting craters. The group is caged up with the other nine or so freaks, including “Ortiz the Dog Boy'' (Keanu Reeves in an uncredited role) and “Sockhead,” a man with a sock puppet for a head. They have some good times, have some bad times, and eventually band together to try and defeat Skuggs and return to normal. Do they succeed? You’ll just have to watch and find out.

The humor of Freaked ends up just like its main character; a half-and-half combination of something recognizable yet middling, and something monstrous yet infinitely more rewarding. A number of the film’s jokes are clunkers, or half-assed pop culture references, or on a level of predictable stupidity which elicits groans instead of laughs. The freaks are introduced with a Hollywood Squares gag, aged in 1993 and gone, gone, gone by 2020. Ricky’s companions Ernie and Julie end up conjoined twins, leading to a lot of dumb gender jokes which are...not mean-spirited or cruel, but just sort of lazy. There's also Mr. T as “The Bearded Lady,” in addition to the screeching freak “Pinhead,” two gags which are never outright repulsive, but, you know. They toe the line. It's no Ace Ventura, but if you've seen a 90s comedy, you know what to expect.

Freaked’s failures are the sort of pitfalls endemic to any dumb movie of this era. Its triumphs, though, wowie zowie! When the film hits, it well and truly hits. The standout moments of Freaked swoop in with a gleeful, goblinous perversion that left me hyena cackling for a good chunk of the runtime. For starters, the film quickly introduces 12-year-old Ricky Coogin superfan Stuey Gluck, a horrendous little turd who everyone refers to as a “troll.” In his first appearance on Ricky’s south-bound flight, the big-eared brat falls out of a luggage rack, gets his head stuck in a door, is creamed by a drink cart, and then immediately gets sucked out through the plane’s emergency exit. Stuey shows up again, of course, and is subjected to endless flavors of incredible physical comedy. It's a level of absurd, hilarious child endangerment unseen outside the much-maligned airplane-fodder kid in Freddy Got Fingered.

Stuey grabs a lot of amazing moments, but the freaks themselves unsurprisingly steal the show. Their sight gags are great - “Frogman” seems to just be a nearly feral guy in a scuba suit - but characters like “Cowboy” (an anthropomorphic cow) and “Worm” leave lasting impressions. Worm in particular proves Freaked’s most consistently hilarious element: a former professor who journeyed to Santa Flan searching for a particular specimen, the unfortunate academic soon found himself nothing more than a face on a giant, pudgy worm body. Though he trills at the initial bliss of becoming one with his beloved earth-crawlers, he admits that recently it's become “a fucking headache.” Derek McGrath delivers all of Worm’s lines with the perfect amount of blasé venom, making it even funnier that he spends most of the movie trying to get someone to wipe his ass. It rules.

Quaid’s turn as villain Elijah C. Skuggs is hammy enough, but it’s the visual design of the carnival world he inhabits which really draws attention. Every element of his domain is weaponized for manic comedy, from the bigger-on-the-inside outhouse to the goofy UI of the “Tasty Freeks” mutation machine. When our main trio first arrive at the sideshow, they take note of a giant, animatronic Skuggs head. Later, this behemoth’s eyes roll out to become two walking (!) talking (!!) Rastafarian eyeball security guards (!!!) who smoke giant prop blunts and shoot machine guns (!!!!). Skuggs is clearly a showman, a villain of style, and I respect the wacked-out Oingo Boingo/Residents vibe he's cultivated.

It's all a lot of fun, and that visual flair is certainly a point in Freaked’s favor. We’re treated to some great and gruesome practical effects: the freaks look wonderful, Ricky’s monster half is totally gnarly, and the film leans in later with two whole creatures straight out of Mad magazine. There's a lot of cool claymation, which injects a particular scrappy DIY vibe to the opening credits and the mutation sequences. I think “charming” and “imaginative” are good words to describe Freaked. Even if you don't dig its sense of humor, it's obvious the film was a labor of love. There was a clear vision for this stupid weirdo comedy, and it turned out unique proof that you can make a movie about whatever, like literally whatever you want. Where else aside from the Internet can you watch a man-cow get milked?

I won't oversell Freaked, but I do think it’s very entertaining. If you’re the kind of person who laughs at sight gags like a plane randomly exploding, a man slowly shrinking into a baby, or thirteen monsters dressed up as identical milkmen, Freaked is for you. If you think a kid getting thrown through a series of windows is funny, Freaked is for you. If you enjoy comedic decapitations, anti-capitalist messages, or Keanu acting like a dog...do I even need to say it? Freaked is nowhere near perfect, but it's deeply dumb, deeply funny and very, very strange. It's also only 81 minutes and free on YouTube. I feel blessed to live in a world where films this bizarre exist, and even more blessed that they're so easily accessible. The world of Freaked is waiting - will you buy a ticket and step inside?

FREAKS ONLY: Get Your FREAKED On