THE MUTATIONS AKA THE FREAKMAKER (1974)

THE MUTATIONS AKA THE FREAKMAKER (1974)

Students from a local university are being kidnapped and delivered to a madman for experimentation. Meanwhile a dark Carnival shows its new freaks to 70s London. Could they be related? 

An almost forgotten gem THE MUTATIONS AKA THE FREAKMAKER is a film I have been wanting to see for years. Starring the ever present Donald Pleasance I became aware of the film from Doctor Who Magazine. Pleasance's co-star in this, is the Fourth Time Lord himself Tom Baker in what must have been his final film role before he took the keys to the TARDIS. Directed by the great Jack Cardiff this is a unique entry in the canon of British horror and exploitation.

Donald Pleaseance plays Professor Nolter the, as ever deranged, scientist who tests his theories on crossbreeding plants and animals on unwilling students. Tom Baker plays Lynch, the deformed owner of a travelling Freak Show, who abducts Nolter's test subjects. The failed experimental mutants become side-show attractions for Lynch's circus. However, soon a revolt by the circus performers and an escaped mutant brings the freak making to an end.

This film is a horror miscellany with a plot that appears to be cobbled from two different scripts altogether. We have a plot about a mad scientist and his deformed assistant and a plot about a revolt in a circus freak show and neither really have any bearing on the other. It gives the impression somebody watched Frankenstein and Todd Browning's Freaks and decided they should make a beautiful mutant baby. It is such an audaciously odd mash-up it transcends itself. There's a unreal atmosphere which permeates the film helped by the vivid saturated Eastman colour, odd soundtrack and casting actual circus freaks. 

Every box of a horror film is ticked on a lurid register. Young ladies in danger, a dashing hero, a twisted henchman and a mad scientist who has lost sight of his humanity. One of the Professor's mutant experiment's escapes half way through and becomes the eventual hero of the piece.  It creates an almost textbook retelling of Frankenstein with the monster who is more human and humane than his creator. There is also a howlingly clumsy late in the plot romance between two characters who are never developed. I wonder if the producers watched it and decided they needed a romance so just gave some lines to two extras.

However, there is an odd artificiality to the film. Ironically with Tom Baker in the cast if feels more like a Doctor Who version of a horror film than an actual horror film. It is essentially the Brain Of Morbius but without the Doctor and Sarah Jane. 

"The Unexpected Delights of Speed Dating" 

The cast are all wonderful. Donald Pleasance is hardly in it and his performance is almost identical to Dr. Loomis in Halloween. Rumour has it the role was originally intended for Vincent Price which I can well imagine. Tom Baker is always Tom Baker but he puts in a rather more restrained performance than would come as his legend grew. The Circus Freaks like the Human Pretzel, The Alligator Woman and Popeye help to contribute to the films rather arch air by not acting. Clearly chosen because they were freaks rather than actors they give those odd performances only non-actors can. They reminded me of Mick Jagger in Performance, and Tory budgets.

The cinematography is lovely with some fantastic time lapse photography in the opening credits. It is the film's soundtrack by Basil Kirchen which really stands out. Kirchen produced a number of soundtracks for films like The Abomnible Dr. Phibes, and his strange jazz is so mutated from its origins it fits the film. Kirchen was known for an album called "Worlds Within Worlds" where he prefigured sampling and looping by mixing the sounds of insects and autistic children with jazz noodling. It is a suitably unreal soundscape for such an unreal film.

The biggest surprise in this film is the director. In what is essentially an exploitation B-Movie the director is Academy Award nominee cinematographer Jack Cardiff. Jack Cardiff's work spanned silent cinema to the mid 80s. He was the cinematographer on everything to A Matter of Life and Death to Conan the Destroyer. His directorial output was intriguing for a man who had worked for Orson Welles and Powell and Pressburger it was all pretty exploitation. He directed Scent of Mystery (Presented in Smell-O-Vision) and the Dark of the Sun. A long forgotten and incredibly violent account of the Congo Crisis which had the greatest poster tag line I have ever seen "You don't kill for women. You don't kill for Diamonds. You kill because you're paid for it". I hope it was because he was a fan of genre. I revel in very skilled artists and authors who never leave the confines of the genres they love, like Neil Gaiman and Quentin Tarantino. It really is a bit like finding Steven Spielberg making a revenge fantasy about topless Biker babes.

"All-right babes, I wanna spray tan"

I am pleased I managed to finally see the film and it is so very odd that I wish they still made films like this. It would certainly liven up BBC2s late night schedule. There is simply not enough these days about mutants and chemical freaks.  Now if you will excuse me I am off to watch The Only Way is Essex.