The Freakmaker

Director- Jack Cardiff

Cast- Donald Pleasence, Tom Baker

Country of Origin- US/UK

Distributor - Diabolik DVD

Number of Discs - 1

Reviewed by  Scott MacDonald

Date- 02/18/2020

    The Freakmaker sees Donald Pleasance playing Nolter a University Professor who studies human mutations. He also maintains a secret lab under his manor house, to create his own human mutations with his assistant Lynch (my TV Dad, Tom Baker). Lynch then takes these mutations, and adds them to his circus sideshow. This has been going on for some-time, but goes wrong when Nolter begins using his students in his experiments and  they begin  rebelling against their creators.

    The obvious influence on the Freakmaker is the 1930's Tod Browning classic Freaks.  In fact this would make a great triple feature with Freaks, and Freaked, but I digress. The film is a fun and entertaining ride with entertaining and magnetic performances by the duo of Pleasance and Baker. We also get some solid, and very colorful visuals present here.  The effects are not top-notch, and the film takes a bit of time to get going, but it's a lot of fun once it gets there, and is definitely worth checking out.

    Diabolik DVD presents the film in a very solid 1:66:1 1080p AVC encoded transfer. The scan was derived from a 35mm print source, which yielded solid results. The films colors are nicely reproduced, detail is solid, and everything looks quite natural, I did notice some issues with compression pop up, but they were very minor. Audio was handled by a DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono track in English that handled the audio well, and without issue. Extras include a featurette, commentary, interview, and more. RECOMMENDED.