She Freak (1967)

(On Cable TV, April 2022) If you think that She Freak is an ungainly mixture of a trite story with a fascinating atmosphere, well, you’re not wrong – meant as a pure exploitation film reprising the classic 1932 Freaks, it’s meant to titillate on a small budget and run roughshod over verisimilitude or even basic human psychology. Our lead (gone-too-soon exploitation player Claire Brennen) is a waitress stuck in the worst roadside restaurant ever presented on film, to the point that signing up to do exactly the same job at a travelling carnival is a step up. But as exploitation films need at least a simple morality tale to justify their plotting, escaping is not enough: seducing the carnival owner is the next step, and as the power of that success goes to her head, she starts making enemies in the carnival crew. Since you’re probably aware of how its inspiration ends (“One of us! One of us!”), then you’re probably comfortable knowing that She Freak goes the same way. The fun here (and I use “fun “loosely) is not really in going through a stretched-out paper-thin narrative over 87 minutes, but taking in the colour cinematography of footage shot in a real carnival, sometimes interminably featured as atmosphere. There’s a real quasi-documentary time-and-place quality to She Freak, especially when it seems to pause its plotting in order to showcase its carnival. Then it’s up to viewers to wait until the final meant-to-be-horrifying shot as a cap on the whole thing. I wouldn’t call She Freak good, but considering that it was an ultra-cheap production meant to rake in easy dollars, the results went far beyond expectations. The fact that it’s still available (even restored!) today is a hint that there’s something memorable to the result. Yes, She Freak could have been sexier, bloodier, freakier, faster-paced or more than utilitarian in its basic filmmaking qualities. But it still leaves a mark when so many much better films fail to do so, and that’s something worth noticing.