Alex Winter’s Freaked Is the Most Handsomely Demented ‘90s FX Showcase You’ve Never Seen

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A thought occurs, in the midst of a long-overdue 4K UHD screening of actor-director Alex Winter’s gaudy 1993 horror comedy Freaked: We probably throw around the word “cult” far too often in describing films that never get a proper chance to be seen, only to find a small and devoted fanbase in the years that follow. Not just any film that has had its critical appraisal change over time, or become relatively more popular now than it was at release, should be described as a “cult movie.” Historically, the term “cult” tended to imply a certain degree of bad taste to the experience, a film with some necessary quotient of guilty pleasure, oddity or provocation as part of its DNA. Cult movies aren’t ones you evangelize to the rank-and-file multiplex patrons walking the street, for fear of being looked at like a deviant or crazy person–they’re the ones you share as secret handshakes with the other inveterate film geeks who are as weird and jaded as you are. And Freaked feels like the perfect case study for this kind of definition: A truly bizarre, darkly satirical but ebullient transmission from another plane of existence; a gross-out splatter comedy and Hollywood parody brimming with cheesy humor, incredible practical FX, and absolutely no mass-market appeal whatsoever. It is the essence of “cult,” and lemme tell you–those cultists are bound to be an intriguingly strange bunch of souls. The film’s title aptly describes both its content and its ideal audience.

That audience will now finally have a chance to see Winter’s Freaked, which was released on a mere two screens during its “opening weekend” in the U.S. in October of 1993, despite a reported budget of $12 million. Seemingly leery of the film’s graphic content and surrealistic humor, changing management at 20th Century Fox decided late in the game against a wide theatrical release in the United States, sending Freaked off into limited international markets and eventually a spot in VHS/premium cable purgatory, where intrepid mid-‘90s TV consumers might have seen it screening with other derided, FX-heavy quasi-genre fare like Dan Aykroyd’s infamous 1991 bomb Nothing But Trouble. Gradually, the out-of-print Freaked faded from all but the most persistent genre geek’s memory, but it’s now poised to triumphantly display its slimy weirdness once again, thanks to a 4K digital restoration (out now) and upcoming November Collector’s Edition Blu-ray from Drafthouse Films. And having now seen this version, I can confirm that Freaked feels goopier and grosser than ever before; a genuinely unique bygone of its era that feels that much more singular now than it did 32 years ago.

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Freaked stars Winter–who recently returned to the director’s chair for another dark comedy in this year’s murderous Adulthood–as the lead of a squelchy ensemble that tend to put Tod Browning’s infamous 1932 band to shame. He’s playing conceited, deeply unlikable former child star Ricky Coogin–a name that feels unmistakably like a melange of Ricky Schroder and Jackie Coogan–the star of promising-sounding films such as “Ghost Dude,” as he accepts $5 million in order to become the pitchman for a faceless, evil chemical corporation that is trying to put a happy face on the hideous mutations caused by fertilizer “Zygrot 24.” The only problem: After traveling to the South American town of Santa Flan in order to do publicity with the substance, Ricky is instead abducted by mad scientist and freak show impresario Elijah C. Skuggs (Randy Quaid) and transformed–well, half of him is–into a hideous, pus-spewing freak via a Zygrot 24 chemical cocktail. Like all the other freaks transformed by Skruggs, he’s then forced to perform for the locals in a Barnum-style talent show of effluvia and cartoon ultraviolence. Will he be able to escape, overcome his crippling deformity and even bigger entitlement, and lead the other freaks to freedom?

Attempting to describe the juvenile comedy and hyperkinetic visual stylings of Freaked is inherently difficult: It combines elements such as the active camera and smash-bang cinematography of Sam Raimi with the sophomoric jokes (and costuming) of Ernest Scared Stupid and the committedly gross scatalogical content of early Peter Jackson films like Bad Taste and Dead Alive. Never content to sit still, it ping-pongs back and forth between puerile battle-of-the-sexes humor (especially via one conjoined couple), slapstick, surprisingly clever filmmaking gags and bizarre dialogue. It contains characters such as a wordless man referred to as “the human flame,” for the fact that from start to finish he is cutting one ceaseless, interrupted, perpetual flaming fart. Tim Burton on his wackiest and most whimsical day could never even conceive of something half as kooky as much of Freaked. Even Roald Dahl would have looked at this and thought it was a bit much.

Spiritually, the film was more or less a continuation of Winter and co-director Tom Stern’s short-lived MTV sketch comedy series The Idiot Box, infused with the same hyperactive zest and penchant for surreal, silly humor and cartoon violence. And indeed, when it works, Freaked has bursts of genuine hilarity, often in its strangest moments–like when, during a series of flashbacks to how they all became freaks, the camera pans down to a hammer on the ground and shows us the horrifying backstory of how the evil Skruggs mutated a wrench into that hammer. So too does the film have a bizarre way with words: When describing his zeal for creating disgusting, performing mutants, Skruggs at one point observes that “Just like Michelangelo saw the angel in the stone, I can look at a guy like Kevin Costner and see a giant peach grub who can fart ‘The Blue Danube.’” Later, evil CEO Dick Brian (William Sadler, reunited with Winter from Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey) lands another instant classic during a board meeting: “Bill, if I could just add one thing–those who dare oppose us will stand knee-deep in the blood of their children.” Lines like that are almost enough to look past the vast array of jokes that land with a resounding thud, but like the densest of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker farces, Freaked keeps moving so quickly that you tend to instantly look past the clunkers and instead appreciate the weird elements of magical surrealism, like the freak living quarters inexplicably appearing to be a tiny outhouse from the exterior, but a football field-sized bunker inside.

Technically speaking, Freaked is often quite incredible to look at, especially in its new 4K UHD state, which goes to illustrate the frankly ridiculous amount of deeply intricate practical FX work involved in bringing all of its outlandish characters to life. It’s impossible to watch this movie in 2025 and not think about just how many lost arts are all being represented at once, from colorfully outrageous comic book-style production design, to astoundingly random claymation sequences, to the endless menagerie of freak/monster costumes and full-body prosthesis sported by practically every character. Perhaps most notable is the ooze-dripping, half-mutated “Beast Boy” costume worn by Winter–it looks arduous beyond belief to perform in, and practically makes it impossible for him to speak. When you see the image of it above, it looks like the kind of FX shot that would appear in a film for only a moment, or a few minutes at most, but Freaked has Winter bounding around (and performing Richard III) in it for almost its entire duration, a disgusting statement of principles. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: There’s also a cow-man fusion, a pair of rastafarian, gun-toting eyeballs, a sock puppet man, and “Ortiz the Dog Boy,” a lycanthrope played by none other than an uncredited Keanu Reeves, clearly doing a solid for his buddy. We should thank god that the film was made when it was; any later and it might have been swarming with terribly rendered CGI versions of these characters rather than the tactile and gross ones we received.

That’s the other thing you can’t miss, watching Freaked as a film geek in 2025–the movie is crawling from top to bottom in notable cinematic personalities both big and small, both in front of and behind the camera. There are cameos from the likes of Morgan Fairchild and Brooke Shields, and freaks played by alt-comedy legends like Bobcat Goldthwait, “serious actors” like John Hawkes, and apparently even Crazy Rich Asians and Wicked director Jon Chu. Mr. T shows up as a “bearded lady.” Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke worked on production design. The soundtrack includes contributions from hardcore and noise rock legends such as Henry Rollins and The Butthole Surfers. The more names you see, the more incredible it is to believe that Winter and Stern somehow assembled all of these people in the name of Freaked … only to see the film denied any kind of real U.S. release, even after the deeply inexperienced filmmakers managed to pull it off.

And rest assured, Freaked getting completed at all feels like it should be regarded as some kind of minor miracle–Winter and Stern had never directed a feature, or reportedly even worked with 35mm film before. And yet, just a few months after the release of Spielberg’s Jurassic Park in 1993, a tiny handful of patrons in two U.S. theaters did indeed file in and see a roomful of corporate CEOs melted into a blob that reassembles itself into a giant, living shoe, or a grotesquely annoying child being sucked out the hatch of a jet, or a villain alerted to the presence of our protagonists because he possesses the ability to hear (and instantly identify) the sound of a styrofoam cup falling several buildings away. That’s the essence of Freaked, and perhaps the lucky weirdos in those theaters were the ground floor for a movie that genuinely deserves the title of “cult” like few others ever have.

Jim Vorel is Paste’s Movies editor and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter or on Bluesky for more film writing.