It was good to be Alex Winter in the early 90s. Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, the second entry in the franchise for which he is most famous, was a rousing success. Bill (Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) themselves were a cultural phenomenon, inspiring spin-offs across almost every form of media. There was a Bill & Ted cartoon featuring Winter and Reeves, and a live action series with different actors in the titular roles. The zeitgeist was so fully captured by the pair of good-natured if unambitious metalheads that they even popped up in video games and a DC Comics series. Sensing an opportunity to capitalize on his worldwide fame and unique talents as a comedic performer, MTV hired Winter, alongside collaborators Tim Burns and Tom Stern, to create The Idiot Box, a sketch comedy show wherein the sketches served as interstitials to the music videos the show featured. The Idiot Box ran for six episodes before its three-headed creative team turned their attention to an offer from 20th Century Fox to write and direct their own feature film.
The film they turned in was Freaked. A delightful relic of a bygone era, it’s a miracle Freaked exists at all and more miraculous still that its capacity to entertain, antagonize, and disgust remains as unlimited as ever almost thirty years after its brief theatrical run. Released in the fall of 1993, Freaked tells the story of insufferable actor Ricky Coogin (Winter), who gets hired by a mysterious global conglomerate to be the face of the PR campaign attempting to limit the damage caused by one of their products, a toxic fertilizer called Zygrot-24. Ricky travels to South America with his best friend Ernie (Michael Stoyanov, Blossom) with the intent of reassuring a nervous public about Zygrot-24’s safety.
Upon arrival, the pair find themselves in the company of a group of environmentalists protesting the use of the chemical on South American soil. Coogin becomes enamored with one of the protestors, Julie (Megan Ward, Encino Man), and in an attempt to both win her affection and avoid the group’s ire for championing the very substance they are protesting against, disguises himself as a heavily-bandaged, and thus unrecognizable, ally. Coogin is then able to convince Julie that he and Ernie are traveling to another Zygrot-24 protest and that her passion would be an asset to the cause. She agrees to join them, but once they find themselves en route, Coogin’s ruse falls apart and the pair’s true identities are exposed. It’s at this moment that Freaked’s central theme reveals itself: no matter how you present yourself or manipulate your exterior, your true nature won’t stay hidden for long.
As the trio bicker following this revelation, they start to notice a series of increasingly deranged billboards advertising the attractions for a local freak show. With their interest piqued and their original plan in ruins, they follow the signs and take the exit. Once they arrive, they're greeted by ringmaster Elijah C. Skuggs (Randy Quaid at the height of his powers) who uses his charm and showmanship to disarm the embattled travelers and lure them inside for an intimate tour of the circus grounds. Unfortunately for our heroes, Skuggs has much grander designs than merely providing them with after-hours entertainment. As it turns out, ‘ringmaster’ is the more modest of his titles, the means to an end through which he manifests his true aspirations: using Zygrot-24 to create a roster of genetically modified human ‘freaks’ to populate his show. He knocks the three unconscious and proceeds to use the dangerous chemical to transform them into his newest attractions.
For Ricky Coogin, this transformation draws his corrupted soul out into his skin, perverting his matinée idol looks into something more representative of his actual personality. He is made into a half-human, half-mutant abomination, forced to confront his own vanity and conceit. Julie and Ernie aren’t treated any more gently, as they awake to find their diametrically opposed personalities bound together as two heads on a single body. The result is much harsher on Julie, who not only has to contend with Ernie’s man-child misogyny, but also finds herself having to reconcile her aspirational self’s ‘beauty is on the inside’ philosophy with the active repulsion she feels upon first sight of Coogin’s newly grotesque outer shell. From there, we follow our three leads as they attempt to adjust to their new reality and navigate the personalities and politics of the pre-existing mutant community they unwittingly joined. In the process, they’re able to overcome their moral deficiencies and develop meaningful relationships with each other and the community at large, ultimately culminating in a wild, last-ditch escape attempt.
Freaked is an absurdist, acid-soaked fever dream. This movie is grimy and gross, but Winter and company keep things colorful enough that it never feels too dark or heavy. Both a time capsule of and a love letter to the first generation raised on MTV, it’s a film that’s so evocative of its era that you should only be able to rent it on VHS from a stoned Rogers Video employee. Our three leads are flanked by a veritable who’s who of 90s icons including, but not limited to: Brooke Shields as a daytime talk show host, Morgan Fairchild as a flight attendant, Mr. T as the Bearded Lady, an unrecognizable Keanu Reeves as a literal dog man, and the disembodied but unmistakable voice of Bobcat Goldthwait as a man with a sock puppet for a head. As if that weren’t enough, we also have beloved character actor John Hawkes in full cow make-up and an uncredited teenage David M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians). Oh, and Deep Roy. Deep Roy’s there, too. At this point, why wouldn’t he be?
Despite the stacked cast and Winter’s own ubiquity, Freaked bombed in a big way, doomed by poor test screenings and a shuffling of studio executives that resulted in its entire advertising budget being pulled. Post-production was also defunded, hindering the movie’s planned special effects and, perhaps most cruelly, depriving us of a new Iggy Pop song written specifically for the end credits. While Freaked eventually found its footing as a minor cult classic, it’s easy to imagine a world where the film was embraced as a Rocky Horror-style premiere midnight movie-going experience, complete with homemade costumes and audience participation. With uniformly scene-chewing performances from its cast of luminaries, Freaked is aware of its own campiness and gleeful in its grotesqueness. Set against a psychedelic and hard-rocking soundtrack, the film’s gross-out gags and unsettling makeup design conspire to deliver a singular viewing experience. To watch the movie now is akin to traveling in a time machine to an era still heavily reliant on practical effects, to journey to the origins of the patented Gen-X ironic detachment, and to spend some time in a pre-internet world where, without the aid of Yelp or Google Maps, one could conceivably find themselves at the entrance to a mysterious roadside attraction.
While Winter would recover from the failure of Freaked, re-emerging as a thoughtful and conscientious filmmaker whose documentaries explore everything from the rise and fall of Napster (Downloaded) to the psychological impact of child stardom (Showbiz Kids), fans of Freaked will always be curious what his output would’ve looked like had the film succeeded. Winter is a charismatic screen presence who, for one shining feature, was given top-billing and a real studio budget to platform his demented imagination. With the third act reveal that Elijah C. Skuggs is employed by the same evil mega-corporation that ensnared Coogin, tasked with using Zygrot-24 to create a tireless labor force of mutated super workers, Winter also delivered one of the decade’s most prescient critiques of unfettered capitalism.
Today, Freaked is out of print and unavailable on home media. There are used copies available on the secondary market, and one industrious fan was able to get a low-resolution copy uploaded to YouTube. The ideal viewing experience, with a pizza on the table and some lava lamps softly illuminating a ganja leaf blacklight poster, remains within reach for only the most determined viewers. If you’re able to make the effort, a true treasure awaits.