Saturday, July 19, 2008

SHE FREAK - Billy Allen aka William Allen Castleman - "Carny Life" (1967)

Wasn't quite sure if I was gonna make it tonight, but here I is, so Let's Rock!! It's a "She Freak" Saturday night, so Let's go!!! "She Freak" is in a category all by itself, period! Probably one of The best movies ever put on film, this movie looks to be shot 97 1/3% at the Kern County Fair Grounds in Bakersfield, California circa 1967, at what I'm sure was probably after the two week stint the carny spent at the fair! Obviously, the people who made this movie should be running this country, because they know what a budget is!!! 
 
It's a real life tale about Claire Brennen as Jade Cochran and a carny life of suspense and greed! Claire reminds me an awful lot of Janine Reynaud for some reason! 
 
Jade's Boss is a prick!! 
 
Life is hard, working in a greasy spoon for minimum wage, and tips don't amount to squat, when you got it going on! 
 
Grease your bearings and gears cause even the carny looks good, and the music just keeps pumpin' by Billy Allen!! 
 
Welcome to the Fair!! 
 
If this was any more exciting, I'd probably burst a balloon!!! 
 
Felix Silla as Shorty and Claire Brennen met on the set of this film, and had an affair that lasted for years and produced a son!! Really!!!! 
 
Lynn Courtney as exotic dancer "Moon Mullins" couldn't dance but looked good in her only film outing! 
 
Blackie and Pretty Boy tangle to see who is in the superior position to score with Jade! 
 
Oops!! Looks like Pretty Boy gets the short end of the straw!! 
 
Man, can you believe what they have to do, just to set up and take down the stinkin' bumper cars?? Can we get some carny love here, these guys are working overtime for bottom dollar!!! 
 
So, she marries the guy with the most money and the Cadillac, but he's not really that interesting! 
 
Blackie's the guy she really wants!! 
 
So her husband dies, she inherits the business, and turns into a greedy bitch! 
 
The freak's don't take to it so well!! 
 
In the end, she is welcomed into the brood as one of their own! 
 
Get the picture????? What else could you possibly want?

10 comments:

  1. This is a great white trash remake of Tod Browning's FREAKS (1932)!

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  2. Please remove your comment about Felix Silla having an affair with Claire Brennen and that they had a child. It is not true information.

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  3. Why does every other source of information on the internet say they did?

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  4. Who are these reliable sources?? It's the same exact paragraph with no proof.

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  5. .....And your information comes from where?

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  6. I actually met Felix Silla at a Film Convention in Winston Salem around 2010. I wish I'd known this backstory before meeting him so I could have asked him about it myself. It's so crazy, it's gotta be true.

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  7. I guess we'll never know the truth. Yeah, that would have been really nice to have some first hand information. Thanks for reading!

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  8. IMDb would appear to be the genesis for the rumor about Brennan and Silla, a notoriously unreliable source with absolutely nothing to back up the claim, pure hearsay. Without direct proof, I would take it with a large grain of salt.

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  9. This appears to be the source, as far as I can tell... except that it seems that the post mentioning it is, well... not meant to be taken literally? It seems to me like someone was trying to make a joke about some other bad movie, and someone didn't realize it wasn't meant to be taken seriously... at least, that's how it appears to me.

    https://everything2.com/title/Bag+of+Crushed+Child

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