This wacky cameo
only just squeaks in on the back of its sheer weirdness, given the
obvious
spoof tone.
Reeves is clearly taking
part not out of necessity but as a favour to his Bill & Ted co-star,
Alex Winter, who also co-wrote, directed and starred in this hard to
resist grotesque comedy horror.
Winter plays Ricky Coogan, an asshole movie star who happily signs up
to be the spokesperson for a company producing toxic chemicals. Accompanied
by his best friend, and a feisty female environmentalist, Coogan sets
off for South America to visit the company but gets waylaid en route
at Elijah C. Skuggs’ Freekland. The demented showman (played to
hammy perfection by Randy Quaid) kidnaps the trio and mutates them using – oh
the blessed irony – toxic chemicals. They must then plot their
escape from Freekland, with the help of their fellow captives.
Reeves’ unbilled cameo is hard to spot unless you know what to
look out for – he’s Ortiz the Dog Boy, his famous face covered
in fake fur and his unmistakable surf dude drawl masked by a garbled
accent that’s two parts Ricardo Montalban to three parts Lassie.
What’s even more amazing is that Keanu Reeves as a talking Latino
dog is not the weirdest thing on display in this movie, which has all
the freewheeling punk rock spirit of a live action Robert Crumb acid
trip cartoon, mixed with the queasy horror of Tod Browning’s Freaks.
Indeed, the movie is worth tracking down regardless of Reeves’ involvement
if only as a time capsule of the days when a major studio (Fox) would
cough up twelve million dollars for something so damn weird.
Need to know: It’s entirely possible that the
character of Ortiz is a tribute to Duke, the dog-faced boy from Big Top
Pee Wee, a role
that saw the debut of a future Oscar-winner (see: Benicio
Del Toro). Another
fellow inmate of Freekland is the bearded lady, played with predictable
poise and grace by fool-pitying TV legend, Mr. T.
Availability: Against the odds, a special edition DVD of Freaked came
out in the US in 2005.
