In the curious career of writer/director Stuart Gordon, his dedication to the work of author H.P. Lovecraft could never be called into question. With cult classics such as "Re-Animator" and "From Beyond," the filmmaker has explored and cinematically transformed the celebrated writer's fascination with depths of depravity and the hypnotic hold of terror, turning fandom into a personal quest. Picking a 1926 short story ("The Outsider") as inspiration, Gordon returns to his Lovecraftian cravings with 1995's "Castle Freak," a bluntly titled genre exercise that provides the necessary amounts of lip-quaking panic and goopy gore, gifted a mildly gothic touch by the picture's remote, forbidding setting. It's a slim tale of redemption and survival, with excitable acting that practically transforms the effort into 3-D, but the macabre essentials are provided with skill by the helmer, who's clearly enjoying this opportunity to romp around an empty castle, dreaming up way to repulse and creep-out the audience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com