Frankenstein meets Freaks in veteran cinematographer-turned-director Jack Cardiff's mind-boggling mad scientist extravaganza, which triumphantly embraces bad taste to provide queasy frissons rarely witnessed in British horror. Demented biologist Donald Pleasence (in one of his few latter-day roles not leavened with over-acted irony) crosses humans with plants and sends his gruesome failures to Michael Dunn, a dwarf who runs a circus sideshow. His most successful hybrid is a man-sized Venus fly trap (Scott Antony) who ingests a tramp before traumatising perennial Brit-screamer Jill Haworth and former Miss Norway Julie Ege. Mixing genuinely deformed performers with made-up actors, the discomfiting template may be that of Freaks (the party scene is a direct lift from Tod Browning's 1932 classic) but its prurient atmosphere is most definitely rooted in 1970s British sleaze.

A mad scientist crosses plants with people, and the results wind up in a sideshow.