Freak Orlando

The opening scene is an arresting one, depicting a lone traveler wandering across a barren landscape and entering the Freak City; outside its gates is a woman who literally grows plant-like from the ground.

Part one has Freak Orlando afflicted with a cone-shaped head bearing a third eye.  Together with her seven dwarf friends, she pounds an anvil as entertainment for the patrons of a shopping mall.  She and her minions get thrown out, though, and forced back to their home in a fairy tale forest, where they somehow all end up inside a Trojan horse.

In part two, Freak Orlando is now a two-headed prophetess whose harmonic kingdom is disrupted by a band of black leather wearing punks who carry around a large, distinctly phallic cone statue and flagellate themselves constantly.  They kidnap two of Orlando’s friends, resulting in a chase back to the hated shopping mall.

Part three begins in the shopping mall, with Freak Orlando seduced by an offer made by department store employees.  Catching a glimpse of herself in a mirror, she’s suddenly transported to the Spanish Inquisition, where she endures countless tortures, eventually escaping with a band of fellow sufferers.

Part four finds Freak Orlando having changed sex.  “He” falls in love with one half of a pair of Siamese twins, but the other twin grows jealous and Mr. Orlando, fed up with all the whining, kills both halves.

Part five takes place in a large field where Freak Orlando hosts a “Festival of ugliness.”  Crippled folks perform their various acts, which include an amputee chorus line and a midget dance, on a stage, and then Orlando crowns the winner with a trophy bearing the inscription: “Limping is the way of the crippled.”