Today’s review is the cult horror comedy “Frankenhooker” from 1990. I’m a fan of the genre, but for some reason I’d never gotten around to this one. This is directed by Frank Henenlotter, who also co-wrote it along with Robert Martin. Henenlotter is most famous for another cult horror comedy, “Basket Case” from 1982. Music is by Joe Renzetti, who previously scored “Child’s Play”, “Dead and Burried” and even John Carpenter’s “Elvis” movie (The non-Elvis parts, obviously). This was made for $2.5m ($6m by today’s money), making it a low-mid budget horror. Basically this is a deliberate B-Movie, an intentionally B-like movie, but made to a slightly higher budget.
The movie stars James Lorinz as young mad scientist “Jeffrey Franken” and Patty Mullen as “Elizabeth Shelley” aka “Frankenhooker”. I think you can probably get the references in the names. A classic romance story. Boy meets girl. They get engaged. Girl accidentally kills herself with a remote controlled lawn mower. Boy keeps girls head in a freezer. Boy makes a load of hookers explode with super-crack and then re-animates girl using their body parts. Girl becomes partially possessed by her hooker body parts and runs off looking for Johns. Boy chases after girl. Will they end up happily ever after?
Piece by Piece
Well, this is certainly a silly movie, but I can’t say it is particularly hilarious. It is amusing in places though and in some cases possibly unintentionally. Elizabeth is meant to be overweight, apparently from a pretzels addiction. But the actress clearly isn’t overweight and so they basically got her to fully do up her outfit and stuff it with what I assume is clothes or paper. It looked ridiculous. That made me laugh more than the rest of the film, but I have no idea if that was intentional or they genuinely thought it would work. There actually wasn’t much need for her to be overweight either since she’s reduced to just a head shortly after the intro.
This is one of those movies that have nothing to it outside of the concept and what you see in the trailer. I wasn’t sure quite how much to cover with the synopsis. What I described is the entire first two acts, but that’s the basic premise and it’s all in the trailer. The movie takes a long time to get around to re-animating Elizabeth. It’s a typical horror built around a gimmicky concept, Quite often with these movies they don’t know what to do after the concept is activated (At least within their budget), so they pad out the build up instead. Still, thanks to James Lorinz wacky portrayal of Jeffrey Franken, the build up is just as amusing as the the actual Frankenhooker rampage.
Conclusion
Once we finally have our Frankenhooker loose in the red light district, the humor is about what you’d expect. It’s a brief pay off for the build up. I do have to give it to Patty Mullen for her portrayal of the monstrous prostitute. She gets a little repetitive but it’s an amusing routine. It is Lorinz that has to hold the film together though and he does a good job. What lets the film down is it seems to run out of ideas just as it gets going. I also got a little bored of people blowing up. It’s sort of one trick comedy gore here.
Ultimately this is a moderately amusing horror comedy that comes across a bit dated in both plot and execution. I enjoy horror comedies more than most, so this is a disappointment. It’s not a total disaster though and I can see why it achieved cult status. If you enjoy comedy horrors based just on ridiculousness then this could be for you. For me though I can only give it a strong 5/10. Best viewed with lots of beer.