Tag: 1990

Frankenhooker (1990)

Posted on by fenrisfil

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.

Rating: 5 out of 10.

Maniac Cop 2 (1990)

Posted on by fenrisfil

There are an endless number of Horror franchises out there. Some big, some small. Quite a few of them I have only seen the first movie and never got around to the sequels. One such movie is Maniac Cop. The original movie starred Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell and Laurene Landon and ended with the apparent demise of the titular character in a watery grave at the end. Of course anyone that watched Horror movies in the 80’s knows that’s basically a guarantee of a return in a sequel and so here we are!

Director William Lustig (Who also directed “Maniac” which I’ll be reviewing later in October) and Writer Larry Cohen both return for this sequel and so it’s no surprise to find it continues directly on from the end of the first film and see’s the return of both Campbell and Landon. However the leads for this movie are actually Robert Davi (One of my favourite Bond Villains) and Claudia Christian (Of “Babylon 5” fame, but also made an appearance in my October Horrothon last year in “The Hidden” (1987)). Lustig has a habit of swerving with his leads and never hesitates to kill one off for shock value, so expect this movie to follow that pattern (Though I’m not dropping direct spoilers).

Cunning Stunts

The first thing to note here is I like the way the story is continued. It’s difficult to cover without spoilers, but it’s worthy of note for a horror sequel to maintain such solid continuity. Of course it helps when you have the same writer and director, but it’s certainly refreshing. The second thing to note is the stunts. For a 1990 horror movie, it is somewhat surprising in the number and quality of stunts here.

There is a very solid car chase, a scene where Claudia Christian (Or rather her stunt double) is handcuffed outside an out of control car and has to somehow try and steer it while being flung around and last but not least there is a climax that features a lot of stunt men being set on fire, with the killer himself spending a lot of time wondering around while on fire! It’s pretty impressive for a $4m horror film ($9m with inflation). The movie also features a “Terminator” like scene where Cordell invades the police station and clears house. Basically lots of cool stuff to enjoy visually in this.

Cops and Killers

Character wise the movie revolves primarily around four characters. Claudia Christians “Susan Riley”, Robert Davi’s “Detective McKinney”, The Maniac Cop “Matt Cordell” (Played by Robert Z’Dar, who the following year would become an even more infamous cop in “Samurai Cop”) and Leo Rossi’s “Turkel”, a serial killer that has been murdering local strippers. Davi puts in a pretty neutral performance and seems less interested in the movie the further on it goes, Rossi overacts, though given his character is a psycho it mostly works and Christian puts in a solid performance hitting all the right notes when requires.

The real protagonist of the story though is Cordell and Z’Dar does a pretty decent job given he’s playing a zombie cop. The other three are just there to move the plot on as required. McKinney is the hero of the day, but not because of any challenge he had to overcome and he doesn’t face off with Cordell or really have any notable action scenes, he just helps clear Cordells name (At least clear his name pre-zombie-psycho-rampage). Susan’s importance largely rolls off for the final act, while Turkel turns up half way through and is only really there to be manipulated. His character has the least depth of the four, but he doesn’t really need any for the plot to work.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a surprisingly good sequel to a moderately decent 80’s slasher. I think I may even prefer it to the original. My only real negative is I would have liked to have seen more of Bruce Campbell, but then since this is after Evil Dead 2 it probably would have taken too much attention away from the killer, so perhaps it’s for the best. Largely for the cool factor and the stunts this just about reaches 6.5/10.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10.