FRANKENHOOKER (1990) - A FILM GUTTER REVIEW

Dir. Frank Henenlotter, USA, 85 mins
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So, I had a day off recently, and I was all good intentions to watch something cutting, intelligent and brilliant. But as I woke up to a day of relaxation after an ultra-busy couple of weeks, I realised I simply couldn’t manage anything cutting, intelligent and brilliant that day. I needed something silly, and something fun, and something I could just enjoy without engaging too much of my brain.

Enter Frankenhooker!

I often talk about some of my favourite directors, and many of them are producing artistic, brutal and flat out hard-to-watch pieces of art. But the more I watch from Frank Henenlotter, I feel like he deserves a mention in that very same breath. You see, usually I’m not a fan of the horror B-movie, but Henenlotter seems to be someone that does it so well that the effect is almost impossible to resist. I felt it with all the Basket Case films, I felt it with Bad Biology, and damned if I didn’t feel it with Frankenhooker. There are many directors who produce one great film and that’s in, but Henenlotter has produced consistently fun and entertaining movies over a long spell of time.

The story itself follows mad scientist Jeffrey, and we begin with his newly-invented lawnmower inadvertently chopping girlfriend Elizabeth to pieces. We’ve already seen him experimenting on a brain in his kitchen (??) so it’s not long before a deeply depressed Jeffrey has determined that he will find a way to bring Elizabeth back. Thankfully he has her head on ice, but all he’s missing is the rest of the body…

You see where this is going?

He decides his best route forward is to get the body from a local hooker, but an unfortunate super-crack accident involving a host of prostitutes (yes, you did read that right) leads to him having a superfluity of body parts to make his own Bride of Frankenstein. The procedure is a success – of sorts – barring the fact that Elizabeth seems to have adopted the speech and mannerisms of the prostitutes that make up her new body.

If it sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is, but Henenlotter’s ability to capture the comedy and absurdity of these sorts of situations is fantastic. By taking everything too far it achieves something more than so many other B-movies can – looking at his career record, maybe it’s just the case that Henenlotter has a lot more love for this type of move than his contemporaries in this patch. The whole thing is hilarious from the get-go, aided by the wonderful central performance of James Lorinz, who plays the whole thing like a lousy 80s sitcom – which is intended as a compliment! The pimp Zorro is also good for plenty of laughs, and everybody almost caricatures the people they are depicting to a fabulously overblown effect. It’s also boosted by an unexpected finale that really brought me one last chuckle from this movie.

Let’s be honest, Frankenhooker is not one of those movies that transcends its title or its premise – you could likely take a good guess at what it would be on its moniker alone. But it’s delivered with such a verve and energy and madcap manner that it’s hard not to like – I’d argue that Henenlotter is the ultimate horror B-movie director, and I think a look at his back catalogue would back that case up too. Henenlotter has recently been working mostly in short films and documentaries, which feels like a bit of a shame, but maybe it’s a matter that the market just isn’t ripe for this particular stripe of horror comedy in 2019.

RATING: 8/10. I don’t want to go nuts on the rating – it’s not a movie that’s pushing boundaries or redefining anything or even making you think much about anything. But it is unequivocally a lot of fun, aided by some excellent comic performances and moments, and might just cement Henenlotter among my top five directors. If you’ve loved any of his previous work – or indeed are just a fan of horror comedy at large – then this one is well worth going out of your way to check out.