CATEGORIES: “LOW BUDGET HORROR FLICKS THAT TRY TO GIVE THEMSELVES INCREASED CREDIBILITY BY SUGGESTING A LOOSE AFFILIATION WITH FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER IN THEIR TITLES.”
“HOW MANY NAKED WOMEN CAN WE FIT ONTO THE SCREEN AT ANY ONE TIME BEFORE WE ARE LEGALLY REQUIRED TO CHANGE THE CLASSIFICATION TO SOFTCORE PORNOGRAPHY?”
“WHEN ALL OTHER STORYTELLING DEVICES FAIL, SIMPLY HAVE YOUR LEAD CHARACTER NARRATE THE PLOT OUT LOUD IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA AND HOPE NOBODY MINDS.”
“HOW MANY NAKED WOMEN CAN WE FIT ONTO THE SCREEN AT ANY ONE TIME BEFORE WE ARE LEGALLY REQUIRED TO CHANGE THE CLASSIFICATION TO SOFTCORE PORNOGRAPHY?”
“WHEN ALL OTHER STORYTELLING DEVICES FAIL, SIMPLY HAVE YOUR LEAD CHARACTER NARRATE THE PLOT OUT LOUD IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA AND HOPE NOBODY MINDS.”
NOTES
Like Frankenstein, this specimen involves a crazed doctor taking his old collection of body parts and putting them to good use by attempting to resurrect the dead. Unlike Frankenstein, this seems merely to be an excuse to pile a large number of naked breasts onto the screen whilst hoping for a few half hearted laughs. Still, out of an 85 minute running time there are 10 to 15 of those minutes which can be considered genuinely horror-worthy, or at the very least worth a chuckle. This immediately raises my appreciation of Frankenhooker above many much less feebly titled B-Movie horrors.
So as we settle down into our electric chairs for the evening, a bowl of barbecued batwings (popcorn for Kylie) on the table, the specimen begins with a wild eyed Jeffrey in
a kitchen, experimenting with an eye fixed to the centre of a brain, which has been hooked up to a TV screen. Just to hammer it home from the very opening seconds that here is a character who’s mental state is, to put it mildly, melting away into madness quicker than a man tied to a chair and forced to watch endless reruns of the Teletubbies. The horror! Jeffrey’s soon to be mother-in-law seems not to mind such things in her kitchen and merely smiles sweetly. Methinks somebody brought his mother in law a home-lobotomy kit last Christmas. Jeffrey’s fiancé, Elizabeth's birthday gift to her father is a remote control lawn mower. Whilst she stands with her back to it, HOLDING THE REMOTE CONTROL IN HER HAND, the lawn mower moves in for the kill and shreds her into pieces (by which point the clearly intelligent Elizabeth has dropped the remote somewhere off camera). All we see is what I can only presume must be blood (though it more closely resembles tar) splattering a garden gnome in the face.
All this happens pre-opening credits, during which I suggest any victim who has been coerced into watching this hash should take their toilet break. K: “They’re very dull opening credits, it’s just a guy mumbling to himself while he draws a lifesize picture of the human body, complete with muscles and the nervous system.” On the plus
side, he obviously paid more attention in art class than he did in med school,
which may be why Jeffrey was expelled from it.
It next becomes apparent that Jeffrey has kept Elizabeth’s head and has become something of a social recluse (K: “BECOME a recluse?” Yes. Apparently we are expected to believe that he was a philanthropist playboy about town before the lawn mower incident). He has also taken to drilling into his own head for kicks, even planning which nerve to kill on a little model (“Some people need booze, some people need drugs, I just need a little surgical assistance.”). K: “Funny how drilling into his head doesn’t make him bleed even a little. Did they use all of the gore budget at
the beginning?”
Bonus marks for the scene when Jeffrey has dinner with Elizabeth’s head, plus one of her hands and a foot in what must count as the most bizarre part of the movie. In between feeding the head a glass of wine and reading some god awful poetry that makes the average teenage boy look like Shakespeare Jeffrey begins to show her pictures of naked women, all with her head glued onto them and narrates his plan to Eli
zabeth. K: “He’s terrible at collage.” You know who he reminds me of? Sid from Toy Story, only a more grown up, psychotic Sid who traded in the skull T-Shirt for a blue jumpsuit. K: “I didn’t think it possible but there is something worse than necrophilia and this entire scene is it.” Hang in there Kylie, it’s about to get much worse.In a bid to get the body parts needed to rebuild Elizabeth, Jeffrey heads over to Manhattan, which is swarming with prostitutes. Not only are the streets full, but every single person on them is selling their body. K: "Did the police just give up on Manhattan in 1990?" After a hooker dangles her breasts into his car for a moment (as you do), she then takes Jeffrey to see her pimp, Zorro (or as I prefer to call him, Greased Up Magnum PI, or GUMP) in the brothel (which turns out to be a run-down public toilet). GUMP agrees that Jeffrey can take all his girls to a hotel room the next night and spend time picking his perfect woman before buying K. “Meet Skanky, Slutty, Sucky, Trampy, Ho-Bag, Booberella and Doc.” Yes, that’s right, the pimp has supposedly adopted a ‘Try Before You Buy’ policy. Given that all the hookers are addicted to crack, Jeffrey plans to kill the one he chooses using a drug of his own invention called Super Crack (all the good names must have been taken already.) His experiment with this explodes a guinea pig and, when Jeffrey gets cold feet in the hotel room the next night, the girls take it onto themselves to seize his money and his Super Crack and have a party, boobs flailing everywhere, whilst a few of them pin Jeffrey to the floor with their knees in what I can only presume is meant to be sexy. Personally it reminded me more of Burke and Hare's preferred method of murder.
The scene in which the hookers all explode is worthy of further study, by which I mean watch it in slow motion, because it is hilarious, not least because the body parts appear to have been brought down at the local joke shop for a dollar each. We not only get to see GUMP get knocked out by the head of the lead hooker, we are also served some welcome relief from the hookers shrieking and jumping around like teenage girls at a Justin Bieber concert. K: “The reaction to the Super Crack seems
less like ‘Let’s take some drugs’ and more like ‘Let’s flail our arms like we’re
in a sorority.”
Feeling somewhat guilty, Jeffrey keeps the girls’ body parts alive a
nd ready for future reanimation by putting them into the same goo that kept Elizabeth’s head alive, and brings Elizabeth back (though she has inexplicably gone from blonde to raven haired). Unfortunately, she channels the minds of the dead hookers and simply repeats their lines, whilst running off and acting like a particularly aggressive hooker (“WANNA DATE?”). It isn’t helped by the fact that Jeffrey dressed her up as a
hooker, for reasons known only to himself. K: “It’s like he wanted his old
girlfriend back, but as skanky prostitute version.” By the way, take note of
the lightning hitting the box full of body parts, it’s important. Elizabeth’s
career as a hooker is less than successful, lasting a matter of hours and
causing three men to explode, including a guy who decided to go down on her in
the middle of a bar (again, as you do). Presumably she’s still full of Super Crack K: “I think you mean Super Crap don’t you?” Cue some light comic relief from the still living head of an old guy she manages to explode. Jeffrey does manage to bring her
back and this time he gets it right and Elizabeth’s personality is restored.
Unfortunately GUMP, unhappy about the loss of his hookers, follows them back and decapitates Jeffrey, before the reanimated body parts of his girls, which have fused together into grotesque monsters, drag him off, presumably to his death. The final scene is a nice twist, Elizabeth bringing back Jeffrey. Unfortunately his life-preserving goo is oestrogen based and only works on female body parts, so he is now a head on a female body (quite amusingly, you can see him putting his head through the cardboard back like those novelty pictures you can take at the fairground.) The ending is quite creepy and the amalgamated prostitute monsters are pretty frightening at first, if you’re 12, though after a few seconds you realise that they are simply the same plastic joke shop items from earlier on and laughter replaces the horror. Still, they are a fair attempt and, coupled with the mildly amusing ironic twist of Jeffrey’s fate, make the last 10 minutes almost worth the rest of the eye-stabbing 75 minutes of torment.
less like ‘Let’s take some drugs’ and more like ‘Let’s flail our arms like we’re
in a sorority.”
Feeling somewhat guilty, Jeffrey keeps the girls’ body parts alive a
nd ready for future reanimation by putting them into the same goo that kept Elizabeth’s head alive, and brings Elizabeth back (though she has inexplicably gone from blonde to raven haired). Unfortunately, she channels the minds of the dead hookers and simply repeats their lines, whilst running off and acting like a particularly aggressive hooker (“WANNA DATE?”). It isn’t helped by the fact that Jeffrey dressed her up as ahooker, for reasons known only to himself. K: “It’s like he wanted his old
girlfriend back, but as skanky prostitute version.” By the way, take note of
the lightning hitting the box full of body parts, it’s important. Elizabeth’s
career as a hooker is less than successful, lasting a matter of hours and
causing three men to explode, including a guy who decided to go down on her in
the middle of a bar (again, as you do). Presumably she’s still full of Super Crack K: “I think you mean Super Crap don’t you?” Cue some light comic relief from the still living head of an old guy she manages to explode. Jeffrey does manage to bring her
back and this time he gets it right and Elizabeth’s personality is restored.
Unfortunately GUMP, unhappy about the loss of his hookers, follows them back and decapitates Jeffrey, before the reanimated body parts of his girls, which have fused together into grotesque monsters, drag him off, presumably to his death. The final scene is a nice twist, Elizabeth bringing back Jeffrey. Unfortunately his life-preserving goo is oestrogen based and only works on female body parts, so he is now a head on a female body (quite amusingly, you can see him putting his head through the cardboard back like those novelty pictures you can take at the fairground.) The ending is quite creepy and the amalgamated prostitute monsters are pretty frightening at first, if you’re 12, though after a few seconds you realise that they are simply the same plastic joke shop items from earlier on and laughter replaces the horror. Still, they are a fair attempt and, coupled with the mildly amusing ironic twist of Jeffrey’s fate, make the last 10 minutes almost worth the rest of the eye-stabbing 75 minutes of torment.
BIGGEST FAIL
Withou
t a doubt, the exposition. Occasionally Jeffrey gets cold feet and sticks a drill in his head, after which he goes on a narration bender and talks through the next 30 minutes of the plot. “I need female body parts, then I’ll buy female body parts, and there’s a place across the street where there are thousands of women anxious to sell their parts.” At least they tried to dress up the lack of plot driving devices as Jeffrey's mania but they failed. Badly.
t a doubt, the exposition. Occasionally Jeffrey gets cold feet and sticks a drill in his head, after which he goes on a narration bender and talks through the next 30 minutes of the plot. “I need female body parts, then I’ll buy female body parts, and there’s a place across the street where there are thousands of women anxious to sell their parts.” At least they tried to dress up the lack of plot driving devices as Jeffrey's mania but they failed. Badly.WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
James Lorinz’s (Jeffrey) career highlight was a brief appearance as Upset Bus Driver in Robocop (1993). He hasn’t been credited in anything since 2003 and in his whole career had more unnamed characters than named. Patty Mullen (Elizabeth) spent most of her career modelling in Penthouse, so wandering around mostly naked in Frankenhooker was a brief diversion.
FINAL THOUGHTS
You know what, maybe it’s the smell of the formaldehyde down here, but Jeffrey didn’t seem such a bad guy. K: “What? He blew up a room full of prostitutes and used their body parts to revive his dead girlfriend.” Exactly, his devotion to his girlfriend is nice to see, though some may dress it up as mania. And besides, hasn’t every mad
scientist done similar things from time to time? K: “If I ever get chopped up
by a lawn mower, just move on, please. We just watched 85 minutes of women
rubbing their breasts and jiggling, which looked more like an 80s,
spandex-filled fitness video for over 18s only. It should never, ever, be
recreated!”
Very well, cover it with 12 feet of cement in an old Indian burial ground. Oh, and throw in some prosthetic limbs while you’re at it.
scientist done similar things from time to time? K: “If I ever get chopped up
by a lawn mower, just move on, please. We just watched 85 minutes of women
rubbing their breasts and jiggling, which looked more like an 80s,
spandex-filled fitness video for over 18s only. It should never, ever, be
recreated!”
Very well, cover it with 12 feet of cement in an old Indian burial ground. Oh, and throw in some prosthetic limbs while you’re at it.
