Frankenhooker (1990)
Review by Theron Neel
It’s the oldest story in the book: boy meets girl, boy loses girl in freak lawnmower accident, boy rebuilds girl using the body parts of dead prostitutes…well, maybe Frankenhooker (1990) isn’t the oldest story in the book, but it is a pretty entertaining one.
Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) is a lucky guy. His life might not be perfect―he’s been kicked out of three medical schools and still lives at home in New Jersey with his mother (Louise Lasser, far, far away from Mary Hartman)―but at least he’s found a fiancée, Elizabeth Shelley (Patty Mullen). Jeffrey works as an electrician, but he keeps a lab in his mom’s garage, where he likes to tinker (i.e., conduct unusual medical experiments, one of which appears to be a living human brain embedded with a large eyeball).
How Jeffrey ever got a girl in the first place is a mystery. He’s a mumbling, antisocial shut-in who seems to care for nothing but his weird research. But he does love the slightly zaftig Elizabeth, and she loves him. Life is good. But, as you know, the universe has a way of throwing curveballs.
Faster than you can say “complicating incident,” Elizabeth is killed by a remote-controlled lawnmower run amok. But these things happen; what’s unusual is that not all of Elizabeth’s body parts can be located. Hmmm…
Cut (ahem) to Jeffrey’s garage/laboratory, where we find him excitedly promising Elizabeth’s decapitated head that he will find a way to rebuild her―to make her better (and sexier) than she was before. He has the technology. All he needs is the right parts.
A visit to New York and a pimp named Zorro provides Jeffrey with all the raw material he could possibly need, as well as an idea for humanely killing his feminine fodder. As we all know, prostitutes love crack cocaine. So, he buys some crack from Zorro (there’s a phrase I never thought I’d write), and a little tinkering later―voila, super-crack! A couple hits of this and the hookers will peacefully fade away. Unfortunately, Jeffrey’s pharmacology skills are not on a par with his medical and electrical skills. This new crack doesn’t just blow your mind, it blows you up…literally…I mean, you explode.
Soon, Jeffrey is awash in detonated hookers and has all the body parts he could possible use. Before long, he has Elizabeth sewn back together and reanimated. But as we all know, once they’ve died and come back, they’re never the same.
I don’t want to spoil the end of the flick for you, but as you can probably guess, all does not turn out well for our star-crossed lovers. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a glimmer of hope to close out the film.
Director Frank Henenlotter, director of such classics as Basket Case and Brain Damage, has given us a movie that’s rather unusual in tone. Frankenhooker is clearly meant to be a farce, but for the most part, it’s played pretty straight. James Lorinz, as Jeffrey, gives a method-y performance. He’s like Andrew McCarthy meets James Dean. As Elizabeth/Frankenhooker, Patty Mullen is a hoot, all spastic expressions and Joisey accent, lumbering down the street looking for a date.
If I have a favorite scene, it has to be the exploding hooker scene (approximately 43 minutes into the movie). The effects are cheesy, but it’s a good cheesy. And Henenlotter gets extra points for giving a cameo to John Zacherle, one of the first horror movie hosts on television.
As you can likely tell, I enjoyed Frankenhooker quite a bit, and I think you will too. If you’ve read to this point, I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I say, “Hey, what’s not to like?”
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