Fresh and Exciting

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The first must-see film of the year.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Frank Henenlotter is famous for directing the Basket Case movies and Brain Damage, which is a fantastic, uncelebrated horror gem from the 1980's. I saw Frankenhooker recently, another of Henenlotter's cult films, and if you had a choice between seeing it and Brain Damage, I really couldn't recommend Brain Damage more. Plot: the girlfriend of a medical school dropout is killed in a freak lawnmower accident (oh, so it's a comedy) resulting in him resurrecting her by using the assembled body parts of hookers. Killing prostitutes for their "parts" could work, kind of, I guess, as a kind of social commentary. I guess. Women in prostitution are indeed objectified, as they sell their bodies (almost always out of desperation) for sexual consumption. But prostitution is a notoriously frightening and grim way to make money, so I found the entirety of the plot disgusting. A crude term for a prostitute is "street meat," which robs prostitutes of humanity, edging them towards the realms of disposable commodities: but they're human beings. With that in mind, the 'comedy' of this movie really doesn't carry through. The movie wants us to like Jeffrey, the med school dropout, and perhaps even sympathize with him (aw, c'mon, he just wants his girlfriend back) but my stomach turns thinking about him. Additionally, he's played by the actor James Lorinz, who continually and annoyingly mumbles his lines in a tedious New Jersey-esque accent. Oi!The way I see it, Frankenhooker has two things going for it. First is its seedy presentation. The city and the sets where Jeffrey hires his hookers are infested with smokey, drug-fumed gloom. At any moment you expect to see teams of cockroaches and other vermin peeling out from the walls. There's some terrific worldbuilding and atmosphere at work here.Second is the film's climax. I won't spoil anything, but I found it happily creepy, and perhaps even poetic--which are feelings horror fans pursue in their movies like heroin junkies chasing that first, initial high.But there is not one laugh to be had in Frankenhooker. It works more as an offbeat fantasy, and not an especially great one at that. Watch Brain Damage instead.

I follow the blu rays coming out on the Arrow Video label, they are so well done. Naturally by following that line sometimes they deliver classics and sometimes the flick isn't really your stuff. I was a bit afraid of this one. Frank Henenlotter isn't my thing, I didn't like Basket Case and I surely didn't like Brain Damage. Frankenhooker did have a nice script, just looking at the title says enough. And doesn't we all remember Weird Science (1985)? It starts of rather good and I enjoyed it, I even laughed a bit with the lawnmower scene. But once Elisabeth is being killed by the lawnmower it becomes a typical Henenlotter flick. There's so much talking and nothing really is scary or whatsoever. The performances are okay, James Lorinz came out of Street Trash (1987) to take the lead as Jeffrey Franken. He went further to act in rather B flicks, the most famous one he was in was Robocop 3 (1993) but even there it was a small part. But most people were looking out for Patty Mullen, a Pet of the Month in the August, 1986 issue of "Penthouse.". The pictures taken were steaming hot and she even became pet of the year in 1987 and revisited her nude pictures in 1988. Her acting career was rather short, she only appeared in 2 horrors, this flick and Doom Asylum (1987). For doing a lot of nudity she only showed her nude ass and a small glimpse of her tits in Frankenhooker although it has a lot of juggs being shown from the hookers, the most famous ones are those tattooed ones from Jennifer Delora playing Angel. It was her first 'major' production. She was in a lot of exploitations and low budgets before playing hookers, the most famous being the Electric Blue series. On the effects part they worked rather good, still, it's low budget and it shows like the drilling machine not working in a close-up but still is drilling into a head, or the body parts were you can easily see that they are fake. But it's maybe the best of all Henenlotter's flicks, but it's so recognisable. Just look at the creators at the end, doesn't they look like the Basket Case creature? Still not my thing but I can understand that it will have his following now that it is out on Blu Ray. Gore 0/5 Nudity 2/5 Effects 3/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 1/5

Frankenhooker starts at the New Jersey home of Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) where at a birthday party a freak accident with a remote controlled lawnmower leaves his fiancé Elizabeth Shelley (Patty Mullen) in pieces all over the garden. Medical school dropout Jeffrey is devastated & decides to combine his medical & electrical knowledge to bring Elizabeth back to life, with only Elizabeth's head to work with Jeffrey has to find her a new body & decides to travel to times square in New York to pick up prostitutes in order to construct the perfect body for his beloved Elizabeth...Co-written & directed by Frank Henenlotter this horror comedy is quite enjoyable if your in the right mood, a silly mix of horror & sex Frankenhooker is fun if nothing else. The script is obviously a parody of the classic novel Frankenstein with Henenlotter's brand of bad taste humour & quirkiness the main thing going for it, from lawnmower accidents to exploding prostitutes to electrifying sex Frankenhooker is not the type of film for those with delicate moral sensibilities. Like a lot of films like Frankenhooker it's a mixed bag, some of the humour & crudeness works & it's occasionally amusing while at other times the jokes & gags fall a bit flat while horror aspect is also varied with some weak effects spoiling a few scenes. The character's are pretty cartoon like with the re-animated Elizabeth quoting prostitute pick up lines & Jeffrey inserting a drill into the back of his head for inspiration, as you do. Frankenhooker is quite likable & at only just over 80 minutes long the pace is decent & it doesn't outstay it's welcome but there are better horror comedies out there, watchable enough & positively amazing when compared to many modern day low budget horror films but I didn't love it or anything.There's plenty of female nudity & bare breasts on show even if some of the actresses who play the hookers aren't the best looking, to go with the nudity there's some gore as well including a couple of decapitations, some severed limbs, some blood splatter, some fake looking exploding prostitutes, a brain in a fish tank & a mangled mass of body parts that comes to life at the end. The final shock twist ending is sort of spoiled by the poor special effects but at least the makers tried to put as much on screen as they could even if they didn't have either the talent or budget to do their ideas justice. Apparently director Henenlotter improvised the pitch for Frankenhooker to a producer when his original didn't impress the money men, he has a small cameo as one of the passengers on the subway train.With a supposed budget of about $2,500,000 this was filmed in New York & some of the seedy nightlife locations add a certain dubious atmosphere. The acting is alright, no-one seems to be taking things seriously which is just as well although it's the Frankenhooker herself Patty Mullen who gives the most watchable performance here.Frankenhooker is a fun little horror comedy with plenty of sleaze & bad taste humour, it's not amazing or life changing but it is fun for what it is & I liked it well enough.

This is the first effort I have checked out from cult figure Henenlotter (though I owned another 2) and, on the strength of which, I acquired a couple more; for the record, I opted to watch it now as part of a belated mini-Frankenstein marathon to complement my recent James Whale retrospective. The film's disarming marriage of black humor and gory effects is comparable to the style of Stuart Gordon (of whose work I am familiar with seven movies) – although, to be fair to him, Henenlotter came first. It is obviously an updated version of the 'man-made monster' myth (though the director says, in the accompanying Audio Commentary, that he was actually inspired by the minor cult THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE [1962]), infused with a quirky touch and a good deal of naïve charm (particularly the two lead performances).The plot concerns a young man with a penchant for science whose girlfriend dies horribly mangled in a freak garden accident (during a birthday party no less). A very funny bit here has his mother – played by Louise Lasser, the ex-Mrs. Woody Allen – cluelessly offering help by asking if he wants a sandwich right as he has finished spouting off a diatribe of existentialist angst! Thereafter, he contrives to revive the girl...only he requires a fresh body; to this end, he scours the city streets by night (also landing in a bar presided over by burly Shirley Stoler of THE HONEYMOON KILLERS [1969] and SEVEN BEAUTIES [1975] fame) in search of a prostitute or, rather, prostitutes since he now intends giving his girl the perfect figure. Organizing a party in order to choose the specimens (which he nonchalantly ticks with a permanent marker as they parade by him half-undressed!), the girls overdose on his specially-prepared "Supercrack" narcotic – which causes them to explode and mess the place up (hilariously, when their macho pimp smells a rat and goes up to the hero's room, he is knocked out by the flying head of one of the hookers on opening the door)!Interestingly, this is the first Frankenstein movie I have come across where the probability of diverse complexions within the monster's body is addressed – so that parts of it are pale-white and others are dark-toned, or even black! However, one thing that baffled me was why, if he kept the original girl's head (and, one assumes, brain), did the creature then revert to exclusively adopting the prostitutes' lingo! That said, the scenes where she goes to look for clients herself, lumbering around in her over-sized boots and twitching her face (I assume, to show that she was still getting used to it but, again, this is the one the girl always had!) and then have them literally combust under her are quite amusing. The climax has the pimp beheading the hero for having destroyed his fount of income, after which he is himself killed by the remaining body parts of his own girls – which are suddenly freed from storage and rise again grotesquely misshapen as if something out of John Carpenter's THE THING (1982)! The coda, then, sees the heroine (somewhat predictably but none the worse for that) re-animate her boyfriend/creator by following his own meticulous experiment notes! P.S. Given that BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) is my all-time favorite horror film and that I would soon follow this viewing with that of Alain Jessua's FRANKENSTEIN 90 (1984), it was quite amusing for me to hear the creation sequence here underscored by music highly redolent of Franz Waxman's celebrated one for the former and that Henenlotter had initially intended calling his own concoction – shot, we are told, back-to-back with BASKET CASE 2! – like the latter (of which, presumably, he was unaware)!