FRANKENHOOKER (1990) - Wanna date ???

DIRECTED by Frank Hennenlotter

WRITTEN by Bob Martin & Frank Hennenlotter

STARRING - James Lorenz as Jeffrey Franken, Patty Mullen as Elizabeth Shelley/Frankenhooker,  Joseph Gonzalez as Zorro the pimp.

PLOT - Jeffrey Franken has everything a medical school dropout could possibly want - a supportive family, a reanimated brain with an eyeball that he works on in his spare time and best of all his beautiful, loving girlfriend - Elizabeth - who he is one day going to marry.

All is going well and the future is looking bright. Until one terrible day, whilst attending a family barbeque, Elizabeth is sliced to pieces and killed in a freak lawnmowing accident, only her head remains undamaged by the whirling blades of death.

Grief stricken - Jeffrey decides to utilise his arcane medical knowledge and bring back to life his beloved Elizabeth...not only bring her back but also improve her...

To achieve his aims, Jeffrey will need to build her a new body. To do this, Jeffrey takes to the seedier part of town and decides that he will build Elizabeth's new and improved body from the corpses of dead prostitutes. Hiring a group of hookers - based entirely on thier looks - Jeffrey arranges a party where he feeds the group of hookers a special strain of Crack Cocaine. This "Super Crack" does just what it says on the tin  - it literally cracks the hookers apart in an explosive manner and very soon Jeffrey has more dead hooker parts than he knows what to do with.

He builds the new Elizabeth and reanimates her during an electrical storm - the only problem is that Elizabeth's personality seems to have become scrambled and she now thinks she's a prostitute herself.

Knocking Jeffrey unconscious, she takes to the streets - there's a new hooker in town - The FRANKENHOOKER !

Soon, sex starved men all over the city are ending up dead - exploded to pieces by Frankenhooker's out of control electrical powers. Jeffrey must find his creation and stop her. However, little does he know that the pimp he hired his hookers from - the psychotic Zorro - is on his case, looking to avenge the working girls he lost.

And even more worrying - somewhere, deep in Jeffrey's freezer, in the darkest depths of his makeshift laboratory - the left over spare parts from the dead hookers have gained a strange kind of sentience - and they too want thier revenge...

DIALOUGE - Newscaster - "In a blaze of blood, bones and body parts, the vivacious young girl was instantly reduced to a tossed human salad...A salad that police are still trying to gather up...A salad that was once named Elizabeth. "

Jeffrey (examining a dead hookers severed foot) - "Oh my God !!!! BUNIONS !!!!"

PERFORMANCES - The two performances that carry this movie work very well in the context of the film. Although the film is ostensibly a comedy,  Lorenz plays the role of Jeffrey completely straight - he gets the odd one liner here and there but for the most part his character is not overtly funny - the humour is instead derived from the situations that Jeffrey finds himself in rather than any character quirks he may possess.

Indeed, in the scenes where Jeffrey is mourning the death of Elizabeth, you would hardly guess you where even watching a comedy. So intense is his performance here - he looks hollow eyed and sweaty,  twitchy and nervous - that you can honestly believe that you are watching a young man coming apart at the seams mentally. He looks like he has literally been awake for weeks and is only staying conscious via sheer force of will, driven by his obsession above all else.

Even when Jeffrey's plans begin to come together and excitement for his project starts to drive him out of the doldrums, he still seems "off" somehow. He's constantly nervous and jittery around the hookers - as if he's about to get caught at any minute. It's a nice piece of acting and serves to elevate the film slightly above its B-movie status.

More traditionally comedic is Patty Mullens performance as Frankenhooker/Elizabeth. As Elizabeth (pre- lawnmower), she's like a chatty and sweet girl next door type. However, when she becomes the monstrous hooker is when the performance really comes into its own. She lurches and twitches across the screen like she's not fully in control of her own body, her face contorting into a grimace as she screams "Wanna date ?" to all and sundry who come across her. It's a very goofy performance but it works well.

SFX - Lots of severed body parts that look completely unrealistic - and surprisingly considering the storyline - very un-gory. Everything looks like its made from plaster of paris, or rubber and plastic rather than human flesh but - once again surprisingly - it works. The scene with the exploding hookers looks like somebody launched a bunch of fireworks at some shop window manikins and filmed the results - which is probably just what they did.

The effects come into thier own in the ending scenes when the sentient remains emerge from the freezer and exact thier revenge - these scenes are gloriously slimy and repulsive and the sheer effectiveness of them - especially in contrast to the earlier parts of the movie - serves to tip the end scenes of the film into the realms of true horror rather than horror comedy. It's a jarring moment but it's brilliant and well worth the wait.

SEX AND VIOLENCE  - As expected with the subject matter of the film  there is plenty of both on offer here. Exploding prostitutes, decapitations, self trepanation and some grotesque body horror in the films final moments. You definitely get your moneys worth.

RATING - As with Hennenlotter's earlier movie "Basket Case" (1982), this is a jet black comedy with a seedy undertone. A trait shared in common with "Basket Case" is the way Hennenlotter films the grimy backstreets of New Yorks red light districts. Every dirty, sleazy aspect is visually savoured. Every rubbish strewn back alley and filthy doorway is shot in an almost documentary style, giving the night-time underworld that Jeffrey descends into a real sense of place and time.

Unlike a lot of horror/comedies of the time - this film actually succeeds in achieving what it sets out to do. A lot of horror/comedies are neither particularly horrific nor particularly funny - falling between two stools and failing on both counts as a consequence. Frankenhooker does not let the audience down on either aspect - some of the comedy scenes are laugh out loud funny - whether it's Jeffrey contemplating a platter of severed tits or watching a load of sex workers being blown to smithereens. True, the humour IS catered to those of us with a sick sense of humour and consequently won't appeal to everyone but if, like me, you are blessed with a twisted worldview then many of the jokes land perfectly.

 The horror elements - especially the ending - deliver what they set out to do perfectly and the tonal shift at the end of the movie is both disorientating and memorably effective.

Final rating  - 4 combustable hoes out of 5.