Frankenhooker

Review by Mike Finkelstein

I am not generally a fan of Troma films. I know the production company has its ardent supporters, and I’m certainly not bashing the work the company has done. They have launched a number of successful (at least by their metrics) franchises – The Toxic Avenger, Nuke ‘em High, Surf Nazis Must Die, among others – and the company has been going strong for over fifty years. They clearly have something they’re doing that works for their fans, a blend of audacity, crudeness, and gore that some people like. And while I’m not above any of that, frequently when I’ve tried to watch various Troma productions I’ve found I just couldn’t get through them. And that’s due to one major factor that really holds their films back for me: ineptitude.

For a company that has been around for so many decades, it’s amazing how often they make films that just aren’t all that watchable. Bad camera work, bad direction, laughably terrible performances, many Troma works feel like a bunch of college kids got together, made a film for 50 bucks and wad of bubble gum, and called it a day. I’m not saying I have the highest standards around, but there is a minimum bar for films that I’m willing to watch and Troma very often easily slides underneath it. It takes a lot, essentially, for me to make it through something Troma has produced.

I honestly let out a deep, sad sigh when I saw that the film Frankenhooker was a Troma production. The title is fantastic, right up there with SexculaA Canadian porn film from 1974 with a name far better than the content within. A silly lark with a nonsensical plot, this one is really just for vampire fans that have to see everything. for being stupid, farcical, and perfectly on point. A dude resurrects his dead girlfriend and turns her into a hooker. Everything you need to know is right there in the title and it sounds hilariously stupid. And, on the one hand, the film is exactly that: funny and stupid. But at the same time it’s still Troma and it shows many of the issues I always have with their works. It’s watchable, yes, but not anywhere even in the ballpark of “good” or something I could recommend to anyone else.

Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) is a brilliant guy. He could be a doctor, if he wanted, but he can’t seem to stay focused in school to finish his medical degree. Instead he spends his days working at the local power plant and his evenings tinkering with weird, biological experiments, like making a sentient brain with a single eye (that he keeps in a fish tank). Celebrating with his girlfriend, Elizabeth Shelley (Patty Mullen), at her dad’s birthday party, he has a front row seat when the lawn mower he made goes off and chows down on Elizabeth, turning her into little more than a head and bloody mulch.

Months later, Jeffrey thinks he can rebuild her. He’s kept her head (and what other parts he could salvage) in a vat of estrogen-laced liquid and, with the right bits and pieces, and enough power, he could reanimate her. But where could he get the parts? Thinking it over, Jeffrey decides to head into New York City, just across the bay, and maybe get the body parts from hookers. This would mean killing them, something he has some qualms about, but if it’s in service of resurrecting Elizabeth, then it’s just something he’ll have to do. But as he works to find the parts, and get deeper down the whole of scientific experimentation, more and more keeps going wrong as the bodies start piling up. Even if he can resurrect her, is he a good enough man at this point to deserve Elizabeth?

A main issue I had with Frankenhooker was that it’s about half of a full movie. Part of what makes a Frankenstein adaptation work is seeing first his descent into madness and then his realization that he’s done something horrible. But Frankenhooker, due to the way it’s built, skips over most of that. Jeffrey is already basically mad after the however many month time jump, deep into his descent in trying to revive Elizabeth. He’s talking about stealing body parts, drilling his brain for comfort, making “super crack”, but we don’t see any of the character development that led him there. He’s already well and truly made, in essence, when the film gets going making him a character that’s just had to watch.

A good version of this film gives us time with the character before he makes the decision to rebuild his girlfriend. We can understand him, bond with him, follow his logic before he goes mad. But by rushing all that we don’t really get to feel anything for Jeffrey. Yes, we can enjoy watching him do insane things, but that’s from a distance. His being wacky and crazy is all we know about him, rendering him into something of a cartoon character. It would have been more impactful if we could have felt something for him first.

Of course, a main draw for this film will be those people just wanting to see a dude build a woman out of hooker body parts. On that front I still feel like the film doesn’t quite work. The name Frankenhooker implies a kind of horror comedy, and while the film has plenty of comedic moments it doesn’t really have the horror at all. Most of the characters in the film are like Jeffrey, underwritten and comically weird. As such, when they die in silly and over-the-top ways (many, many hookers explode due to the super crack) it doesn’t really land. It just feels too broad and not scary at all.

While watching Frankenhooker I kept thinking about Return of the Living Dead IIIThe third film in Dan O'Bannon's parody Living Dead series, although this film did the most to push the films beyond their silly, comedic origin.. That was a film that had a similar mix of elements to this production: horror, comedy, and gratuitous nudity. But in that film there were the elements that were needed to make you care with real character development and actual pathos. When the body horror begins, it feels more genuine, more real, and it’s done in a way to turn your stomach. Return of the Living Dead, Part 3 knew how to make you genuinely invested so that whether it was horror or comedy you were along for the ride.

That was the key that was missing for me here: I was never truly along for the ride. Most of that was down to the fact that the film doesn’t invest in itself, instead essentially building out a series of skits for Jeffrey to follow before he just kind of completes his work and unleashes it on the world. I was never horrified at any moment, and I rarely laughed either, and that was all due to structure and writing. You could blame the shoddy special effects or the bad direction and camera work, but deep down in the film had just spent a little more time investing in its characters and building its story it could have been shoddy as hell elsewhere and I wouldn’t have minded.

Because, yes, a film called Frankenhooker was never going to be a big budget production. You can’t hold it to the same production levels of a B- or C-list studio because Troma films never have that kind of budget. But a lot can be made up with a good story and good characters. You can do a lot with a little, but even on that front Frankenhooker just can’t deliver. It’s just a really good title with a few cute ideas but it fails to stick anything. All the super crack in the world can’t make up for a bad script.