FRANKENHOOKER (1990)
I’m a real sucker for “bad” horror movies whether made intentionally or not. Is my taste rooted in my debilitating fear of gore? Absolutely, but that doesn’t make these films any less iconic in their own right. I was apprehensive when I initially came across FRANKENHOOKER (1990), mostly because I’m not the biggest fan of Frankenstein or any of the novel’s countless reimaginings. FRANKENHOOKER was different though, it’s so weird and… good? Definitely one of those movies where the sentiment “don’t judge a book by its cover” can be applied. Jeffrey Franken, a bioelectrician based in New Jersey, puts himself through Hell and high water in order to piece his fiancée, Elizabeth, back together after she’s killed in a freak accident involving one of the young scientist’s contraptions.
The universe of FRANKENHOOKER incorporates a quirky kind of absurd realism, think 1996’s MATILDA or BEETLEJUICE. Worlds like this are great in comedies and make for some unique dialogue between characters. A prime example is at the very beginning of the movie as Elizabeth complains to her cousin about not being able to lose weight even though Jeffrey had been performing surgeries on her, stapling her stomach smaller, to no effect. She just casually mentions this to the shock and concern of the poor lady just trying to make small talk. This kind of dynamic is so charming in its humor and sets the scene for this 90-minute classic.
Jeffrey is the typical aloof mad scientist type. Your sympathy starts and ends with him losing the love of his life because he almost instantly begins plotting on how to collect enough fresh body parts to put her back together. In true serial killer fashion, he decides to target sex workers under the guise of being a john. His method for murder? A brand of “super crack” (yes… super crack) that causes the user’s body to get so hot it almost immediately explodes into a mass of conveniently whole limbs. After a brief trip to New York, Jeffrey’s able to kill two birds with one stone by chatting up a pimp named Zorro and getting away with a baggie full of crack to study and a scheduled meeting of him and about nine unnesspecting victims the following night. Absolutely unhinged, I know, and so did the writers as it’s constantly foreshadowed that this is a terrible idea in every way, shape, and form. Not even Jeffrey thinks it’s a good plan for most of the runtime. His confidence in the scheme beings to waver after watching a segment from a late-night talk show in what I believe is the best scene in the whole movie; The host of the program, credited as Motormouth, is debating (in bad faith) with an activist about how the government should acknowledge the crack epidemic as it pertains to sex workers in particular.
Motormouth rolls his eyes at his guest, Casey, and her argument that legalizing sex work would allow more women to be able to seek community resources rather than being thrown in jail. The host and his audience find this laughable as he begins to mock Casey by using other examples of what he believes are overly radical ideas like having the government provide free birth control. Jeffrey, tinkering away in his bedroom, takes a moment to look up from his work and talk to his TV, “Don’t laugh, don’t laugh!” his tone sharp and angry, “She’s right…this crack shit’s killin’ ‘em!” as he continues to watch the program, a snippet from a film created by Casey’s nonprofit that documents the tribulations of life on the streets begins playing and Jeffrey fully hallucinates his deceased fiancée getting berated by Zorro, even hearing her calling out to him for help. On the verge of a nervous breakdown he decides to comfort himself by…drilling…drilling into his head. No joke this man puts a power drill against the base of his skull, just behind the ear, and starts going to town on his brain. The procedure seems to “work” and he stabilizes, once more convincing himself that the people he’s about to murder were already goners. This isn’t the only instance of Jeffrey’s declining confidence in his half-baked scheme, in fact, he doesn’t technically follow through with the plan (at least not intentionally).
There's a clear shift in the movie where Jeffrey stops being proactive in his endeavors and starts happenstancing his way through everything after his initial visit to the Big Apple. He’s easily swept up in the chaos and bombastic personalities of those around him and does nothing but watch in awe like someone going through the strangest guided tour of NYC. By the time the “party” Jeffrey was planning with all the ladies comes around he’s a bumbling mess of nerves for the whole scene, clearly reluctant to do anything he can’t take back. Jeffrey (an absolute airhead) can’t seem to understand why all these women are so care-free and only worried about getting paid, completely forgetting that he is the only one who knows about the true nature of this fraudulent party. Fed up with his own inconsistence, he tosses a bag containing the ladies’ payment to the girls, forgetting entirely that he’d also packed his “super crack”. Safe to say, his plan blew up in his face (literally). Completely aghast by everything working out the way he envisioned, Jeffrey promises to put all of the ladies back together again (conveniently leaving out the fact that several of them would be left without body parts including at least one missing an entire torso). I digress, seeing as this is where things stop going Jeffrey’s way entirely.
After going back to his garage turned laboratory in Jersey, Jeffrey is finally able to bring back his late fiancée, and to the shock of literally no one, the experiment doesn’t go exactly as planned. Elizabeth doesn’t come back as herself, frankly, she doesn’t come back as anyone. Because of Jeffrey’s incompetence Elizabeth is brought back to life as a being without sentience and at the mercy of their own muscle memory. An important note here is that Elizabeth isn’t “possessed” by any of the other women, rather none of them are in control and Jeffrey essentially made a walking, talking, half-baked caricature of a person. Around this point in the movie, karma kicks into full effect as he’s forced to chase down Elizabeth who’s gone back to the familiar New York City street her body (or should I say bodies) is/are used to. It’s there that Jeffrey seals his fate as it doesn’t take much for Zorro to track him down and exact his revenge for “taking his girls”. However, before meeting his own demise Jeffrey does manage to fully reinstate Elizabeth’s consciousness back into her new body. The movie doesn’t just end there (that’d be too easy) and the final sequence of events are so campy and ridiculous that no written description could even begin to do it justice. You’ll have to watch and see the chaos ensue for yourself.
On every level, FRANKENHOOKER shot for the moon and landed amongst the stars. For each character who felt like a real person there was an equally unserious role to balance everything out. I loved this silly movie. It’s a great middleground for anyone who appreciates the aesthetics of horror without the kind of scares that’d give you the chills and make you lose sleep. It's also one of those older movies I like to categorize as “funny without being mean” which is always a nice plus for sensitive folks like me. So to all my peers who’re petrified of horror and wish to test the waters with something spooky, but not scary, FRANKENHOOKER is an extremely forgiving movie that is far more funny than it is frightening.
