"Frankenhooker"(1990)d/Frank Henenlotter

Frankenstein's creation was never my favorite movie monster(despite the fact that I wear his boots all the time), to be truthful, I've always been more of a werewolf guy. You know, beast within, howling at the moon, at the ladies' throats and so forth? At least until the first time I saw Frankenhooker, that is, the fourth full-length feature from Frank Henenlotter and Co. One thing I've always dug about his films, is the effortless way he's able to blend horror and absurd comedy on challenged budgets into substantial genre art. Nowhere is that more evident than tonight's review, a collaboration with original editor of Fangoria magazine, the steadfast 'Uncle' Bob Martin, who adapted the Brain Damage(1988) screenplay into a novelization, as well as penning the initial drafts for tonight's film and Basket Case 3: The Progeny(1991). The effort stars the deadpan James Lorinz, (who woprophiles will remember as the wisecracking doorman in cult classic, Street Trash, three years earlier) as the resident mad electrician, and the savory former Playboy Playmate/ Penthouse Pet of the Year, Patty Mullen (who really proves she's more than another gorgeous face) turns in an exceptional and highly memorable comic performance as the titular patchwork(and partially purple) prostitute.


"Hey Ma, I've invented the webcam!!! Come make a duckface in front of it."
We watch in horror (not really...) as electrician/med school dropout/inventor, Jeff Franken (James Lorinz) provides his father-in-law to be with a remote controlled lawn mower that naturally goes awry and fatally cuts down his pudgy pretzel-chewing fiancee, Elizabeth (Patty Mullen), into pieces. Obsessed with resurrecting his lost love, he spends long hours in experimentation when he isn't getting scolded by his mother (Louise "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" Lasser) or self-medicating against migraine headaches with a power drill. He's managed to steal some of his late girlfriend's more important parts from the county morgue, and keeps them dormant and immersed in a preservation/rejuvenation fluid until the later date on which he can piece her back together. Having spent many nights cruising Manhattan's forty-deuce in search of acceptable replacement parts, he arranges a hotel room party with several striking hookers from the stable of a highly possessive and equally muscular pimp named Zoro (Joseph Gonzales), only to kill them off after they sample a fatal form of "super crack" he's developed that blows them into pieces. He hoards the parts into plastic garbage bags and heads back into New Jersey, with much work to do...


"Jersey Boy"(James Lorinz) is hella ambitious: I still haven't replaced the LED lights in my digital Detroit Lions helmet alarm clock from the seventies.
Back at the lab, he sorts through random asses and tits, etc.,  for the perfect combination to add to his former girlfriend (whose disembodied head he writes bad poetry to and even wines and dines on occasion) and after piecing her back together with well-placed stitches, sends her lifeless form through the garage roof into the heart of an electrical storm, which naturally brings her back to life, but there's one or two slight problems Jeffery has to deal with.The first is the muscle-bound mack Zoro who's looking to exact bloody revenge upon him for blowing up his best bitches, the second is the foreign body parts that comprise Elizabeth's patchwork frame have somehow retained the memory of their previous lives, being sex workers. This results in his Frankensteinian fiancee impulsively stomping back off to the Big Apple to get back to work, after knocking her would-be saviour unconscious. One of her new tricks explodes into pieces as he reaches orgasm. Oh my. Can Jeffery reach Elizabeth in time and fix her faulty flaws before Zoro spots her partially purple ass and lays claim to the pieces that were once his? I'll save the wild finale for you to discover on your own, once you've picked up a copy for yourselves, which should be as soon as possible, You'll love it.


Franken full of despair, the whores 'sploding in air, gave proof through the night, that super crack had been therrrrrre...
The first VHS release of the movie came with an optional talking box that asked you if you wanted a date if you pressed a subway lamp on the poster artwork. I bet copies that still work are pretty rare these days. If you're a stickler for detail, you'll surely notice horror host extraordinaire who voiced Henenlotter's Aylmer in 1988's Brain Damage, John Zacherle himself, as a weatherman on television here. Beverly Bonner also reprises her Casey character from Basket Case in a cameo. Among the, errr, working girls... you'll note the likes of December 1982's Playboy Playmate, Charlotte Kemp (later Helmkamp), December 1988 Penthouse Pet of the Month, Kimberly Taylor, and Nubian porno delight Heather Hunter, who you'll no doubt recall from her roles in things like Coming on America (1989) and Screw the Right Thing (1990). The ungainly practical effects were purposely provided by Gabe Bartalos and company, and I got it. Horror comedy of the highest order, for sure, as I could easily spend the whole paragraph waxing nostalgically about all the pleasure I've gotten from Frank Henenlotter's movies over the years, from that first sixty-five dollar Basket Case (1982) VHS I bought at the mall as a teenager, to 2008's Bad Biology (and not excluding his excellent work with Something Weird over the years, by any means). Four Wops on the rating scale, and my highest recommendation, for sure.



I was gonna give you a purple nurple, but I see you've already got a couple, baby...

"Brain Damage" (1988) d / Frank Henenlotter

If you happen to enter my media room (you're either a hot chick or a member of my inner circle, congrats, either way), you'll notice that the German poster for tonight's review that I've had since the nineties,  hangs, right next to my German print of Carpenter's Halloween (1978)...I never dreamed I'd get this snobby in my old age, really, but here I am, running down my Henenlotter pedigree. No stopping now. I spent sixty-four ninety-five on the Media VHS of Basket Case (1982) when it first came out (I was fourteen), and though I could never stabilize the tracking the whole way through on the big floor model tv in the parlor ( Mr. Bradley's nose always looked like Margaret Hamilton's, as he walked slowly down the cellar stairs on my copy), I was instantly a huge fan of Frank's work. His next film, 1988's Brain Damage, I also saw upon release, and liked even more. Where Basket Case suffered from budgetary restraints in areas, Damage handles the same dilemma, and pulls it off; a more polished, funnier, more generally effective film than his previous effort.


Next week on "When Keith Moon and Syd Barrett Play Hide n' Seek at the Junkyard"...
An elderly couple (just as worldly, judging by their culture-laden digs) seeks out their family pet at the outset, to show him the nice calves' brains they've gotten him, but he's flown the coop, causing his captors to obsessively, haphazardly needle through all of their belongings to find him, until they're both left spastic and foaming on the floor. Elsewhere in the building, there's young Brian (Rick Hearst), who's bedridden with a headache, only to end up on a mind blowing trip of psychedelia and colors, thanks to the mouth parts of Aylmer, a phallic, wisecracking parasite who sort of resembles a smug brussel sprout that attaches itself to the host's neck and shoots a blue euphoria-inducing fluid into their brain. In return for the experience, the host must provide him with a steady diet of brains, preferably human, and fresh out of a living skull? Why, that's even better...


"The waitress, a vampire named Perkins...was so very fond of small gherkins, while she served the tea, she ate forty-three...which pickled her internal workin's! Ho! Ho! Ho!"
Brian is instantly hooked on Aylmer's juice, and willingly strolls out into the New York night with the lump on his neck, unaware that, while he trips his face off, the talking shillelagh will be claiming victims; first a night watchman at a junkyard, then a wasted chick at a punk rock show willing to get her knees dirty. Meanwhile, his relationships with his girlfriend, Barbara (Jennifer Lowry), and his brother, Mike (Gordon MacDonald), become so strained that she ends up waxing his brother down instead, when he blows off their dates, often for a splashy party in the tub with Aylmer (!). It's only when Brian tries to take charge of their symbiotic partnership that Aylmer tells the young man his historic back story, and, in a battle of wills, refuses to juice him, while holed up in a flea bag hotel room. I won't ruin the ending for you here, it's one you need to see to believe. Snag a copy.


It's not the face you fuck, but the fuck you face, except for this fatal face fuck.
Two years later, Henenlotter would revisit Belial and Duane Bradley in Basket Case 2 (1990), though it should be mentioned that they make a cameo here in a hilarious subway standoff with Brian and Aylmer that I never saw coming the first time around and left me laughing. Fellow Basket Case alum, Beverly Bonner, also makes an appearance here. The first time I heard Aylmer's distinct voice, I knew it was New York Horror Host and Chiller Theater regular, John Zacherle, uncredited, though how I fished his name out of the dark recesses of my memory is still puzzling, seeing how I'd only caught Zacherle's act a few times during my childhood (probably the last being his 3D presentation of Gorilla at Large on WOR-TV 9 six years earlier), which belonged exclusively to Dr. Shock, and to a lesser degree, Uncle Ted, during his Ghoul School days. Man, I wouldn't trade growing up in my era for anything. So much good stuff, which happens to be what Henenlotter is synonymous with: good genre stuffs a'plenty. Damage scores a perfect four Wops, as an urban horror/comedy/fantasy about addiction, as gritty as it is urbane. My highest recommendation comes along with it.


Ear's looking at goo, kid.