The Problematics: ‘Frankenhooker,’ The Ultra Rude Body Horror Movie To Which ‘Lisa Frankenstein’ Owes A Debt Of Gratitude

This week sees the release of Lisa Frankenstein, a teen horror comedy that I in fact have reviewed for a different publication, one located North of the metropolis from which I write this missive. Despite the movie’s PG-13 rating, Lisa — which was written by much-lauded Jennifer’s Body scribe Diablo Cody and directed by Zelda Williams — takes a fairly relaxed attitude toward homicide when the title heroine Lisa needs new body parts for the undead reanimated creature who’ll become her love interest once she manages to clean him up and supply a very vital physical component. 

Hence, as I note in my review, the picture’s vibe is much more Frankenhooker than it is Monster High. An observation, I hope, that will encourage the masses up in Boston and elsewhere to check out Frankenhooker. 

The 1990 picture is the fourth feature directed by Frank Henenlotter, who’s perhaps the most overtly credible of the self-conscious grindhouse directors who emerged in the 1980s, when New York grindhouses were about to be drummed out of existence by Disney, Ed Koch, and Rudolph Giuliani. Henenlotter’s first feature, 1982’s Basket Case, about a withdrawn young man and the very hungry misshapen twin he carries with him everywhere, was a horror exercise with no winking, shot in and around the fleshpots of Times Square, is grimy like something you’d scrape off your shoe, and scary in a fundamentally upsetting way. In subsequent pictures he’d let his sense of humor show more, and Frankenhooker is his funniest picture to be sure. 

Its protagonist is one Jeffrey Franken, a young genius amateur scientist with a very broad New Joisey accent who we first see experimenting on a brain with an eyeball in its center, floating in a purple liquid. He’s ignoring the birthday barbecue for his future father-in-law, and soon girlfriend Elizabeth Shelley (you’re following the significance of these names, I presume) pops in with encouragement. Elizabeth recounts a conversation with her own mother thusly: “Jeffrey’s too strange and I’m too fat.” Her weight concerns dissipate, you could say, when a remote-controlled lawnmower designed by Jeffrey as a birthday present chops Elizabeth into a “salad,” as one news report puts it. 

Of this salad, Jeffrey has rescued Elizabeth’s head, and a hand, which he’s preserving in the aforementioned purple liquid. As in the James Whale Frankenstein, and, indeed, as in the new Lisa Frankenstein, the reanimating agent for a new creature will be electricity. But the new creature needs a body, and Jeffrey’s conscience is an inhibiting factor. With a giant lightning storm a couple of days away, he agonizes: “In order for you to live, somebody’s gotta take your place…somebody’s gotta die…for you to live…I’m getting a cluster headache.” Jeffrey does what anybody with a cluster headache looking for clarity would do, that is, he takes a drill and bores a couple of holes in his skull to either alleviate guilt or spur inspiration, or both. And then it hits him: theres’a slew of body parts to be had across the river. And so he gets into his vehicle and drives to Times Square and thereabouts.

Frankenhooker revels in the filth of old New York. Not many of you may be aware that the Smashburger on Eighth Avenue and 42^nd St. in Manhattan was once Show World Center, for all intents and purposes the Chuck E. Cheese of peep shows. One might expect to be loudly propositioned by streetwalkers at least half a dozen times walking from 42^nd to 50^th in the 1980s, in broad daylight, yet; hence, the trade could hardly be called anything like an “underworld.” Henenlotter’s depictions of dicey strip clubs with senior dancers, side routes teeming with ladies of the evening or afternoon or any other time of day, and more feels authentic, even if the lighting is a little on the flat side at times. 

Upon witnessing the leisure activities of the urban tenderloin, Jeffrey deplores the smokable cocaine that so many sex workers are reliant on, and determines to synthesize a “super crack,” the better to snag his victims. After another session of self-drilling, he rationalizes: “It’s not like I’m committing murder…I’m not killing anybody…it’s the crack that’s what’s gonna kill ‘em…it’s killing them already. I’m just speeding up the process, that’s all.” 

So far so tasteless. And it just gets more so, with abundant nudity and an unforeseen side effect of “super crack:” spontaneous combustion. 

Patty Mullen plays both Elizabeth and the creature that Jeffrey builds out of a bevy of porno-ready girls (some of the ladies of the evening are played by actual adult stars of the time, including Heather Hunter, a regular feature on the basic cable filthfest Midnight Blue). Elizabeth’s sweet personality is temporarily displaced, unfortunately, by a twitchy, ticcy, tooth-grinding miniskirted vixen who can’t stop asking “Want a date?” and “Going out?” Mullen, who wears some weight-simulating padding as pre-mower Elizabeth, was the 1988 Penthouse Pet of the Year, and her form once she achieves the condition of the title role reflects that — although she has a lot of stitches, mismatched skin tones, scarring, and she strides, well, like Boris Karloff. While the movie was critically lambasted for the most part on release, some critics expressed surprise that a Guccione photographic model was both so game and so comedically deft. 

How game was Mullen? For her nude scene, she allowed the makeup department to paint her nipples purple — they match her outfit and of course are appropriately undead. Once she’s on the loose, the utterly delightful Mullen really walks away with the picture, despite a couple of other excellent comedic turns, especially from laconic James Lorinz as Jeffrey and the great Louise Lasser as Jeffrey’s mom. (Other icons of a bygone era turn up in the cast: DJ and horror TV show host Zacherle plays the weatherman who informs Jeffrey of the incoming storm, and Shirley Stoller of Honeymoon Killers, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, and Seven Beauties fame plays a sleaze bar doyenne.) 

Is the movie scary? Not so much. The gore effects are generally too outlandish to be credibly gross. But Frankenhooker does shamelessly and gleefully romp in its atmosphere of perdition — “Jesus, Elizabeth,” Jeffrey says at one point, “I didn’t bring you back to hang out in a joint like this” — an atmosphere that New York certainly tamped down in the years since this film was made. But trust me, if you know where to look, the Big Apple can still offer it. 

Veteran critic Glenn Kenny reviews‎ new releases at RogerEbert.com, the New York Times, and, as befits someone of his advanced age, the AARP magazine. He blogs, very occasionally, at Some Came Running and tweets, mostly in jest, at @glenn__kenny. He is the author of the acclaimed 2020 book Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas, published by Hanover Square Press.