Frankenhooker

Watch Movies TV -***DISCLAIMER*** The following review is entirely my opinion. If you comment (which I encourage you to do) be respectful. If you don't agree with my opinion (or other commenters), that's fine. To each their own. These reviews are not meant to be statements of facts or endorsements, I am just sharing my opinions and my perspective when watching the film and is not meant to reflect how these films should be viewed. Finally, the reviews are given on a scale of 0-5. 0, of course, being unwatchable. 1, being terrible. 2, being not great. 3, being okay. 4, being great and 5, being epic! And if you enjoy these reviews feel free to share them and follow the blog or follow me on Twitter (@RevRonster) for links to my reviews and the occasional live-Tweet session of the movie I'm watching! How is it possible that a film titled Frankenhooker lacks in quality?!?

Frankenhooker – 0 out of 5

I love bad movies and have pretty much enjoyed the experience of watching and laughing at them since I was in grade school—it’s no wonder that Mystery Science Theater 3000 spoke to me.  I’ve gotten my hands on some true gems over the years but there has always been one I’ve heard of but have never seen and that one is Frankenhooker.  The name and premise alone should have been enough for me to seek this one out but, for some unclear reason (even to myself), I never bothered to try and find it.  Well, recently I decided to check it out and, I gotta say, it wasn’t very good.  I mean, I knew it would be bad but it wasn’t fun bad.  It was just bad.

Ha ha!  Wackiness!

Who would have thought that a remote control lawnmower
with exposed blades would have gone so wrong?

After his fiancée Elizabeth (Patty Mullen) is killed in a tragic lawnmower accident, Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) decides to use his knowledge of science and engineering to bring her back to life.  However, since he doesn’t have all her parts, he decides he is going to visit some sex workers in order to get the perfect body parts he needs in order to reconstruct her.  Sadly, tragedy strikes as the sex workers consume…*sigh*…super crack made by Jeffrey himself and all the girls explode.  On the positive side, he has all the parts he needs to complete Elizabeth and return her to the world of the living…but Jeffrey isn’t prepared for the monster he is setting loose on the city.

Behold, Super Crack.  Somehow it is the least moronic thing in this movie.

Hmmm, what's her feelings about fire?

To be blunt, Frankenhooker is more grating to sit through than it is fun.  A great bad movie should be fun in its absurdity and with how terrible it is but this one was just a drag and really hard to watch.  The story and plot are so minimal that the whole feature required an insane amount of padding in order to get this to a feature length and the way they go about padding the film is harsh.  You might think I’m gonna complain about the gratuitous nudity in the film because this one doesn’t hesitate to use pointless nudity but that wasn’t the problem with the movie.  Yes, the film does have a scene that is filled with needless nudity and drags itself out in order to maximize as much expose flesh as it could but what really drove me nuts in this film was each and every single scene with James Lorinz.

This thing doesn't have a single line in the film and it is the best performance by far.
Also, they never really explain what the hell this is and what its point was...
and it still was better than everyone and everything else.

Looks like he somehow got transported into a David
Lee Roth music video.

Bad acting is pretty much expected in a film like Frankenhooker and it’s no surprise that the performances aren’t great.  It would be easy to rag on Mullen because her Frankenstein performance is really awkward but her performance and the rest of the cast are so much easier to sit through than Lorinz.  While I can’t say with certainty, I don’t think most of Lorinz’s lines were in the script.   Instead, what you get is a guy looking like he is treating improv like it is just a stream of consciousness.  He never stops talking and the things he is saying you can tell he thinks they are jokes and gags but nothing about it made me laugh.  I just found it terribly annoying.  Matters are only made worse that these scenes are used to extend the length of the film (because without them there is probably less than 45 minutes of material) so I was tortured by this character rattling on for large chunks of time and never did any of these periods of time feel important until the last few seconds—because that is when they would use the scene to set up what was coming next.  The moments of gratuitous nudity felt calculating and like it was time well spent when compared to Lorinz’s non-stop prattling.

I hate being mean in my reviews but literally every scene from Lorinz was unbearable.

I was hoping Frankenhooker would be one of those “so bad it is good” bad movies.  Something that makes me laugh, is easy to riff on, and something to have fun with.  Instead, I just sat through a very grating and boring feature that had very little substance and stretched itself and its weak concept to its very limit.