The Movie
Frankenhooker opens with our hero Jeffrey Franken conducting experiments on a bodiless brain… in the kitchen… of his fiance’s parents home… during her father’s birthday party. Jeffery seems to be making progress in the area of bodiless brain science but the interruptions by his future mother-in-law are definitely not advancing his significant scientific work. Jeffrey’s fiance, Elizabeth, loves pretzels and her mother is worried by how much she eats, implying she is large though she is not. In fact, as she tells her friend, Elizabeth allowed Jeffery to staple her stomach although he is not a doctor. No, Jeffrey works for the electric company and has been thrown out of 3 medical schools which may explain why ELizabeth’s stomach stapling was not successful. The celebration continues and Jeffrey and Elizabeth present her father with his birthday gift- a remote controlled lawn mower because apparently he can’t push a mower like a normal person. Elizabeth starts the lawn mower but, despite Jeffrey’s warnings, she stands right in its path. Elizabeth dies in a horrific lawn mower accident.
Jeffrey is not taking Elizabeth’s death well. He has begun to work tirelessly on a plan to use electrical currents to reincarnate his shredded sweetheart. Jeffrey is a mess though. He kisses photographs which are all over his room and can’t hang pictures straight. He also keeps a video tape of the news report of Elizabeth’s accident hidden in a copy of Grey’s Anatomy. The reporter on the tape is filled with the typical honor and sensitivity reporters are known for. She tells of Elizabeth and “her personality raining down upon birthday revelers” and that she “was instantly reduced to a tossed human salad.” The big reveal of the report is that some of Elizabeth’s parts have gone missing, including her head- I wonder who has that? As the report ends Jeffrey’s mother lets herself into his room and attempts to console the distraught Jeffrey and offers to set him up with a new girl. Jeffrey bares his soul to his mother but all she can do is offer him a sandwich. After this heart to heart, Jeffrey goes outside to his car and grabs some tools he clearly stole from work and goes to his garage laboratory. Stored inside a cooler filled with a mysterious purple fluid is the missing head. Jeffrey takes the head on a romantic dinner date in the corner of the lab. Dinner is pizza and wine but Elizabeth, apparently still conscious of her weight, skips the pizza. Jeffrey shows the head pictures of it on the bodies of nude pin up girls showing it the many ideas he has to rebuild her. After reading her a love poem of Shakespearean skill, Jeffrey returns the head to the cooler and gets back to work because he only has two days to find new parts and reassemble Elizabeth before a major storm hits the area. Jeffrey needs ideas and he has developed a new method to encourage thought- drilling into his brain. On the second drill, he comes up with a plan. Jeffrey is going to New York City to find hookers to use for parts and he is going to fund it with his Christmas Club account.
Jeffrey drives into the city and cruises the hooker strip looking for the perfect parts. He finally settles on a block and finds a woman. The two negotiate a deal for a party with many women for Jeffrey to choose from but first her pimp, Zorro, has to approve the deal. They find Zorro hanging out in the men’s room of the seediest club in all of late 1980s New York, selling crack. Zorro approves of the deal and manages to sell Jeffrey some crack. Jeffrey does not have any interest in doing crack himself, however. Instead, Jeffrey takes the crack home and, through his genius, manages to turn it into an even greater quantity of supercrack. Jeffrey’s supercrack is extremely potent and causes his guinea pig to explode. The next night, Jeffrey takes his money and supercrack to his party at the upscale hooker motel. Jeffrey is dressed as a doctor and he begins an enthusiastic inspection of the assembled hooker. The women humor Jeffrey but are clearly becoming bored as Jeffrey struggles to find the perfect body. Eventually, Jeffrey begins to have second thoughts about the plan entirely and starts to leave. The hookers will not let him leave until he pays them and Jeffrey gives them his bag of money, forgetting that the supercrack is in it. The hookers find the supercrack and are more excited by that than the cash. The party is reignited but supercrack is not to be fucked with. In fairly short order, the hookers begin to overheat and explode. The gorgeous hotel room is transformed into a fireworks show of legs and boobs that would dwarf the local 4th of July displays. Zorro, waiting in the lobby, grows impatient and goes to find his stable only to be knocked cold by a flying head. Jeffrey bags up the hooker parts, promising to use his estrogen based serum to put them all back together but first Elizabeth.
Back home, Jeffrey is hurrying to reassemble Elizabeth as the storm approaches but his organization system is flawed. He just has buckets of parts all over the garage lab. He even gets distracted shaving bunions off of the feet he has picked. I guess if you’re going to rebuild your fiance, you might as well make sure she doesn’t have bunions. Jeffrey dumps the remaining parts in the cooler of estrogen based serum just in time to fire up his equipment. Lightning strikes and
Elizabeth lives!!!!
Sort of. Elizabeth has taken on the traits and language of the hookers and immediately asks Jeffrey if he wants a date. She knocks Jeffrey out and heads back to New York City to ply her trade. When Jeffrey comes to, he quickly realizes where Elizabeth went and tries to find her. Meanwhile, Elizabeth has found her first customer and takes him to the five star motel but she must have too much supercrack because he explodes when they kiss. She then heads to the bar where her pretzel addiction is reborn and she runs into an angry Zorro who recognizes the words, phrases and big Z tattoo on her arm. They scuffle and Zorro nearly punches her head off. In the ensuing chaos, Zorro slips into the background as Jeffrey finally finds Elizabeth and bring her home for repairs. Jeffrey’s problems are mounting. Can Jeffrey save his beloved from the urges of her body? Will he rebuild the hookers? How can he deal with Zorro? Watch Frankenhooker for the answers to these important questions.
How It Fits I With the Day/ Why Did I Choose This Movie
Frankenhooker was an easy choice to celebrate Frank Henenlotter. The movie was my first introduction to his work and one of the first schlock horror movies I ever saw. The movie caught my eye immediately on the shelf of a Blockbuster video in Mt. Kisco back in the days when you could wander around a rental store and discover movies. The cover image of Elizabeth, in full Frankenstein mode with her purple bra, emerging from a subway station was one of the more iconic of that time period. As much as I love Henenlotter’s other movies, Frankenhooker will always be my favorite.
Lessons
- Do not build or operate remote controlled lawn mowers. Think of how many times you crashed that little RC car and now imagine the damage you could do with a lawn mower. Just push the mower. If you can’t resist, don’t stand in front of it.
- Do not let your boyfriend/fiance/husband perform surgery on you if he’s not a doctor. Especially if he’s been kicked out of medical school.
- DO NOT try to bring your loved ones back from the dead. This is an important, recurring lesson. They never come back the same and always cause more problems. Let your mom set you up, go to a bar, sign up for an internet dating service. Do anything EXCEPT reanimation. Please.
- Say no to crack... but run from supercrack.
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