I really wanted to like Frankenhooker more than I did. I've certainly enjoyed what I've seen of writer-director Frank Henenlotter's other films, but the way Frankenhooker focuses more on overt comedy just didn't pan out for me. I mean, there are still the occasional horror bits (including some Basket Case-ish body horror towards the end of the film), but the comedy comes first here. That, and the story frankly isn't all that interesting. Despite the mash-up title, there's not a heck of a lot in the film that plays around with the Frankenstein tale/mythos. Frankenhooker certainly has potential and has a few fun moments, but overall it's kind of a disappointment.
(Incidentally, if you watch the DVD, don't check out the special features until *after* you watch the film. I'll usually look to see what special features a DVD has - but I always watch the film first. I just want to know what's there. But here, there's a little clip that segues from the main menu that basically gives away the best moment in the film.)
Jeffrey is a weird dude. Not only is he a genius with electrical circuits, he has a great interest/aptitude for biology as well. He could have been a doctor, but just wasn't interested, I guess. When we meet Jeffrey (to prove he's a bio-electrical genius) he's messing around with a brain with an eye smack-dab in the middle of it, submerged in a fish tank. Apparently, he's hooked a camera up to the eye and attached it to a monitor - so you can see what it sees. But the thing is still clearly alive - it's actually pretty gross. And even though he's doing this at his girlfriend's dad's birthday party, nobody really seems to care about his strange experiment. But his girlfriend Elizabeth wants him to join the party, especially since they are about to present her dad their gift. You see, Jeffrey rigged up a lawn mower with a remote control, since mowing the lawn is hard. But Elizabeth doesn't know how to use it - so it goes awry and chops her up into little pieces.
Jeffrey is understandably devastated. To make matters worse, several important parts of Elizabeth have gone missing (like her head). If you know the name of the movie, you can probably guess where all this is going. The big twist? Instead of using corpses, Victor (semi-accidentally, so things don't get too dark) murders 8-10 prostitutes and uses their body parts to rebuild Elizabeth. Of course, things don't go as planned.
Like I said, Frankenhooker is way more of a comedy than anything. And that's all it's really trying to be. There's a little interview in the extras with the special effects supervisor. There are key scenes (that involve people exploding) that could have been crazy/gory/nasty, but Henenlotter insisted that it play comedically. So no gore or anything. And while the humor kind of creates an interesting tone for the film, it only works every once and a while and undercuts any legitimate tension. The whole thing is treated like a joke - and it's not a very funny one, unfortunately.
It doesn't help that James Lorinz's performance as Jeffrey never really clicks. He's got a kind of Andrew McCarthy-lite thing going on, and his line reads are a little too corny to work. It's true that Jeffrey is kind of a ridiculous role, but Lorintz plays it like he's on the joke too, and the film suffers for it.
You do get some good old fashioned dirty New York City, which is always a treat. Dirty dive bars, filthy streets, rundown hotels, and blocks upon blocks of drug addicts and prostitutes. But again, it's just not menacing. You know the film is just out to have a gay old time, and are never actually concerned about the fate of any of the characters.
So yeah, overall I just couldn't get into the film. While it does get into some solid Basket Case-esque mutant horror in the waning moments of the film, it's too little, too late. Frankenstein is such a tragic story that it's hard to tell comedically (other than Young Frankenstein I can't even think of any film that has really tried in the last half-century). Frankenhooker is not ever a boring film - it moves along pretty fast and is capably made. But you end up never really being engaged, and you want it to be funnier and better than it is.
I would not recommend this film.
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