Brunswick Underground Film Fest 2025 Review - Frankenhooker
Images courtesy of Brunswick Underground Film Festival.
Frank Henenlotter, mad genius of exploitation cinema, has never been one for subtlety. Frankenhooker is proof of that - an electrified, crack-addled, hooker-exploding fever dream that somehow manages to be both hilariously absurd and tragic. It’s a film that asks all the important questions: What would you do if your fiance was killed by your own remote-control lawnmower? What if you had to kill to build her a new body out of “spare parts”? And most importantly - would you try super crack?
James Lorinz plays Jeffrey Franken, a New Jersey medical dropout with a penchant for trepanning his own skull when stressed. After his fiancée Elizabeth (Patty Mullen) meets a tragic end via rogue lawnmower at a family BBQ (her own father's birthday, no less), Jeffrey embarks on a noble quest to rebuild Elizabeth using the finest body parts the streets of New York have to offer. The result? A resurrected boo with the mind of six dead prostitutes and the libido of a mid-meltdown nuclear reactor.
Much like previous films Basket Case (1982), wherein a man carries his murderous, malformed twin brother in a wicker basket, or Brain Damage (1988), which features a parasitic alien creature that injects hallucinogenic fluid into its host in exchange for a steady diet of human brains, Henenlotter’s maniacal and morbid sense of humor is on display in full force. Frankenhooker takes the same gleeful approach to the breakdown of the human body, but with an extra dose of sleaze and satire. It’s a film that revels in its own trashiness - Mr. Henenlotter loves taking the notion of bad taste and throwing it out of the window at high velocity - yet also works as a critique of the hyper-criticism and commodification of women’s bodies.
Likenesses can be drawn to last year's surprise critical darling The Substance, Coralie Fargeat’s monumental film that owes more than a little to Henenlotter’s legacy (even if many prefer to compare it to the much more popular works of Cronenberg, despite their styles of body horror being wildly different in tone). Like Frankenhooker, it explores the horrors of bodily modification and the grotesque lengths people will go to achieve an idealized version of beauty. But where Henenlotter’s films are drenched in neon sleaze, Fargeat’s vision was polished, hyperreal, and dizzyingly blunt force. The DNA of films like Frankenhooker, Brain Damage, and even Troma's The Toxic Avenger are all prevalent in The Substance - from its satirical take on beauty and substance abuse, to its creatures that amount to a loose amalgamation of limbs and orifices - not to disparage Fargeat as she paints the material in a more explicitly introspective and personal light.
Ultimately, Frankenhooker is the kind of film that refuses to be ignored. It’s loud, garish, and unapologetically grotesque, yet like its oddball protagonist, it manages to be weirdly endearing, despite the rampant sex and violence - gleefully flipping off the notion that horror has to be serious to be brilliant. Henenlotter knew exactly what he was doing, and he did it with the confidence of a man who has stared directly into the abyss of low-budget filmmaking and said, "Yeah, but what if we made it fun?". Every scene is dialed up to 11, every gag lands with a splatter, and every grotesque mutation of flesh is served with a knowing wink. It’s cult cinema in its purest form: unfiltered, unashamed, and absolutely unforgettable. You don’t just watch Frankenhooker - you experience it.
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Frankenhooker is screening as part of Brunswick Underground Film Festival. The festival runs from the 30th of May to the 1st of June. Check out the festival website for tickets and more info here.