Frankenhooker

Frank Henenlotter

R1 DVD

Uncut Edition Unearthed Films

Distributed by Anthem DVD

Web: http://www.anthemdvd.com/

From the eccentric filmmaker who brought you such infamous classics as Basket Case and Brain Damage comes ‘a terrifying tale of sluts and bolts!’ Frankenhooker. Originally released in 1990 Frank Henenlotter’s Frankenhooker created an immediate sensation among lovers of cult and horror films. It also caused much controversy and was regularly banned and censored. While it reached a wide audience, most early releases were heavily edited with many cuts and the various VHS releases varied in quality from the mediocre to the atrocious. While there have been various a DVD releases, all have been of edited releases.

This new edition from Unearthed films (released via Anthem), is truly impressive. Frankenhooker is presented in its original 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen with good clarity and solid colours. The sound track is a solid English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo with clear dialogue.

Frankenhooker is a wild and exciting ride, the film is a bizarre post modern adaptation of the Frankenstein tale. Elizabeth is killed after her rather unstable boyfriend, Jeffrey Franken, makes a remote control for a lawnmover which proceeds to run her over and leave her as a pile of body parts.

Jeffrey is a trifle strange, using an electric drill to drive holes in his head when the stress gets too much for him. He is also obsessed with medicine and electricity and has been thrown out of numerous medical schools for his strange experiments. He collects whatever parts of Elizabeth he can salvage and sets to work reconstructing her.

He realizes that to create the new Elizabeth he will need body parts from many different women, so he raids his Christmas account and sets out to rent some prostitutes. When he realizes that most are “crack” whores, he uses his chemical knowledge to develop a new form of crack with the hope of arranging their demise in the least painful manner. While he accepts he must kill them, he wants to do so in a humane manner. There is a problem however with his plan, this new crack causes his test animals to explode!

He arranges to meet some working girls in a cheap hotel and select the ones with the best parts but as he vacillates about which ones to use things get out of hand, the girls steal his money and smoke the crack. What happens next is perfect cult cinema; the girls strip, dance, sing, have some one-on-one action and then begin to explode. Here we have it all - sex, prostitutes and exploding bodies, a scene to be remembered !! Jeffrey panics and collects all the body parts and tails it back to Jersey where he recreates Elizabeth and things go from bad to worse.

As the tale continues Elizabeth becomes an avenging prostitute, the remaining parts come to life and form their own grotesque unions and Frank ends up being resurrected by Elizabeth after losing his head to a pimp!

What, of course, is most impressive about this release is that it is totally uncut. At last Frankenhooker has been restored to its original sex and gore quotient and that makes it a real gem. But that is not all; this edition is packed to the brim with extras. A great commentary, a doco called The Salad That Was Once Named Elizabeth: Patty Mullen Remembers Frankenhooker in which the actress who brought Elizabeth to life reminisces about her work on the film and a thirty-minute documentary entitled A Stitch in Time: The Make-Up Effects of Frankenhooker which covers in some details the special effects used in the film.

This is followed by a second interview Turning Tricks: Jennifer Delora Remembers Frankenhooker, where the actress who played ‘Angel’ discusses what it was like to work with Henenlotter and the rest of the crew on this project. There is also a photo album and a few trailers.

This is the ultimate Frankenhooker release and a must have for any cult film aficionado.