Frankenhooker (1990) – What Happened to This Horror Movie?

There are certain types of media that could have only come from one person. Something so specific and out there that only a beautiful, twisted mind like director Frank Henenlotter could have conjured it. Today, we’re talking about one of those movies. A movie that answered a question we’ve all asked at some point in our lives… ”What if Frankenstein were a hooker?” This is the story of what happened to Frankenhooker.

Director Frank Henenlotter hit the streets of New York City for his follow up to Brain Damage and Basket Case with a hankering for something different this time around. His newest film would stay in and around the horror genre of course but would lean further into the comedy aspect of his writing prowess. The idea of which came from an improvisation that took place at a pitch meeting for an entirely different film. According to Henenlotter, “We were discussing another screenplay I’d written. An insect story”, when he realized his audience wasn’t interested and on the fly pitched, in his words, a “rather oddball idea of blending The Brain That Wouldn’t Die with some T&A and some very affectionate Frankenstein cliches from my favorite grade-D movies”. And so, it was at that point, in the same three month period, Henenlotter would write the script for both Frankenhooker and Basket Case II. On Frankenhooker’s script, he thankfully had the help of the late Bob Martin who worked as an editor for Fangoria and wrote a novelization based on Henenlotter’s previous film, Brain Damage.

In the script, New Jersey’s Jeffrey Franken is something of a disenfranchised mad scientist. He spends his days in his moms basement working on his elaborate and wacky inventions. Even at one point having the confidence to DIY provide stomach surgery on his girlfriend. He can’t go to a real school for this of course because he’s anti-social found they “upset” him. One fateful day, one of Jeffrey’s inventions (an automatic lawnmower), runs his dutiful girlfriend over, horrifically murdering her in front of everyone at her dad’s birthday party. Afterwards, Jeffrey proceeds to go full on nutbar and lose his mind in his moms basement. He’s stolen her head (the only part of her left intact) from the crime scene and keeps it fresh in a freezer full of purple goo. By day he works on a plan to bring her back to life. By night he has dinner dates with her severed head.

To demonstrate just how off the map Jeffrey is at this point, whenever he becomes tired, stuck on a problem, or full of anxiety? He takes a power drill to different parts of his brain. Just to mix it up. Finally, he decides that he can’t take it anymore. He has the scientific ability. It’s time to bring her back to life. But since her body has been gruesomely dismembered, he would have to create her a new one. But where’s he going to get them? Hookers of course! Hookers from Manhattan. Jeffrey dresses like a doctor and heads downtownwhere he acquires a group of hookers from their pimp, Zorro. Later, he reluctantly and sort of accidentally murders them all by offering them his supped of version of crack, which makes them overheat and explode into actual smithereens. He then takes their bits home and picks his favorite body parts from the hooker treasure trunk, creating the perfect body to match his dead girlfriend’s head.

Only when Elizabeth is brought back to life she is all sorts of Pet Semetary messed up. Her mind is an amalgamation of the dead prostitutes mixed together, and her genitalia make those who come into contact with them overheat and explode. But Elizabeth is also in there somewhere. And pretty pissed off that her boyfriend brought her back to life using, as the movie poster states, ”sluts and bolts”.

Zorro the pimp later beheads Jeffrey for his crimes upon the hooker kingdom but fear not…Elizabeth uses Jeffrey’s left behind schematics to bring him back to life as well. When Jeffrey awakes, to his horror, he finds out that his head is attached to a body comprised of female hooker parts. “Where’s my Johnson?!?” he screams into the void as the credits roll. Frank Henenlotter, everyone.

One thing that makes Henenlotter’s films work despite their batcrap crazy premise and low budget? His ability to find actors with almost no experience who absolutely crush their performances. In this case, James Lorinz as Jeffrey delivered a performance just as quirky and original as the film that surrounds him. The Street Trash and eventually King of New York actor had an authentic New Jersey attitude infused with the wacky hijinks of a Jeffrey Combs in Reanimator. He reminds me of Randall from Clerks were his dickishness infused with the spastic quirky nature of a New Jersey version of Matthew Perry’s Chandler from Friends.

The same is true for Patty Mullen as Elizabeth. For an actress who had only been in two other roles to this point in her career (and shockingly doesn’t have a credit after Frankenhooker), Mullen is unforgettable. She’s total game for anything the film throws at her and manages to pull off both verbal and physical comedy in a way that would impress comedian and stuntman alike.

One of my personal all time favorite acting roles, however, goes to a man with only two acting credits to his career. Zorro the Pimp’s Joseph Gonzalez. Gonzalez made his acting debut in Henenlotter’s Brain Damage as a meat head in the shower. In that film, he’s actually a pretty decent guy, telling a skinny, scared looking man entering the showers, “Hey man, don’t worry about it, ain’t no body gonna bother you”. Before having his brains eaten. Here, as Zorro the Pimp, he runs around like a cracked out businessman Lou Ferrigno type-Hulk and it’s nothing short of glorious. I’m not going to call it good parse, but there’s something about Gonzalez’ line delivery that should be studied. There’s nothing like it. As he says (while his mouth isn’t even moving) *Clip here* “Zorro knows what you need to get in the right state of mind…some of this sweet, sweet…ROCK”.

Made for a budget of $2.5 million according to Box Office Mojo and produced by Shapiro-Glickenhaus Entertainment (or SGE for short), Frankenhooker was, at the time, Henenlotter’s most expensive film to date. Henenlotter sang the praises of SGE in an interview, stating that the company was extremely supportive of the films he had made for them. He even states that if they were still in business, he’d still be making films. Which would be pretty rad.

Part of Henenlotter’s love for SGE came from the fact that they fought with him against the MPAA when the company refused to give the film an R rating. This, despite Frankenhooker’s decided lack of gore. Henenlotter mentioned that at the infancy stages of the movie, SGE asked how he was possibly going to make it without receiving the dreaded “X” rating from the MPAA. He explained that the movie was a comedy, not a horror film, and thus would not have gore. He said, “when I kill all these women, I’m not going to have any blood or gore. I’m going to do this like fireworks. It’s going to be hilarious.” But when the MPAA called with their results, they didn’t think it was that funny. As Henenlotter tells it, the head of the ratings board at the time, Richard Heffner, called and said they had screened the film and were going to rate it an “S for sh*t”.

This emboldened Henenlotter’s understandable suspicions the ratings board were corrupt, saying, “That was the ratings board. It’s supposed to be an impartial, nonjudgmental organization who is all a crock of sh*t.” SGE decided to back Henenlotter and instead refused to accept the X rating or the R rating. Releasing the film unrated in all of its glory. Apart from one specific version of the film made for the most prudish of video stores Frankenhooker was released in all of its unrated glory on home video.

Though Henenlotter had a good time working with SGE, it doesn’t mean the shoot was without its problems. Allegedly at one point in the production they went over their budget and had to bring in someone “unlicensed” who told Henenlotter “don’t worry…..it’s maybe safe”. He also ended up having to handle the cinematography himself as he had done on both Brain Damage and Basket Case after, as he puts it, “the DP we got flaked out”.

Frankenhooker was filmed in part at Pier 40 in New York where, as Fangoria #90 put it, was a semi derelict storage facility where they would also be filming Basket Case 2. Back to back. Henenlotter explained this was the only way to make both films on such a low budget, saying, “both films are far more ambitious than you would assume from the budgets. By setting up the studio on the first one, we already have everything arranged for the second, minimizing our overheads.”

Henenlotter once again worked with the amazing special FX guru Gabe Bartalos who helped him set up the intricate shot of nine hookers exploding in a hotel room. They achieved this by having the ladies freeze in their positions and then creating full body molds of them in said positions. They then filmed up until the point of fruition and removed the actresses from the set, replacing them with the molds, and blowing them the F up.

It’s not all fun and exploding hookers. Neither in the stressful creation or the film, nor in its meaning. Henenlotter explained “a film has to be about something”. In this case Jeffrey wanted bring his girlfriend who struggled with her body image before she died back to life as this porno mag centerfold. The end of that movie is him paying for that sin. You may not need a decoder ring to get it, but it deserves credit where credit is due. Even something as dumb and fun as Frankenhooker can have something interesting say in the right hands. As Henenlotter puts it, “I’ve always been fond when women embrace Frankenhooker. Because they see past the T & A and realize….’That son of a bitch tried to fix her!”.

There you have it. Frankenhooker. A feminist film. I kid, but these films do tend to be far smarter than the average critic gives them credit for. One scene between Jeffrey and his mother where he bares his heart to her that he’s losing it, becoming amoral and veering toward utter madness only to be offered a sandwich? Is a particularly hilariously sharp take on mental health and relationships. But its funner in a movie that features a character feverishly digging through a container of dismembered hooker breasts.

At some point amongst the filming and or editing of Frankenhooker, an unlikely ally appeared onto the scene in Bill Murray. Murray had been editing his film Quick Change and ended up hanging around for a bit. Murray was later quoted as saying, “If you see one movie this year, it should be Frankenhooker”. Which, at the time, absolutely had to blow people’s minds.

Eventually, the rights to Frankenhooker and other SGE properties were sold to Synapse films who released the film on Blu-ray in 2011 before Troma Entertainment purchased the entire SGE catalog in 2021. Here’s hoping we’ll get a 4K special edition some day with all the fixings.

In the end, Frankenhooker is a hilarious and underrated mix between Porky’s, Weird Science, and Reanimator that was destined to become a cult classic from the day Henenlotter improvised it in that meeting room. One of those rare movies whose hidden qualities you appreciate more and more upon each viewing. And that, my friends, is what happened to Frankenhooker.

A couple of the previous episodes of What Happened to This Horror Movie? can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!