Basket Crass: Frankenhooker

This is about what I expected when I released who Directed this.  Today's film is Frankenhooker, a title which speaks for itself.  How I managed to not see this is simply an issue with DVD availability over here.  It sat in my Saved Queue for quite a while, before suddenly reappearing months ago.  At that point, I had nearly forgotten about it.  Thankfully, I spotted it a while back and finally got it.  The movie is, well, weird as hell.  That all made sense, however, when I connected 2 and 2 to figure out that this film is by Frank Henenlotter, the man behind Basket Case 1-3.  Given that this film was made between sequels, the insanity of it all is explained.  The plot involves an already-crazy guy who has to reconstruct his girlfriend after a ridiculous accident- more on that later.  As luck would have it, he's a wannabe Scientist/Electrician.  All I'm saying is that if I had a girlfriend I had to reconstruct, she'd be shit out of luck!  I'm a bit torn on the lead, as he comes off as a cross between the lead in Basket Case and the best friend in Living Doll.  Aside from that, the film is just chock full of crazy, which is generally up my alley.  Will this film be a shocking success or just explode harmlessly?  To find out, read on...

At her father's birthday party, our 'heroine' shows off a remote control lawn mower made by our lead.  Naturally, she's so dumb that she drives it towards herself and lacks the ability to move!

There's also a weird plot point in the beginning about her being 'fat,' but it's about as realistic-looking as the 'fat kid' from The Ice Cream Man.

Our hero plans how he's going to make her a new body via replacement parts and...um, circuits?  You fool-this can only lead to the ending of Deadly Friend!

While working on his plan, he makes time to have a nice dinner with his lady...'s head.  This doesn't help the Living Doll comparisons for our lead, although both came out the same year (1990).

His plan to get body parts involves hiring some hookers and getting the parts he needs.  Naturally, he uses his...Electrician skills to create Super Crack Cocaine.  What's the worst that could happen?

Oh, right.  I suppose that is a bad thing...unless you need lots of body parts.

This scene sure is familiar.  It is a nice homage here though.

As far as the operation itself goes, well...

If he was going for this, I would really question his long-term planning.

As it turns out, all of the parts retained some sort of memory and tried to, well, return to work.

 To make a long, drawn-out Third Act short, the Pimp comes calling and, well, things don't go well for our hero.

I won't SPOIL the final results (if you so choose), but it's not exactly all that great for him.  The End.

Of course- don't you know anything about Science?!?  This film is...well, weird.  With a name like Frankenhooker, I suppose that you expected that.  Even beyond that though, it's a weird, weird film.  Before writing this, I looked back at my Reviews of the Basket Case Trilogy.  The one theme I noted was that the second and third films took big jumps in the crazy department.  Given the timing of this film, this is just another example of that, I suppose.  There's no 'normal' way to do this story, but it still tries hard to be extra insane.  Decapitation by pimp, Crack that makes hookers explode and re-animated body part jumbles are just a taste of what this movie has to offer.  It's  a weird tale in both story and morality.  Who's the good guy?  I guess it's the lead, but he does try to hire a hooker to harvest her body parts.  Henenlotter is not big on traditional, well, anything, so I guess this makes sense.  If you're into the wacky side of Cinema, check this one out.  It may blow your mind though...

Next up, we (read: me) take on something new- a non-Blogger request.  They wanted a crazy Anime film...so there we go.  Stay tuned...