Frankenhooker (4 Stars)

When this film was made in 1990 nobody took it seriously. People laughed at it, and not in a good way. They said it was stupid. But now, 30 years later, it's regarded as a cult classic. But it goes further than that. Back in 1990 the critics wrote bad reviews. Since then it's been re-evaluated. Critics now regard it as a dark comedy that people can laugh at in a good way.

The film's hero is Jeffrey Franken, a young man who spends all his time attempting to resuscitate dead life. He was thrown out of medical school, for unnamed reasons, and now he works for a power company in his home town of Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey. Yes, that town really exists.

Jeffrey's fiancée, Elizabeth Shelley, is killed in an accident with a lawnmower. Jeffrey salvages her head and a few other body parts before the police arrive. He wants to put her back together. The trouble is that her body isn't complete, so he needs spare parts. He visits a pimp in New York and hires all six of his prostitutes for a party. They're all crack addicts, so he offers them crack that he's specially modified. Their bodies explode. He doesn't feel guilty because they could have said No. He picks up the best pieces and takes them home to put Elizabeth back together again.

Jeffrey works hard in his laboratory to make everything perfect.

He makes sure Elizabeth's head is screwed on tight.

Electricity is applied, and she's back to life.

Does that mean they can live happily ever after? Not quite. Even though it's Elizabeth's head and brain, she's influenced by the body parts of the other hookers. Her first impulse on coming back to life is to have sex and make money. She pushes Jeffrey away when he refuses to pay her. She goes out to pick up customers.

Would you want sex with a girl like Elizabeth? I wouldn't. Her scars would scare me away. Other men think differently. They just look at her purple breasts, and the rest of her body isn't a problem. But they soon regret hiring her. Somehow the electric charge is still in her body. Or maybe it's an after-effect of the modified crack. Any man that she gets close to is electrocuted, and then his body explodes.

So Jeffrey has to try to get his fiancée back without getting killed. It's a hard life for a teenage Frankenstein.

Jeffrey also has to deal with the pimp who wants revenge for the loss of his girls. He wears an amulet with a Z symbol. He looks like one of Vladimir Putin's friends from an exclusive Moscow gay bar.

It's a fun film. I can understand how it's won so many fans over the years. The special effects are ridiculously cheap, which is emphasised by the Blu-ray remastering, but somehow it doesn't matter. Love it or hate it, it's a film you won't forget.

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