1990, USA
Frank Henenlotter
1 // 10
Where is the line between the so-bad-it's-good and the so-bad-it's-just-bad? If I drank a bottle of whisky would I have suffered less? How did it even get into my watch list? There's only one way to find out!
When I look at my queued watch list of the titles waiting for rental I realise that 60% of those titles just don't ring a bell. They've been there so long I simply cannot remember why I wanted to see them. Usually it's because I've read something about them on a blog somewhere, or even in the comments to a post referring to a specific genre or a director or a theme. Which, every now and again, leads to situations like this, when the film-watching me wants to hop on the time machine and punch the watch-list-adding me square in the face. Basically, FRANKENHOOKER is an eighty minutes of my life I'm not getting back. And boy, don't I wish I could...
I am rarely finding myself in a position when the time spent watching a film I'd consider a complete waste. There were some bad, really bad films I've seen and still was quite glad to have watched them. If you're interested in the cinema you don't only watch films for fun, that's probably quite clear. However, sometimes, just sometimes you come across something that doesn't add to your knowledge base absolutely nothing. A film that from every possible point of view is, as I said already, an absolute, total and 100% waste of time. FRANKENHOOKER is one of those. As you can guess it does relate to the popular perception of Frankenstein, so yes, there is a 'mad scientist' figure and there is a come-alive creature collated from various body parts. And none of it serves any purpose whatsoever. It's not funny and it's not scary. It's not really gory, even if it kind of makes attempts. With the amount of tits on offer it does hint at sexploitation but the nudity doesn't even feel gratuitous. It's probably more awkward than anything. The story doesn't get engaged in any sort of dialogue with the source material, it's just completely uninspired, dumb and pointless. I have not noticed a single scene or idea in this film that would feel fresh or original. The script is shite, the acting even worse and the whole thing feels like a project that was cobbled together by a bunch of college blokes who's names are Wayne, Wayne and Trevor and whose achievements on the football pitch outnumber the achievements in the academic subjects by ten to one. So, I guess, what I'm trying to say is that FRANKENHOOKER is offensive. Not because of its nudity or blood and guts but simply because of how stupid it is. And I've seen STREET TRASH, boys and girls. Which, as it happens, features James Lorinz, who plays the main character of Jeffrey Franken in FRANKENHOOKER. It's just a meaningless bit of trivia but it does evoke a type of film that I was probably hoping FRANKENHOOKER to turn out to be. But no, there is simply nothing here. This film is simply so self-serving and self-indulgent that in today's terms it feels much more like an act of elaborate trolling than an actual film. Time to get on with my life, I think.
No comments:
Post a Comment