Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 10/29/23

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, October 29, 2023

Frankenhooker (Frank Henenlotter, 1990)

Patty Mullen in Frankenhooker

Cast: James Lorinz, Patty Mullen, Joanne Ritchie, Paul-Felix Montez, Joseph Gonzalez, J.J. Clark, Gregory Martin, Carissa Channing, Shirl Bernheim, Hannah York, Helmar Augustus Cooper, Heather Hunter, Louise Lasser. Screenplay: Robert Martin, Frank Henenlotter. Cinematography: Robert M. Baldwin. Production design: Charles C. Bennett. Film editing: Kevin Tent. Music: Joe Renzetti.

Mary Shelley's monster -- by which I mean the novel, not the creature in it -- has undergone so many dismemberings and reassemblages over two centuries that I doubt she would recognize it today. I certainly don't want to speculate about what she would think of Frankenhooker, which carries the premise of reanimating the dead to its sleaziest extreme. When Jeffrey Franken's (James Lorinz) fiancée, Elizabeth Shelley (Patty Mullen), dies in an accident that leaves him only her head, he takes what he has learned in the med schools he flunked out of and the equipment he has "borrowed" from his job in an electrical power plant, and sets out to collect other body parts with a view to reconstructing and reviving her. He finds the parts he needs on the women walking the seedier streets of Manhattan. How he collects them and how the plan goes awry involves, among other things, some explosive crack cocaine and a vengeful pimp. Yes, the movie is in the worst possible taste, with something to offend almost anyone. The acting is atrocious and the special effects are, let's say, marginal. But it's also some kind of classic -- cult or camp or exploitation, you label it. I can only say that if you don't laugh out loud at least once, you may need to reanimate yourself.