Frankenhooker Movie Review *SPOILERS*

I first found out about Frankenhooker towards the end of last year while I was endlessly scrolling through TikTok and found a video about the film. I love comedy-horror movies and adore Frankenstein. I read the Mary Shelley novel four times throughout my time in college and found it more and more interesting each time.

Back in January, I came down with a bad case of bronchitis and had nothing but free time on my hands, so I thought it was the perfect time to watch Frankenhooker. I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did, and I’ve talked about it a lot since first watching it. I recently watched the movie again on Friday with my boyfriend, after finally convincing him, and realized I love the movie more than I originally thought I did.

The premise of the film is that Jeffrey, an electrician and “sort of a doctor in his spare time” (according to Elizabeth), is heartbroken over his fiancé, Elizabeth’s, untimely death, and plots to bring her back to life. The movie opens with Jeffrey creating a weird creature, a brain with an eyeball in it, while at his future father-in-law’s birthday party. Its sight is connected to some kind of camera so that Jeffrey can see what it sees. I think the point of showing him creating this creature is to show the audience that he already understands human biology to a certain degree and can mesh it with his skills as an electrician. I think it’s supposed to convince us that he’s educated enough to be able to succeed at bringing Elizabeth back to life later in the film.

At the birthday party, Elizabeth’s mom scolds her for eating pretzels and tells her, “For your own good, ease up on the pretzels.” A family member comes up to Elizabeth after and asks what’s wrong. Elizabeth responds, “Same old thing. Jeffrey’s too strange and I’m too fat.” The woman asks Elizabeth what happened to her diet, and she explains, “Oh heck. I’ve tried it all and nothing works. I’ve tried liquid diets, seafood diets, vegetable diets, fruit diets, pills, powders, Weight Watchers, and clinics. I even had Jeffrey staple my stomach and nothing helps… but it didn’t help much. I’m still a compulsive eater.” The woman was shocked that Elizabeth let Jeffrey operate on her and she explains, “Well, of course. I mean… we’re going to be married.” She goes on to explain that he’s a self-described “bio-electro technician” and that he’s been kicked out of three different medical schools. I can’t imagine the delusional devotion someone must have to allow their unconventionally weird boyfriend with no medical degree to cut them open and perform surgery on them. Also, if Jeffrey loves her enough to marry her, then why is he trying to change Elizabeth. All I can think of is that TikTok trend where girls make a video where they list the toxic, manipulative things they put up with in their past relationships and then they laugh about it in retrospect because they can’t believe they stayed with their abusive ex-partners.

Diet culture and stigmas surrounding weight are definitely prominent in the film. Somehow Jeffrey being a weirdo is equivalent to Elizabeth being considered fat. Elizabeth is at the party, enjoying herself, spending time with her family, and eating the food prepared for the festivities, while Jeffrey is sitting alone inside, fiddling with his brain creature, instead of spending time with his loving fiancé who is constantly defending him and hyping up his skills to others, and supporting his hobby. Elizabeth needs to drag Jeffrey out of the kitchen to join the party, only to then accidentally get killed by one of Jeffrey’s inventions, a lawn mower he rigged with a remote for Elizabeth’s father.

You would think that it’s reasonable for Jeffrey to fall into a deep depression while grieving for his fiancé, whose death he blames himself for. However, you start to lose empathy for him during the credits of the film, while he’s planning how he’s going to bring Elizabeth back to life. As he’s making his calculations, he talks to himself about the things he needs to change about Elizabeth’s body. These are all things Jeffrey says during this scene:

“That’ll give me enough power to at least inflate them, at least three inches.”
“No, wait a minute, I want to get rid of that chicken neck look.”
“Inject some steroids into this leg.”
“Now this is where the mole was. I gotta get rid of this.”
“This was the problem, the mole. I gotta get that mole, there might be a little concave hole.”
“That’s right! Get these varicose veins outta here.”
“If I can only get rid of that skin growth, okay.”
“This is where I can turn her off, get rid of that pigmentation.”

His whole plan to bring back Elizabeth is to bring her back without flaws. He doesn’t want Elizabeth as she was, he wants Elizabeth to be his own personal design. His plans for her new body show that even if he does actually love and miss her, he still objectifies her sexually. If he brings her back to life, he wants it to be gratifying for himself.

In the news broadcast of Elizabeth’s death, the newswoman describes the scenario: “The vivacious young girl was instantly reduced to a tossed human salad. A salad that police are still trying to gather up. A salad that was once named Elizabeth.” I thought it was kind of ironic that Elizabeth was shamed for her diet and eating habits at the party, but now in the broadcast was referred to as a salad, which is often considered healthy.

As if he doesn’t have enough red flags as it is, Jeffrey’s mother comes into his room and picks up his dirty laundry. This grown man mad scientist can bring his fiancé back from the dead, but can’t do his own damn laundry? Jeffrey confides in his mother and goes into a monologue about his feelings and fears. He tells her, “Somethings happening to me that I just don’t understand. I can’t think straight anymore. My reasoning is all twisted and distorted, you know? I seem to be disassociating myself from reality. More and more each day. I’m anti-social. I’m becoming dangerously amoral. I’ve lost the ability to distinguish between right from wrong. Good from bad. I’m scared, Ma. I mean, I feel like sometimes I’m plunging headfirst into some kind of black void of sheer utter madness or something.” His mother stares at him for a moment and responds with, “Do you want a sandwich?” These A+ parenting skills definitely offer an explanation or two about why Jeffrey is the way he is. He basically isn’t able to express his emotions because when he does, he gets no validation from his mother who still cleans up after her adult child. It’s a little crazy that this movie came out over thirty years ago and we’re still, as a society, trying to normalize men being emotional.

Jeffrey goes into his garage, A.K.A. his secret lab, where it’s revealed that he’s been keeping Elizabeth’s head and body parts in a tank of a purple preservative liquid. He dines a fancy Italian dinner with her head and then reveals that it’s actually just pizza (which I found hysterical). He tells Elizabeth that his plan to bring her back is coming to an end and that the time to do it is almost here. He tells her, “If everything goes as planned, and it should, it’ll be a whole new look for you. As a matter of fact, it’ll be a whole new you.” He starts to show her images of nude models but with her head glued on top. He goes on to read her an awful poem he wrote for her and slips it between her fingers when he puts her body parts back in the tank. At least she was spared hearing it since she’s dead…

As if Jeffrey couldn’t get any weirder, he is addicted to giving himself self-inflicted lobotomies. He says that they help him relax and think better. He says to himself, “Some people need drugs, some people need booze. I just need a little surgical assistance.” My favorite part about this is that the drill goes in nice and smooth and there’s no blood or brain matter from the drilling. Just a casual evening lobotomy, no biggie. After scrambling his brain, he comes to the conclusion that he can buy and kill a prostitute to get the body parts he needs for Elizabeth, so he travels into New York City to find one.

While driving around in the red-light district, Jeffrey meets a prostitute named Honey. He tells her that he’s looking for a few girls, but they need to have the “right” parts. Honey responds with an iconic line, “Honey, in case you ain’t noticed, I not only got all the right parts, but I got them in all the right places.” She brings him to meet her pimp, Zorro, who sets up a time for him to see his group of girls. During the scene, it’s revealed that Zorro brands his girls with a “Z” and keeps them addicted to crack. He calls it the “glass diet.” Jeffrey comes up with the idea to make his own lethal crack (he calls it super crack) to give the prostitute he chooses to make her death less violent.

While making the super crack, Jeffrey watches a talk show where a woman is advocating for the legalization of prostitution. She’s telling the host of the show about the danger that prostitutes are in. Pimps are abusing them and keeping them addicted to drugs which are killing them. Jeffrey says that the woman is right, now that he’s seen it first-hand. The TV show plays a clip of a pimp, who looks a lot like Zorro, abusing one of his girls and Jeffrey hallucinates that the woman in the video is Elizabeth. This is the first time he’s made the connection that prostitutes are real people. With seeing Elizabeth in this position, he’s humanizing the women, one of which he’s planning on killing. He begins panicking and having doubts about his plan, but Jeffrey whips out his good old handy dandy drill and gives himself another lobotomy to calm down. He talks himself out of his anxiety and convinces himself that giving the prostitute the super crack is not him killing her, but instead she is making the choice to smoke it and then facing the consequences. He thinks that the crack is killing her already, so what’s the harm of speeding up the process? A gaslighter who’s gaslighting himself: a classic tale.

Jeffrey examines the girls’ bodies, but still can’t make a decision. He has some doubts and doesn’t know if he can go through with killing one of them. The prostitutes find the super crack in his bag and even though Jeffrey protests, they hold him down and smoke it. The prostitutes start to party while they continue to smoke the super crack. Jeffrey protests everything they do. He tells them to turn off the “devil’s music” because it is telling them to do things they shouldn’t be doing. He tries to tell them that there are rehab programs that could help them. Two of the girls start to kiss and touch each other, to which Jeffrey yells at them to stop it because it’s “not natural.” He tells them, “Your body wasn’t meant to do that.” (Another red flag: Jeffrey is homophobic.) Zorro starts to come to the room, but not before the girls start to EXPLODE! All the girls combust from the super crack and their body parts fly all over the room. When Zorro finally gets the door open, Honey’s head flies right into his and he’s knocked out cold. Jeffrey regrets his role in the girls dying and insists that he’s going to bring them back to life after he’s done with Elizabeth. He bags up all the body parts and brings them back to his lab with him.

With the prostitutes in pieces, Jeffrey can pick out his favorite parts for Elizabeth. With her new body put together and the electric storm he needs finally here, it’s time for Jeffrey to bring Elizabeth back to life. (SHE’S ALIVE!) However, something’s wrong and Elizabeth isn’t herself. She doesn’t recognize Jeffrey and is looking for money. Elizabeth knocks him out (You go girl!) and goes back to the red-light district.

Elizabeth isn’t fully conscious, and the experiment changed her. She’s reliving memories of the girls whose body parts she has and speaking their dialogue from earlier in the movie. She finds a client and takes him back to the room where the girls exploded. While servicing him, the client starts to overheat until he finally explodes. Elizabeth has an electric cooch!! When she leaves the room, a man grabs her and kisses her, and he also explodes. She’s electric! (Boogie woogie woogie!)

Elizabeth finds herself back at the bar where Zorro hangs. When she goes inside, she spots a bowl of pretzels on the bar. As she’s eating them, the bartender tells her, “Hey babe, for your own good, go easy on those pretzels.” Elizabeth growls at her (understandably). Let my girl eat her pretzels!! Elizabeth gets the attention of a pimp who also oversteps boundaries and explodes. Zorro confronts her and acknowledges that she has one of his brands but that she’s not one of his girls. She pushes him, but he knocks her head off, causing sparks and smoke in the bar. Jeffrey arrives just in time and rushes her out of the bar and back to his lab.

Jeffrey fixes up Elizabeth and shocks her with electricity again. This time she remembers him. She gets excited that Jeffrey discovered a way to bring women (his serum is estrogen-based) back from the dead, until she realizes that he’s completely changed her body. When she gets mad at him, he tells her to calm down and that he will explain everything. He says, “I had to make a few changes. That’s all… Maybe I had to do a few unorthodox things, but you know, things didn’t turn out so bad. I mean, I love you and you’re alive, and I love you, Elizabeth. Now more than ever, I love you. And we’re gonna spend the rest of our lives together.” While Jeffrey is confessing his love for Elizabeth, Zorro sneaks up behind him and decapitates him. Zorro tells Elizabeth that he’s taking possession of her since she’s made of the body parts of his girls. He names his girls and then tells them (and Elizabeth) that he has what they need, crack. A hand comes out of the tank where Jeffrey kept the body parts in, revealing that the electric storm brought the dismembered girls back to life as well. The tank tips over and shows that the body parts of the prostitutes have turned into malformed monsters, randomly put together. They grab onto Zorro and drag him into the tank. They kill him and take his crack. Elizabeth picks up Jeffrey’s head and says, “Jeffrey, I have an idea.”

When Jeffrey wakes up confused about how Elizabeth was able to bring him back. It’s revealed that Elizabeth used the body parts of the dismembered prostitutes since the serum could only bring back women. Using his own words against him, Elizabeth tells him, “Granted, what I did may have been a bit unorthodox, but hey, you look great! And you’re alive, and you’re back with me and I love you. I love you, Jeffrey, and we’re together again.” Jeffrey screams in horror at his new reality of being a woman.

I love the ending of the movie. Throughout the whole movie, Jeffrey is constantly objectifying women. He sees designing Elizabeth’s new body as creating his dream woman. He wants the perfect woman with the right parts. He even tells Elizabeth that he loves her “now more than ever,” meaning that now she’s his ideal physical form, he loves her more than he ever did. Instead of viewing the prostitutes as people with their own lives and experiences, he views them as objects to be bought and disassembled for his own needs.

My favorite part about the ending is that now that he has a woman’s body, he is forced to embody all the negative and toxic views he had about women in his own body. Elizabeth was angry that he changed her body, and now in bringing him back, she was able to do the same to him. She was forced to feel like a stranger in her own body, and now he is as well. This is one of those movies with a “you go girl” ending.

Something I’ve realized throughout watching the movie is the theme of possession of/entitlement to women’s bodies. Jeffrey feels entitled to his fiancé’s body so much so that he not only feels like he has the right to experiment on it and bring it back from the dead, but also that he can alter it to match his own sexual desires. When it comes to the prostitutes in the film, he feels as if he’s better than Zorro. Zorro sees the girls as a commodity that he can earn money off of and to get the results he desires, he gets them addicted to crack so that he can control them. He believes he has ownership of their bodies. Even though he doesn’t think so, Jeffrey thinks the same way. He plans on buying the prostitutes’ time so that he can have his pick of their bodies, but only wants the most perfect one. Even though the girls exploding was kind of an accident, once he has them disassembled, he believes he has the right to take whatever pieces of them he wants to build his dream girl’s body. After Zorro kills Jeffrey, he tells Elizabeth that he is “taking possession” of her because he feels entitled to her body since it’s made up of his girls. Even the men Elizabeth accidentally kills feel entitled to her body. The first man ignores that she’s not fully there mentally, and still pursues her. The second man grabs her and kisses her without her consent. The third man tries to become her pimp and does things to her body without her consent. I think all the men in the movie got what was coming to them.

I also think it’s funny that Elizabeth is discolored and has stitches all over her body, yet when men see her, they still think she’s perfect and beautiful. Somehow, they don’t notice the scars because they’re so focused on how they can use her sexually. She also makes these crazy distorted faces throughout her rampage of the red-light district. I feel like it’s definitely obvious she needs help.

The film definitely didn’t have a crazy budget. The special effects aren’t the best. When the prostitutes explode, it’s very obvious they’re using mannequins, and all of the body parts throughout the movie look very fake. When Jeffrey is in his new female body, it looks like the body is separate from Jeffrey, like he just stuck his head in one of those cut-out portraits you put your face in. I don’t mind the poor effects. I still think watching the movie is a hell of a time. It’s definitely a cult horror film. I think it would be fun to watch it with friends and make a drinking game out of it.

Elizabeth is my dream Halloween costume. The Frankenhooker outfit and makeup are iconic, and I’d love to rock it.

Frankenhooker is currently streaming on Peacock. If you watch it or have already watched it, let me know what you think.