Frankenhooker (4K UHD Review)
Director
Frank HenenlotterRelease Date(s)
1990 (April 7, 2026)Studio(s)
Shapiro-Glickenhaus Entertainment (Synapse Films)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: A-
- Extras Grade: A-
Review
In the long annals of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, there have been many infamous snubs when it comes to the acting categories. You don’t have to look very far to see plenty of examples, like Peter O’Toole losing for Lawrence of Arabia, Peter Sellers for Being There, and Judy Garland for A Star Is Born. In some cases, the snub was so bad that the actor or actress wasn’t even nominated in the first place, like Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers, Gene Hackman in The Conversation, and Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude. Yet out of all these numerous oversights during the history of the Academy Awards, there’s one outrageously glaring snub that arguably outweighs everyone else put together: Patty Mullen in Frankenhooker.
Work with me here for a minute.
Writer/director Frank Henenlotter is known for a great many things, but guiding actors to award-winning performances isn’t one of them. Grotesque humor? Sure. Cartoonish levels of gore? Uh huh, yep. General outrageousness? Oh, yah, you betcha. But when you think of Basket Case or Brain Damage, you’re usually thinking of Belial or Aylmer, not necessarily their reluctant partners Duane Bradley and Brian. Yet however charming that Belial and Aylmer may be, they’re still little more than special effects that were brought to life thanks to the hard work of Kevin Hayney, Gabe Bartalos, and others who were working behind-the-scenes. Bartalos was also responsible for the makeup effects in Frankenhooker, but actually bringing the titular (no pun intended) creation to life required the incomparable acting skills of the August 1986 Penthouse Pet of the Month and 1988 Pet of the Year, Patty Mullen. Frankenhooker is still a Frank Henenlotter film from head to toe, but Frankenhooker never would have worked without Mullen in the title role (also from head to toe). Still, it took a visionary like Henenlotter to put that kind of faith in someone who was known more for posing than acting.
William S. Burroughs was correct that John Waters is the Pope of Trash, then by the same token, Frank Henenlotter is the Archduke of the Absurd. So, it’s no surprise that Frankenhooker was born out of equal levels of absurdity: Henenlotter ad-libbed the whole story (and the title!) while making a pitch to James Glickenhaus of Shapiro-Glickenhaus Entertainment, and Glickenhaus loved the idea so much that he bought it on the spot. That put Henenlotter in a spot of his own since he didn’t actually have a script, but he hastily threw one together with the help of screenwriter Robert Martin. So, Frankenhooker was born out of the fevered recesses of Henenlotter’s brain, which is entirely appropriate, because the story idea started as a modern riff on The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. Yet by the time that Henenlotter and Martin had fleshed it out, it ended up more as an homage to classic Universal monster movies, The Bride of Frankenstein in particular. (And not a subtle one, either: listen for the church bells on the soundtrack when Frankenhooker is born, and watch for Mullen’s birdlike head movements.)
Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) serves as the story’s Henry Frankenstein, but he’s no Baron. Instead, he’s just a schmuck who lives with his mother (Lousie Lasser) in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey. But he’s a bit of a mad scientist, which comes in handy when his girlfriend Elizabeth Shelley (Mullen) is killed in a tragic lawnmower accident (don’t ask). He decides that he can rebuild her, but there’s just one problem: most of the leftover parts are the worse for wear. He needs fresh body parts, and inspired by the way that addiction to crack cocaine has been causing the deaths of prostitutes in New York City, he invents a new “super-crack” that accelerates the process in dramatic fashion. Since he’s figures that they’re all going to die anyway, he tricks a pimp named Zorro (Joseph Gonzales) into letting him set up a party to test it out on some of Zorro’s girls, with suitably gruesome results. Yet when Jeffrey reassembles everything, the Bride of Franken doesn’t turn out quite the way that he planned. Frankenhooker also stars Charlotte Kemp, Jennifer DeLora, David Lipman, and the great Shirley Stoller.
So, yes, Frankenhooker is very much The Bride of Frankenstein, but filtered through Frank Henenlotter’s fevered imagination, which means that everything is taken to absurd extremes. Absurd gore. Absurd nudity. Absurd drug-fueled debauchery. Absurdly filthy restrooms. Absurd Morton Downey Jr. style asshole talk show hosts. Absurdly exaggerated overacting. And yet… there’s still Patty Mullen to consider. While her performance can’t exactly be called subtle, every one of her awkward body movements, every twitch, every facial reaction, and yes, every one of her line deliveries, couldn’t possibly be more perfect for a film like Frankenhooker. She understood the assignment, and then some. Sure, there’s a fair argument to be made that the film needed James Lorinz as well, but if Lorenz is the brains of Frankenhooker, then Mullen is its very heart and soul. Frank Henenlotter found his perfect muse, and so yes, Patty Mullen deserves a retroactive Best Actress award. Sure, her total screen time might put her more firmly in Best Supporting Actress territory, but if you’re going to aim high, you might as well go for all the gusto that you can get.
Also, that solves another MPAA oversight regarding Frankenhooker: Louise Lasser. She surely deserved the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress as one of the most paradigmatic representations of the maternal instinct ever put on film. She’s justifiably concerned about Jeffrey’s obsessive behavior, locked up in his room while making his mad plans for death and rebirth. When she tells him that she’s worried about him, he replies:
“Yeah... Well so am I, Ma. Something’s happening to me that I just don’t understand. I can’t think straight anymore. It’s like my reasoning is all, uh, 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—I’ve lost the ability to distinguish between right from wrong, good from bad. I’m scared, Ma. I mean, I feel like I’m—I’m plunging headfirst into some kind of black void of sheer and utter madness or something.”
That’s an ominous statement that should put a chill into the hearts of mothers everywhere, but like the very best of them, Jeffrey’s mother has the perfect maternal solution to the problem:
“You want a sandwich?”
Cinematographer Robert M. Baldwin shot Frankenhooker on 35mm using Arriflex cameras with spherical lenses, framed at 1.85:1 for its theatrical release—although most viewers ended up experiencing it open-matte at 1.33:1 on VHS. In that vein, this version has been opened up slightly to the full 1.78:1 of modern HDTVs. Synapse describes this new 4K master as being “from the archival uncut original 35mm vault materials,” graded for High Dynamic Range in Dolby Vision and HDR10, but there’s no other information available about it. The wording implies it wasn’t based on scans of the original camera negative, and from the looks of it, they may have used an interpositive instead. It’s certainly not the sharpest 4K presentation out there, but it’s perfectly clean and every last bit of gory psychosexual detail has been reproduced as well as is humanly possible, right down to the abundant grain (all of which is handled perfectly by the Fidelity in Motion encode).
But it’s the HDR grade(s) that really make Frankenhooker sing, with the saturation levels pushed as far as they can without sailing over the edge into oversaturation. In other words, nothing looks overcooked, but the candy-colored hues really pop here, from the various shades of purple to the intense red lighting at the Huevos Grande club. The latter almost veers into NTSC territory, but in a good way—the lighting is brilliantly red, but everything within it is still sharp and clearly defined. Nothing in Frankenhooker is subtle, the colors included, and they’ve been justifiably intensified in this version. Contrast, black levels—everything else also looks spot-on. Is this demo material? No. C’mon, it’s Frankenhooker. But it’s never looked better than it does here.
Audio is offered in English 2.0 and 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English SDH subtitles. Frankenhooker was released theatrically in Dolby Stereo (hey, SGE spared no expense), and the 2.0 sounds like the original track with matrix-encoded surround channels. The 5.1 version is mostly just a discrete encoding of those original four channels, but it’s been remastered for this release, and it’s a definite improvement over the original 2.0. Everything has just a little more clarity to it, from the imaging characteristics to the overall quality of the sound itself. In comparison, the 2.0 sounds a little muddier, with the top end rolled off a bit. It’s not clear what sources that Synapse were working with, but this sounds like they may have gotten their hands on the DME stems. It’s the 5.1 for the win here.
The Synapse Films 4K Ultra HD release of Frankenhooker is a two-disc set that includes a remastered Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film. It’s currently available in a Limited Edition 5000 Unit Chipboard Slipcase version, which as the title implies, offers a rigid slipcase with a J-card slipcover. Once that’s sold out, they’ll be offering a standard version minus the slipcase. Either way, the disc-based content will be identical, and the following extras are included on both discs:
- Commentary with Frank Henenlotter and Gabe Bartalos
- A Salad That Was Once Named Elizabeth (Upscaled SD – 8:49)
- A Stitch in Time: The Make-up Effects of Frankenhooker (Upscaled SD – 20:56)
- Turning Tricks: Jennifer DeLora Remembers Frankenhooker (Upscaled SD – 19:32)
- Jennifer DeLora’s Frankenhooker Scrapbook (Upscaled SD – 11:21)
- Original Theatrical Trailer (HD – 1:32)
The commentary with Frank Henenlotter and Gabe Bartalos was originally recorded for the 2006 DVD from Unearthed Films, and if you know Henenlotter and Bartalos, you know what you’re in for: a good time. Okay, maybe they’re a matter of taste, but if you’re here for Frankenhooker, they should be right up your alley. They discuss the very, very Henenlotter origins of the project, which came together quickly. It was a struggle to figure out how to keep Jeffrey sympathetic despite all the death and destruction. Casting James Lorinz helped, but losing the original cinematographer before a frame of film had been shot didn’t. Fortunately, Glickenhaus came to the rescue by loaning them Robert Baldwin—although Henenlotter didn’t get along with him, at least at first. On the other hand, they have nothing but praise for Lorinz, and equal amounts of praise for Patty Mullen. Bartalos says that her memorable grimace was something that she was doing in the makeup chair, and when they showed it to Henenlotter, he loved it so much he incorporated in into the film. But the most interesting thing is how much credit that they give to Glickenhaus, who was involved at every level—he’s even the one who had the idea for the infamous “talking” VHS box. It’s a fun track.
The rest of the extras consist of interviews that were also originally produced for the Unearthed Films DVD. A Salad That Was Once Named Elizabeth is with Patty Mullen, who talks about her experiences making Frankenhooker and yes, she also talks about her experiences as a Penthouse Pet. She discusses her favorite scenes, what it was like having to deal with the makeup, and her discomfort with shooting the sex scene with David Lipman (who she refers to as the “Miracle Whip man,” and if you don’t get that reference, Google it). She also tells a different version of the story about her funny face: she says that Henenlotter is the one who taught her how to make it.
A Stitch in Time is with Bartalos, and Bartalos being Bartalos, it’s a little different. He shot most of it on location, and not at any locations used in the film, either—you’ll have to find out for yourself exactly where he chose to go. He repeats the praise for Mullen, who he says was patient and easy to work with. He also breaks down some of the challenges that he faced on the project, including shooting makeup effects on location and trying to find a way to make the exploding hookers as unrealistic as possible in order to avoid issues with the ratings board (naturally, they had problems anyway).
Turning Tricks is with Jennifer DeLora, who played one of the hookers in the film—which she was happy to do despite the fact that she had already played a half dozen hooker roles prior to Frankenhooker. She had a blast because in terms of personality, she basically got to play herself on crack (not super-crack), and improvised some of her own dialogue. As the interview makes clear, her own real-life persona definitely shined through in the final film. She doesn’t hold back, either; while she says that Mullen was a doll, she calls James Lorinz a “diva.” She also returns in the final extra to show off her Polaroids from her Frankenhooker Scrapbook, with plenty of pithy comments along the way.
It’s a great collection of extras, but it’s fair to point out that there’s a lot of stuff missing here. Arrow’s 2012 U.K. Blu-ray added an introduction and a commentary by Henenlotter and Lorinz; a different interview with Bartalos; and a making-of documentary. But the mack daddy of all in terms of extras is the 2025 Tromarchive Collection Blu-ray from Refuse Films in the U.K., which includes all of the above plus a new commentary with Lorinz and Jackson Stewart, as well as a boatload of Troma-related stuff. It also includes an open-matte version of the unrated cut and a workprint version ripped from VHS. The downside is that they used an older HD master for the main presentation of Frankenhooker, and their audio is lossy Dolby Digital. Synapse’s 4K version looks and sounds much better, and it’s not even close. This is the definitive release for fans who want to see Frankenhooker at its best, and the extras are nothing to sneeze at, either. If you must have every last bit of arcana, then pick up the Refuse version for the extra extras, but you’ll never want to watch their version of the film again after seeing Synapse’s. It’s the only date that you’ll ever need again.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).