Frank Henenlotter: Director Showcase
To begin with, I'd like to quote from an interview with Henenlotter for Total Sci-Fi. He claims that his films are intentionally exploitation films rather than horror in particular. "Horror" isn't the label that Henenlotter prefers (though I'd say it most definitely applies):
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Frank Henenlotter has just six movies in his filmography:
Basket Case (1982) - The story of a young man who wanders around with basket, inside which lives his deformed and homicidal twin brother.
Brain Damage (1988) - The story of a young man who receives a parasite which injects him with a powerful and addictive drug so long as he finds victims to feed the parasite with blood.
Basket Case 2 (1990) - Sequel to Basket Case where the central characters find themselves welcomed into a new home.
Frankenhooker (1990) - The story of a young bio-engineer who plans to rebuild his wife from the body parts of prostitutes after she is ripped apart in a lawnmower accident.
Basket Case 3 (1992) - Sequel to Basket Case 2.
Bad Biology (2008) - Two young people with bizarre sexual deformities might be perfect for one another, in a bizarre and twisted way.
Pretty much every film Frank Henenlotter has made has a central premise which boggles the mind a bit and I wouldn't say that any of these films was predictable.
I would note however, that Henenlotter sometimes has a habit of letting a single joke run on too long. Also the exploitation element of the films means that there's sometimes a lot of nudity simply for the sake of it.
Still, these films are always a lot of fun...
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Basket Case 1, 2 and 3 (1982, 1990, 1992)
Making up a full half of Henenlotter's filmography, I feel I need to deal with these three films separately from the others. Each one flows neatly into the next film, yet you could stop after any single one of them and be left with a pretty satisfying (and disturbing) ending.
Basket Case
The first entry is quite a slow moving film, but it really serves to flesh out these two characters and to slowly reveal their background together. It's a simple but effective plot and while the effects are extremely low budget, there's something disturbingly delightful about the whole twisted project.
A+
Basket Case 2
It's not at all clear at the end of the first movie that there could even be a sequel, but the explanation makes enough sense. The effects have made a notable improvement since the previous entry, though this is still clearly a low budget feature.
The 'house of freaks' (which was actually Frank Henenlotter's originally intended title) is extremely inventive. Also while the first entry in the Basket Case series was more like a typical horror film, Basket Case 2 is a horror comedy with a lot of the creepiness coming from a bizarre and twisted humour that gets under your skin even as you laugh at it.
Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that, as a big horror comedy fan, Basket Case 2 is my favourite of Frank Henenlotter's films. For me, it was an utter joy, particularly the appearance of Annie Ross as the philanthropic "Granny Ruth" who absolutely stole the show.
The ending is bizarre, but provides a proper arc for the characters at the same time. After beginning "Basket Case 2" wondering how they could possibly make a sequel, I finished totally immersed in the new expanded world of the Basket Case movies. This is my favourite of Henenlotter's movies because it touched my heart.
A+
Basket Case 3: The Progeny
It was interesting to hear that Henenlotter isn't a fan of this either. His issue with the movie explains a lot. My impression was that the film had a lot of good ideas, but that a lot of those ideas didn't really have a good enough payoff. Meanwhile the film feels aimless at points and some of the jokes seem to be stretched longer than they ought to be.
As it turns out Henenlotter went into this expecting to have free reign to do a full blood and guts movie. Turns out he was wrong and about 11 pages of his script were no longer viable. So when (see the title) the birth takes place, Henenlotter clearly didn't expect to spend the birth scene with the camera trained on the guy delivering the babies the whole time. Also when Belial is in his battle-suit (I'll leave the context a mystery, but I'm sure you can tell that this idea had potential) the whole scene feels remarkably tame.
Basket Case 3 is a really poor end to the first two excellent movies, possibly made even sadder by the occasional glimpses of genius buried within it. Henenlotter's original plans for the movie would undoubtedly have been a great deal better than what we end up with and considering that Henenlotter claims to have been re-writing the film pretty much as they filmed, the outcome probably should have been worse.
D+
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Brain Damage (1988)
Henenlotter has a lot of great ideas in "Brain Damage" but the film starts off rather slowly and early sex-related kill scenes didn't really feel as funny as they were presumably intended to be.
A scene later on in the film within a public showers makes it quite explicit that there are is a homosexual subtext to the movie. Still, while the homosexual subtext is noteworthy, the main story is about something else. Rather like with "A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Dead" which is also well known for having a homosexual subtext, it's not really necessary for the audience to notice that subtext. (In "Freddy's Dead" the protagonist enters what is clearly a gay bar, his gym teacher catches him drinking and brings him back to school late at night, only for his gym teacher to get a death scene involving being tied up with towels.)
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The explicit theme of the film is drug addiction. The central character is being influenced by the powerful drug of a parasite that has attached itself to him. Eventually he sobers enough to realise that he has been unknowingly helping the parasite to find victims and drink their blood. It is at this point where the film finally picks up, when the protagonist decides he doesn't want to kill anyone anymore. Can his conscience beat his addiction to the parasite's special drug?
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Brain Damage sometimes drags in pacing and it's not always as funny as it ought to be, but by the end I was fully on board. The problem with Brain Damage is that it is highly inconsistent, but it showed clear promise and some people may be able to forgive its failings more than I did. This could have been better, but it's well worth a watch all the same.
C+
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Frankenhooker (1990)
I heard positive comments about this around the internet and was quite surprised. The title didn't exactly appeal to me. However, there's a lot of inventiveness, some clear tributes to the original Frankenstein and some great black humour.
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That said, I didn't find the humour was entirely consistent and there are definitely a few scenes where the joke goes on too long, often particularly when those same scenes involve gratuitous nudity.
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The film lights right up, however, when the eponymous Frankenhooker finally turns up. Patty Mullen's performance in the role is comic gold. After most of the film had been spent watching the morally bankrupt Jeffrey work on his twisted experiment, it was such a relief to finally see him get his comeuppance.
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Frankenhooker is a lot of fun, but a few of the scenes seemed to try to run with a joke longer than they should have. Still, I can highly recommend this classic Henenlotter comedy.
B+
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Bad Biology (2008)
I've got to admit, I'm very embarassed to be writing this review. Bad Biology has to be one of the weirdest films I have ever seen and in places it is barely distinguishable from softcore pornography.
We begin the film introduced to a woman called Jennifer who tells the audience over narration that she has multiple clitorises. Although you couldn't tell to look at her she has a deformity which makes her highly sexually charged. We then discover that she has a string of one night stands where she photographs her lovers during sex (since she's also a photographer) before eventually killing them unintentionally during the passion of lovemaking. And things actually get even more bizarre and twisted than that.
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Meanwhile there is a male character called Batz who is clearly disgusted and disturbed by his penis and yet is desperate to find more and more extreme medications for it.
While in some ways it seems inevitable that these two characters will connect later in the film, it's not clear how that would work. Jennifer is so confident about her bizarre condition while Batz seems completely horrified by his own.
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Of course, it's not all just sex in the movie. Jennifer has a career in photography and, when involved in photoshoots, is clearly able to keen her personal and professional life separate. Also Batz spends time freaking out his drug dealer who wishes he would just smoke crack like an ordinary junkie.
I cannot imagine that I would be giving this film the high praise that I do if I were not already familiar with Henenlotter's style as a filmmker. It's a particularly bizarre film and I normally get extremely annoyed when sex becomes a main feature in movies. However, Bad Biology is fantastic combination of twisted and hilarious and if you are familiar with Henenlotter's endearing approach to low budget cinema it becomes very easy to go along with it.
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As bizarre, rude and sick as "Bad Biology" might be, I am inclined to say that it is Henenlotter at his best. He doesn't need a high budget to completely immerse you in his twisted world. As a film that creeps you out and makes you laugh at the same time, Bad Biology definitely meets my criteria for a great horror comedy.
A+
Frank Henenlotter is a great horror-comedy director and I would highly recommend that you all see at least four of his movies. You possibly ought to leave "Bad Biology" until you've seen one or two of Henenlotter's other ones first though!
(cross-posted to Halloween Candy)
To begin with, I'd like to quote from an interview with Henenlotter for Total Sci-Fi. He claims that his films are intentionally exploitation films rather than horror in particular. "Horror" isn't the label that Henenlotter prefers (though I'd say it most definitely applies):
"I never felt that I made ‘horror films’, I always felt that I made exploitation films. Exploitation films have an attitude more than anything - an attitude that you don’t find with mainstream Hollywood productions. They’re a little ruder, a little raunchier, they deal with material people don’t usually touch on, whether it’s sex or drugs or rock and roll.
"They’re what I grew up on. I used to cut high school when I was growing up on Long Island. I’d take the train into Manhattan and would go to 42nd Street back when it was the greatest paradise in the world. I remember it was just nothing but theatre after theatre after theatre after theatre. And my head would spin! It was never a question of, ‘Oh, what shall I see?’ It was a case of ‘How many shall I see?’ It was glorious. Whether it was low budget horror films or sexploitation films or foreign films or just grubby little strange things that you never saw again. And you wouldn’t see these films anywhere else except in that wretched little street. It was just paradise!
"...When I do exploitation it gives me the freedom to go a little nuts. I mean, I’d only say I work in ‘horror films’ so that the people that sell it have a safe label to put on it - “What category is it going to be on the shelves? Oh, horror.” And that’s fine.
"But if you look at my films they’re really crazy, and I like the way I can blend comedy, horror and sex and just sometimes… self-indulgence! (laughs) I don’t think there’s a bad joke I won’t chase. Bad Biology is the biggest homage to exploitation films ever made. I just thought, ‘let’s go back and make an exploitation film as if the world still wanted them!’ (laughs manically)"
Frank Henenlotter has just six movies in his filmography:
Basket Case (1982) - The story of a young man who wanders around with basket, inside which lives his deformed and homicidal twin brother.
Brain Damage (1988) - The story of a young man who receives a parasite which injects him with a powerful and addictive drug so long as he finds victims to feed the parasite with blood.
Basket Case 2 (1990) - Sequel to Basket Case where the central characters find themselves welcomed into a new home.
Frankenhooker (1990) - The story of a young bio-engineer who plans to rebuild his wife from the body parts of prostitutes after she is ripped apart in a lawnmower accident.
Basket Case 3 (1992) - Sequel to Basket Case 2.
Bad Biology (2008) - Two young people with bizarre sexual deformities might be perfect for one another, in a bizarre and twisted way.
Pretty much every film Frank Henenlotter has made has a central premise which boggles the mind a bit and I wouldn't say that any of these films was predictable.
I would note however, that Henenlotter sometimes has a habit of letting a single joke run on too long. Also the exploitation element of the films means that there's sometimes a lot of nudity simply for the sake of it.
Still, these films are always a lot of fun...
Basket Case 1, 2 and 3 (1982, 1990, 1992)
Making up a full half of Henenlotter's filmography, I feel I need to deal with these three films separately from the others. Each one flows neatly into the next film, yet you could stop after any single one of them and be left with a pretty satisfying (and disturbing) ending.
Basket Case
The first entry is quite a slow moving film, but it really serves to flesh out these two characters and to slowly reveal their background together. It's a simple but effective plot and while the effects are extremely low budget, there's something disturbingly delightful about the whole twisted project.
A+
Basket Case 2
It's not at all clear at the end of the first movie that there could even be a sequel, but the explanation makes enough sense. The effects have made a notable improvement since the previous entry, though this is still clearly a low budget feature.
The 'house of freaks' (which was actually Frank Henenlotter's originally intended title) is extremely inventive. Also while the first entry in the Basket Case series was more like a typical horror film, Basket Case 2 is a horror comedy with a lot of the creepiness coming from a bizarre and twisted humour that gets under your skin even as you laugh at it.
Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that, as a big horror comedy fan, Basket Case 2 is my favourite of Frank Henenlotter's films. For me, it was an utter joy, particularly the appearance of Annie Ross as the philanthropic "Granny Ruth" who absolutely stole the show.
The ending is bizarre, but provides a proper arc for the characters at the same time. After beginning "Basket Case 2" wondering how they could possibly make a sequel, I finished totally immersed in the new expanded world of the Basket Case movies. This is my favourite of Henenlotter's movies because it touched my heart.
A+
Basket Case 3: The Progeny
It was interesting to hear that Henenlotter isn't a fan of this either. His issue with the movie explains a lot. My impression was that the film had a lot of good ideas, but that a lot of those ideas didn't really have a good enough payoff. Meanwhile the film feels aimless at points and some of the jokes seem to be stretched longer than they ought to be.
As it turns out Henenlotter went into this expecting to have free reign to do a full blood and guts movie. Turns out he was wrong and about 11 pages of his script were no longer viable. So when (see the title) the birth takes place, Henenlotter clearly didn't expect to spend the birth scene with the camera trained on the guy delivering the babies the whole time. Also when Belial is in his battle-suit (I'll leave the context a mystery, but I'm sure you can tell that this idea had potential) the whole scene feels remarkably tame.
Basket Case 3 is a really poor end to the first two excellent movies, possibly made even sadder by the occasional glimpses of genius buried within it. Henenlotter's original plans for the movie would undoubtedly have been a great deal better than what we end up with and considering that Henenlotter claims to have been re-writing the film pretty much as they filmed, the outcome probably should have been worse.
D+
Brain Damage (1988)
Henenlotter has a lot of great ideas in "Brain Damage" but the film starts off rather slowly and early sex-related kill scenes didn't really feel as funny as they were presumably intended to be.
A scene later on in the film within a public showers makes it quite explicit that there are is a homosexual subtext to the movie. Still, while the homosexual subtext is noteworthy, the main story is about something else. Rather like with "A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Dead" which is also well known for having a homosexual subtext, it's not really necessary for the audience to notice that subtext. (In "Freddy's Dead" the protagonist enters what is clearly a gay bar, his gym teacher catches him drinking and brings him back to school late at night, only for his gym teacher to get a death scene involving being tied up with towels.)
The explicit theme of the film is drug addiction. The central character is being influenced by the powerful drug of a parasite that has attached itself to him. Eventually he sobers enough to realise that he has been unknowingly helping the parasite to find victims and drink their blood. It is at this point where the film finally picks up, when the protagonist decides he doesn't want to kill anyone anymore. Can his conscience beat his addiction to the parasite's special drug?
Brain Damage sometimes drags in pacing and it's not always as funny as it ought to be, but by the end I was fully on board. The problem with Brain Damage is that it is highly inconsistent, but it showed clear promise and some people may be able to forgive its failings more than I did. This could have been better, but it's well worth a watch all the same.
C+
Frankenhooker (1990)
I heard positive comments about this around the internet and was quite surprised. The title didn't exactly appeal to me. However, there's a lot of inventiveness, some clear tributes to the original Frankenstein and some great black humour.
That said, I didn't find the humour was entirely consistent and there are definitely a few scenes where the joke goes on too long, often particularly when those same scenes involve gratuitous nudity.
The film lights right up, however, when the eponymous Frankenhooker finally turns up. Patty Mullen's performance in the role is comic gold. After most of the film had been spent watching the morally bankrupt Jeffrey work on his twisted experiment, it was such a relief to finally see him get his comeuppance.
Frankenhooker is a lot of fun, but a few of the scenes seemed to try to run with a joke longer than they should have. Still, I can highly recommend this classic Henenlotter comedy.
B+
Bad Biology (2008)
I've got to admit, I'm very embarassed to be writing this review. Bad Biology has to be one of the weirdest films I have ever seen and in places it is barely distinguishable from softcore pornography.
We begin the film introduced to a woman called Jennifer who tells the audience over narration that she has multiple clitorises. Although you couldn't tell to look at her she has a deformity which makes her highly sexually charged. We then discover that she has a string of one night stands where she photographs her lovers during sex (since she's also a photographer) before eventually killing them unintentionally during the passion of lovemaking. And things actually get even more bizarre and twisted than that.
Meanwhile there is a male character called Batz who is clearly disgusted and disturbed by his penis and yet is desperate to find more and more extreme medications for it.
While in some ways it seems inevitable that these two characters will connect later in the film, it's not clear how that would work. Jennifer is so confident about her bizarre condition while Batz seems completely horrified by his own.
Of course, it's not all just sex in the movie. Jennifer has a career in photography and, when involved in photoshoots, is clearly able to keen her personal and professional life separate. Also Batz spends time freaking out his drug dealer who wishes he would just smoke crack like an ordinary junkie.
I cannot imagine that I would be giving this film the high praise that I do if I were not already familiar with Henenlotter's style as a filmmker. It's a particularly bizarre film and I normally get extremely annoyed when sex becomes a main feature in movies. However, Bad Biology is fantastic combination of twisted and hilarious and if you are familiar with Henenlotter's endearing approach to low budget cinema it becomes very easy to go along with it.
As bizarre, rude and sick as "Bad Biology" might be, I am inclined to say that it is Henenlotter at his best. He doesn't need a high budget to completely immerse you in his twisted world. As a film that creeps you out and makes you laugh at the same time, Bad Biology definitely meets my criteria for a great horror comedy.
A+
Frank Henenlotter is a great horror-comedy director and I would highly recommend that you all see at least four of his movies. You possibly ought to leave "Bad Biology" until you've seen one or two of Henenlotter's other ones first though!
(cross-posted to Halloween Candy)