Frankenhooker!

Well this week I've made a discovery of the best kind. I'm a big fan of Zone Horror, the awfully produced horror channel on Sky TV. Over the years it has shown some great short-story based TV shows that I used to watch as a kid. Shows such as Tales From The Crypt, Friday 13th, The Outer Limits and now Freddy's Nightmares. I've always been a sucker for this format of horror, especially for Crypt. I remember as a kid I'd get up at about 1am on, I think, a Monday night/Tuesday morning to watch WCW Worldwide on ITV. If I got up early enough then I'd catch the end of Tales From The Crypt. That was when I would be about 8. Years later I discovered Creepshow, Creepshow 2 and Body Bags. Three feature length films made up of the same idea of short stories. Creepshow 2 was so-so but the original Creepshow was brilliant. I was made up when it finally came out on DVD a few years ago, along with a fair few extras. My VHS copy had seen better days so it was also a bit of a relief to get it on DVD. As for Body Bags, Mark Hamill being a star baseball player on his way home, looking to play a music cassette but crashing his car and ending up with said tape wedged in his eye was brilliant. I can't do the scene justice, and I can't find a decent image of Hamill's reaction, but this is an image of part of that scene, dodgy moustache included:

Anyway, I'm getting slightly off point here. I had started to say about my love for Zone Horror. As well as the aforementioned short-story type horror shows, they have also shown some great unknown gems over the years. Now and again they'll show a well known film, normally something in the Hellraiser vein. One film I did come across a few years ago was The Tripper. Now I'm the type of person that will watch any and all horror films, regardless of how shit they sound or how low budget they look. I don't hold premise or budget against a film. To my surprise, The Tripper had Jason Mewes in it. As a big Kevin Smith fan, Mewes peaked my interest straight away. The summary of the film also said that it was directed by David Arquette and also featured appearances from Arquette, Courtney Cox-Arquette, Lukas Haas, Jaime King, Thomas Jane (Deep Blue Sea, Punisher and Boogie Nights REPRESENT!) and Paz de la Huerta. Obviously this was way before David started shaking the bacon with lots of other ladies who mainly seem to be varying forms of prostitutes or escorts. Anyway, I digress, The Tripper turned out to be a great little film about a Ronald Reagan obsessed serial killer who was taking out his aggression on hippies and stoners all whilst wearing a Reagan mask. There was also the immortal tag line of "Here's Ronnie!". Get it. Get it. Got. So, anyway, it's taking me what seems like a fair old ramble to establish that I have a lot of time for Zone Horror. Now on to the main point of this blog, Frankenhooker.

Frankenhooker: "It's a stitch!"

What a brilliant little film?!?! I can't believe that I've never seen it up until now. I almost feel ashamed at that admission. I was flicking through Zone Horror over the weekend and the title caught my eye, I had a quick read of the synopsis and then used the trusty Sky+ button to record it. I got round to watching it on Sunday night and it was even better than it sounded. The basic plot is that an amateur 'mad-scientist' sees his girlfriend killed in a lawnmower accident. Yes, a lawnmower accident. One minute she's waving at him from across the lawn, the next she's chewed up by a lawnmower as we see her blood splat against a poor, unsuspecting gnome.

Poor Noddy had only just washed his beard

During this tragedy, our Dr Frankenstein in waiting, Jeffrey, manages to salvage the severed head of his girlfriend. From there on in he tries to come up with ideas on how to re-animate her. In his wisdom he decides that he can buy a shit load of hookers and use their body parts to make a body for the head of his beloved. This is all well and good but Jeffrey has a bit of a pickle when it comes to actually killing the ladies of the night. He decides to drill into his own brain, which somehow gives him a creative boost. He decides that he'll buy some crack and turn it into "Supercrack" using his science skills. If this was me then I'd market it as "Supercrack - guaranteed to get you higher faster than a speeding bullet". I think it's catchy. Maybe my skills are wasted in my current job and I should use my marketing knowledge to market drugs. I guess it's an option. Anyway, all tooled up with this wonder drug he goes out to get himself some hookers. By this point he's already researched his whores and has struck up a relationship with a pimp called Zorro. The character of Zorro is arguably the worst acting I have ever seen in any film, and I've seen myself act. It's so bad that it's scene stealing. You'll understand if you've seen the film. Anyway, Jeffrey ends up in a room with a shit load of hookers and a load of drugs. His original plan was to feed the hookers the Supercrack and watch them explode (literally!), but he has since had a change of heart. Just when he starts to realise that the whole thing is a bit of a stupid idea, the hookers discover the stash of Supercrack. Within all of 5 seconds of consuming the new drug of choice, they're all naked and fondling each other. This had me thinking that I should try and make some Supercrack of my own. I've already got a swish, catchy slogan sorted (see above) so if only I could make the product then I could attract me a room full of naked ladies. Hmmmm. So the naked ladies take the Supercrack and then they basically blow up, as in like a Catherine Wheel.

She definitely should have avoided the Chicken Vindaloo

I forgot to mention this but there's a great scene before all of the hookers go boom where Jeffrey basically checks each one's body out for the perfect limbs. I may have a soft spot for this scene because there's about 14 pairs of breasts on show, although I'm sure there's other merits to the scene. So Jeffrey toddles off to his garage (his lab) where he puts all of the hookers body parts in a storage tank. He then begins the task of choosing the best parts and putting them together to re-animate his girlfriend. Amazingly this works and his beloved comes back to the world of the living, only now she's full of hooker memories. This means that she pushes Jeffrey to one side and basically hits the streets, looking to hop on to any and all penises in sight. The only problem is that her lady parts are all now full of experimental goodness and cause her partner in passion to explode in a way similar to the aforementioned hookers. I won't give any more of the movie away apart from the fact that Zorro, the horribly acted Hispanic pimp, turns up to take revenge/ownership on the hooker that's made up of the parts of his former money makers.

All in all, the film is a blast. It's got a serious tone of Troma to it in some ways. It's gorey, it's badly acted, it's low budgeted, and it features some brilliantly awful lines - my personal favourite being "I'm not much of a sports fan but I do like a certain indoor sport. Mind if I stick my tongue down your throat?". I reckon that's guaranteed to make the ladies swoon on a Saturday night out in Wrexham. Maybe I'll try it and post a result of my findings on here. Or maybe I won't and I'll save myself a slap and a knee to the balls.

Other than Frankenhooker, I've been having a bit of a John Carpenter kind of week. The Thing, Halloween 2 and The Ward have followed my recent viewing of Elvis. Always a Carpenter fan, but that's another blog. On a non-film note, it's been a rum old week for Wrexham FC. Firstly, Dean Saunders left the club to move to Doncaster. A great move for Deano, moving up three divisions to the Championship. No qualms from me as any player would have made the same move, and any person would take a jump of three grades in their current job. All the best to Dean, Mal Purchase and Brian Carey. The current caretaker, Andy Morrell, got off to a great start with a 3-1 away win against Grimsby at the weekend. The good news from last night is that the Geoff Moss and Ian Roberts era is finally over. The fans now own the club so there can be no more excuses when it comes to results being affected by ownership. Time to get our heads on and maintain the form that currently has us sitting top of the Blue Square Bet Premiership, starting with tonight's game against Mansfield.

Come on the Town!