It’s the oldest story in the book: boy meets girl, boy loses girl in freak lawnmower accident, boy rebuilds girl using the body parts of dead prostitutes. Well, Frankenhooker (1990) might not be the oldest story in the book, but it is an entertaining one.

Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) is a lucky guy. His life might not be perfect―he's been kicked out of three medical schools and still lives at home in New Jersey with his mother (Louise Lasser, far, far away from Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman)―but at least he’s found a fiancée, the pleasantly plump Elizabeth Shelley (Patty Mullen). Jeffrey works as an electrician and keeps a lab in his mom’s garage, where he likes to tinker (i.e., conduct freaky medical experiments, one of which appears to be a living human brain embedded with a large eyeball).

How Jeffrey ever got a girl in the first place is a mystery. He’s a mumbling, antisocial shut-in who seems to care for nothing more than his weird research. But he really does love Elizabeth, and she loves him. Life is good…perhaps a little too good. As you know, the universe has a way of throwing curveballs at content people.

Faster than you can say "complicating incident," Elizabeth is killed and dismembered by a remote-controlled lawnmower run amok. Hey, these things happen; what’s unusual is that, after the accident, not all of Elizabeth’s body parts can be located.

Cut (ahem) to Jeffrey’s garage/laboratory, where we find him excitedly promising Elizabeth’s decapitated head that he will find a way to rebuild her and make her better (and sexier) than she was before. He has the technology. All he needs is the right parts.  And Jeffrey has a plan to get the exact parts he wants.

A visit to New York, and a pimp named Zorro, provides Jeffrey with all the raw material he could possibly need, as well as an idea for humanely killing his feminine fodder. As we all know, pimps provide prostitutes, and prostitutes love crack cocaine. So, Jeffrey procures several girls as well as some crack from Zorro (there’s a phrase I never thought I’d write), and a little tinkering later―voila, super-crack! A couple hits of this stuff and the hookers will go peacefully into the light. Unfortunately, Jeffrey’s pharmacology skills are not on a par with his medical and electrical skills. This new crack doesn’t just blow your mind, it blows you up. I mean, you literally explode.

Before long, Jeffrey is awash in detonated hookers and has enough body parts to build a roomful of women. Elizabeth is soon sewn back together, reanimated, and Frankenhooker is born. I don’t want to spoil the end of the flick for you, but things do not quite turn out the way Jeffrey had planned. Don’t be sad...Frankenhooker is a film whose strange sense of humor allows a bizarre glimmer of hope to close out the story.

Frank Henenlotter, director of such classics as Basket Case and Brain Damage, has given us a movie that’s rather unusual in tone. Frankenhooker is clearly meant to be a farce, but for the most part, it’s played pretty straight. James Lorinz, as Jeffrey, gives a method-y performance. He’s like a mixture of Andrew McCarthy and James Dean. As Elizabeth/Frankenhooker, Patty Mullen is a hoot, all spastic expressions and Joisey accent. And Henenlotter gets extra points for giving a cameo to John Zacherle, one of the first horror movie hosts on television.

If you’re anything like me (and I think it’s safe to say that if you’re still reading this, you’re a lot like me), you’re going to enjoy Frankenhooker. How do I know?  There's a freak lawnmower accident, exploding prostitutes, and a pimp named Zorro…need I say more?