Drive-thru review - No. 1 (and 2)

Hello and welcome to the first of a semi-regular series of late night intelligentsia posts I am calling: “Drive-thru reviews”. These are my low-key reviews of the more non-mainstream films I have been watching: TV movies, B-movies and C and probably D Movies too. Stuff you might see at a small town drive-in. The reviews will be a mix of synopsis, my own views and film facts. The potential for spoilers is rife. I will keep those to a minimum wherever I can. And if I can imbed a trailer or clip, then I’ll do that as well. Hopefully you might find them as entertaining as watching the films, which I hope you will too.

I will award each film my patent-pending Tombstone Rating too.

So slouch down, pick up a day old bucket of popcorn and chew on.

To kick off this feature, I am hosting a Saturday night double presentation of reviews – the 2011 film, Disco Exorcist and Frankenhooker, from 1990.


The Drive-Thru Review of Disco Exorcist (18)



Disco Exorcist was cut by American director Richard Griffin and the production travelling ensemble cast and crew in the relatively brief downtime between shooting Nun of That (a revenge genre piece about an avenging nun) and Sins of Dracula (Shadow of the Vampire versus community theatre workshop).

Disco Exorcist holds the enviable accolade of being the first film I’ve watched and then immediately re-watched, with director’s commentary. This was because I was unsure if what I’d seen was simply borderline p0rn. No further educated by the commentary track (it mainly talks about lighting and set dressing between giggles) the third time I watched it I did so with a girl just to be absolutely certain. Girls can tell if you’ve invited them to your home and then start showing them p0rnography. I always find.

The result is I think we are just about safe to (re)view it.

Filmed as a homage piece to the recently back en-vogue budget produced horror films of the 1970’s, Disco Exorcist is a paranormal horror planted in an unclassified US town at an unidentified time in the 1970s where a Disco going, bed post notching lothario meets his match in a classic woman scorned plotline with an incantation hell-raising, voodoo twist.

The trouble with Disco Exorcist is it is a superb idea for a film (acknowledged with it being by far the most well-known of the company’s output despite it being the least seriously approached)… which should have been a film made in 1977: a mirror-ball reflecting riff on the success of Saturday Night Fever. A straight ahead, lurid sexploitation budget horror filmed in a contemporary environment would have meant this being a cold classic today.

There is a decent, fun film in here if you rummage, but as homage, Disco Exorcist simply fails to find the conviction to raise it from modern curio to cult status. Period films of this nature stand and fall on the audience investing in what they are watching. Is it a supposedly gonzo account of hedonistic events and exploitative counter-culture? Is it a living nightmare where the rules are malevolently tipped in the balance of the evil entity at every slow turn? Can you suspend your belief enough to buy into the rules established in the movie?

Watching Disco Exorcist, you are never unaware this is a modern attempt at retro, characters are actors playing dress-up (and wearing wigs) and the locations’ the same warehouse redressed with drapes and repositioned lava lamps. This is a film by people who were barely alive in the 1970’s reanimating the disco scene into what they think it was probably like. This isn’t Happy Days, this is a history lecture of Mel Gibson proportions. Everyone knows this is a through and through fake, crucially including the viewer. The main cast are having too much fun pretending, and it shows. There is no authenticity and the world the characters inhabit is like a paint-by-numbers rendering of the Mona Lisa.

Neither does it maintain a conviction to the horror, comedy or 70’s adult cinema lineage although it certainly has enough touchstones to all three.

There is plenty of gore and fake blood spilled throughout the film. There are moments grafted onto scenes as comedy (although the comedy does flat line more than the body count. Example: “Go get the good coke from the good cocaine safe” “where do you keep the bad coke?” “In the bad cocaine safe”) and dilutes any sense of building terror left in the fairly ponderous, flabby edit. There is a buffet of male and female wobbly parts on show. The actual film-celluloid is faux-aged and damaged (through post-production digital effects) and the audience is even treated to a “REEL MISSING” card (though there is no disappointment at missing a scene where the characters evidently move from one location to another). The other genuine touch of pure grindhouse offered is how the tiny budget and less than convincing horror effects combine with some amazingly uninhibited scenes to compensate which would look a treat spliced in a 240 second trailer from a scratchy, stained rental VHS tape.

But for all the gore, drug and sexual excesses in the film (and these all do increasingly push boundaries as the running time rattles on – and it is not exactly “Watch With Mother” from the opening scene) it never fully commits to them, much like the walk-on extras who are often painfully caught half-heartedly reacting in the background. This is a surprising statement to make considering (thanks to the director’s commentary) the lead characters in the film are real life husband and wife, and the scenes of drug taking involved genuine snorting of flour.

On a final note, you don’t see the tits of the hottest actress in the film. Armoeena Jones (played by Sarah Niklin) never reveals a nipple. And, remember, I’ve watched this film twice. And then another time. Sarah steals the scenes she is in – attractive and able to deliver a line – playing Armoeena, a starlet in the adult movie industry and subject of voodoo possession. Given the copious amounts of nudity surrounding her, that Armoeena meta “acts” in an adult film within the film and later abundantly enjoys the festivities of an orgy party, Sarah has a part which is the very mathematical formula for topless being a contextual prerequisite for the role.

Ironically, this is the most perverse thing in the film.


Greville Rating: 3 out of 6 Tombstones



There are no such imponderable issues of the mind in our second drive-thru review of the evening. The leading lady in our second feature does go topless, even if technically they are not her own breasts.



The Drive-Thru Review of Frankenhooker (15)




The tag-line was gift-wrapped to Frankenhooker’s PR when Bill Murray provided the quote: “If you see only one movie this year, make it Frankenhooker”.

If you followed Murray’s advice in 1990 you would have not paid to see: Kindergarten Cop, Spaced Invaders, Troll 2, Bill Murray’s own starring turn in Quick Change; Ducktails the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp or the Bill Cosby big screen vehicle “Ghost Dad” where Bill Cosby plays ghost dad… a workaholic ghost who struggles to complete a multi-million dollar merger deal for his alive boss while also providing a nurturing home environment for his alive family, all of whom can’t hear him.

Frankenhooker is a story very (and I mean, extraordinarily) loosely connected with the Mary Shelly gothic novel, Frankenstein (if you hadn’t already worked that out).

After befalling to an unfortunate accident with a remote controlled lawnmower, boyfriend Jeffrey Franken, sets about combining his weekend hobby of experimental biology and his day job working for the local electricity board to rebuild his girlfriend from chunks of prostitutes he kills. However his plans go awry when his creation lives to become less girlfriend and more girl-fiend in a tale which manages to hold together to the Kafkaesque ending better than the Monster.

A horror-comedy, Frankenhooker also intended to be a satire, supportive of the feminist cause. Although killing prostitutes in order to use their flesh to improve your girlfriend’s appearance may seem like a stretch of the satire in that direction.

In some ways, Frankenhooker takes the male adolescent fantasy game of creating the perfect woman (the head of Jolie, the body of Hayek, legs of Anniston…) to its more satisfying gothic end compared to its older cousin, Weird Science. In other ways, it doesn’t quite make the emotional connection that what is being done is a grotesque of nature and so the altogether more fulfilling conclusion about whom the real monster is, is lost.

Behold! The most beautiful girl in the world!

As an aside, the cast of hookers and Elizabeth – the mad hobbyist’s girlfriend and, later, objects of his affection (the objects specifically being her head and right foot), and all Penthouse Pets at the time, possibly better known by the late night theatre going audience than anyone else in the film – were all chosen for their on screen glamour. If you’re going to measure up a thigh to sew into a meat jigsaw, may as well make it a good one.

Just like the Penthouse Pets, Frankenhooker does the most with what it has: limited special effects are put to use with multiple lopped heads rolling about, and so a strong sense of narrative pulls the story along when perhaps the action cannot.

Indeed, this movie almost plays out as a character piece.

In a scene early in the film, Jeffrey explains to his mother the series of weird feelings and bad thoughts he has been having since his girlfriend’s death. One may be moved at the outpouring of dialogue of a troubled young man coming to terms with his grief in the midst of trauma against a society which does not empathise (his Mom comically offering him a sandwich after his heart bled speech). Or one may see it as a means to convey these feelings when the actor is not talented enough to portray them any other way.

Whatever, the scene is a good example of the main protagonist giving a running commentary of his thoughts by talking to himself throughout the film: from his deep love for his chopped up girlfriend to how he is vetting the hookers he sees. Which is only a little annoying – like a mouthy audio photography book that won’t shut the hell up!

It is notable the writer and director Frank Henenlotter strove hard for an R rating post cut, and this film is classified 15 in the UK. There is little bloody gore involved, which is a likely factor of budget (although the cost of the film was a startling $5m – which today could be $126m for all I know) rather than anything else. There is little in the way of bad language and sex, considering the plot. The titular Monster, a potential pin-up for the video nasty fan, is played with lightness and a sense of the ridiculous. Ultimately every character gets exactly what you feel, in the end, they deserve in karma exploring conclusions (with the exception of the guinea pig, which is pure and simple animal cruelty). As a result of this, Frankenhooker is more 1950 sweet 16 Debutant Ball than 2003 Dutch underground club sleaze-fest.

If there is a loser in this film, it’s science. Science of all schools is a distant second to the populist means of getting on with the story. This is why it is Peter Venkman and not Egon Spengler quoted on the poster.

Which leads me onto Ghost. The film Ghost was released in 1990. How come no Ghostbuster was endorsing that one? I would have thought that would have been the prime candidate for a bit of Ghostbuster championing.

As for the feminism in Frankenhooker? Well, one of the prostitutes’ heads comes off when she explodes from taking “Super Crack” and hits her pimp, rendering him unconscious. That’s a form of girl power, I suppose.


Greville Rating: 3 out of 6 Tombstones