Making a great movie is a difficult task. But making a great “bad” movie is a bigger challenge. Steven Kostanski has made the big bad movie his calling card: No one is turning trash into treasure like the Canadian FX makeup expert turned director, whose skills at transcending pastiche and expanding indie budgets into spectacle in full rule in films like Manborg and PG: Psycho Goreman I should put him in a league with people like licorice pizza director Paul Thomas Anderson. However, that will never happen – the masses here have no respect for cheese!!
And that's fine. But for those who understand it: Kostanski's latest film, Frankie Freakois another twisted and silly odyssey full of puppets, slime and FREEAAAAKO-ING OUT, MAN. 2024 is not necessarily the ideal time for a combination of demons and Children's trash can with a hint of '80s party comedies, but with its retro horror comedy, Kostanski suggests it might be always the right time for something along these lines. If Beetlejuice can return in 2024, there's room in moviegoers' hearts for Frankie Freako, a mischievous leather-jacketed gremlin who loves to dance and crush Fart soda cans.
Frankie Freako It stars Kostanski regular Conor Sweeney as Conor, a classic '80s yuppie who's been so broken by office life that he can't satisfy the sexual needs of his sculptor wife Kristina (Kristy Wordsworth). When Kristina goes out of town for work for the weekend, the wayward jerk decides to stay home and dust off the CD rack. Those plans are interrupted by a fascinating advertisement for Frankie Freako's services. Knowing deep down that he needs a shake-up from the self-proclaimed “Party King,” Conor summons Frankie with a simple 1-900 call and immediately regrets the decision. Along with two of his fellow monsters, Dottie Dunko, the cowgirl, and Boink Bardo, who says nothing but “Sha-ba-doo!”, Frankie wreaks havoc on Conor's house, in a prolonged rampage that Kostanski introduces as if it were real action. what-a-mole.
Kostanski could have been content to simply comment vermin and the joys of bad horror movie dialogue with Frankie Freako. Sweeney nails the cadence of every idiot actor who's been criticized for Mystery Science Theater 3000and Kostanski's script fills it with one-liners that elicit laughter from a knowing audience. The scenes of the crazed monsters are both familiar and extraordinary: as Conor's house is destroyed, every bit of vulgar painted profanity or vandalized wall art seems perfectly placed and in character. While Wes Anderson's attention to detail is easier to spot, the Frankie Freako The production design team has the same intention of dazzling viewers with every frame.
But Kostanski isn't content with a 90-minute one-note joke. After some chasing the monsters with a gun, Conor learns an important lesson about why monsters are so strange, and is soon transported to Freakworld to confront Freaklord Munch and his battalion of mechanical monster slayers. Through a mix of lo-fi CG and grotesque latex creations, Kostanski sends Conor through Freakworld, a cartoonish nightmarescape that's as if Ralph Bakshi's animation came to life. The background feels dirty and alive, in a way that movies with a budget 10 or 20 times bigger (speaking of beetle juice beetle juice…) never do it.
That craft, combined with the wail of the guitar and a dash of world-building, elevates Frankie Freako from pure parody to a hybrid subgenre of true merit that Kostanski basically owns. In a time when horror can seem like the dumping ground of a studio executive looking for cheap work and attempts to change the genre can make less commercial sense, it's exciting to see a director like Kostanski take risks on an absurdist tone and take the execution so seriously. like Ridley Scott would do in a historical epic.
In a way, it's the Frankie Freako way: there are no half measures. Just strange measurements.
Frankie Freako debuts in theaters on October 4.