“Frankie Freako” Review
Director: Steven Kostanski Screenwriter: Steven Kostanski Cast: Conor Sweeney, Matthew Kennedy, Kristy Wordsworth, Adam Brooks Distributor: Shout! Studios Running Time: 85 min. MPAA: NR
Frankie Freako feels like a wild retro cocktail of combining the allure of those enticing hotline numbers and gross-out puppetry. The obvious inspiration for such a film was the commercial for Freddy Freaker, a freaky puppet character you could call up to hear weird in-character conversations. Watching that odd commercial years after it aired triggered some immediate curiosity. What would happen if you dialed the number and listened to the paid-for words of an inhuman gremlin creature? What if the number was so cursed that the beast came to your house?
This film tries to find the bonkers answer to that question. Set in the 1980s, the story follows the yuppie loser Connor (Conor Sweeney). Despite his cocky attitude, he soon starts to realize how bland his life truly is in more ways than one. He thinks his boardroom presentations are hot, but gets told they’re pretty dull. He has a sexy wife in his lavish home, but he stumbles his way through sex and emotional honesty. He desperately needs to be cool and is attracted to the bizarre Frankie Freako hotline commercial. With the commercial’s puppet threatening Connor as a square, the yuppie soon relents to his desires to dial up this unorthodox phone service.
Naturally, all hell breaks loose when he does so. With Connor agreeing to Frankie’s freaky partying, a wild night will soon be had with the arrival of the crude party animal, Frankie Freako (voiced by Matthew Kennedy). To make the party more complete, Frankie invites over his puppet pals, including a cowgirl and a DJ who can’t stop saying “shabadoo.” Although chaotic and violent, the trio manages to get Connor out of his shell and not be so dull. Well, at least by Connor’s standards, where his wildest acts of rebellion seem to be drinking soda and spray painting the word “butt,” the foulest of profanity for the fuddiest of duddies.
Thankfully, the film goes the extra mile in weirdness by later transporting Connor to a dystopian world of freaky puppets. Those hoping for more puppet mayhem and campy practical effects won’t be disappointed. There are plenty of varied puppets, ranging from robots that explode to full-bodied monstrosities that attack Connor and his freaky puppet entourage. The dated sensation of dancing on the wild sight has a hilarious absurdity, existing in a film where Frankie can turn into a demonic nightmare when witnessing a cross, but also has Connor being forced into a bad Zardoz outfit while being ensnared by creatures 1/4 his size. There’s a dedication to the dumb required to sell this silly scenario for more than a short film, and director Steven Kostanski has a firm enough grasp on the film he’s making here.
Frankie Freako finds enough fun things to do with its rude-dude puppets and crude/prude humor. The tongue is firmly in cheek for a film that crafts compelling puppets and knows precisely what to do with them. The practical effects don’t rest on their laurels as the story steers towards the weirdness of yuppy mundanity and demonic pimps. The result is a film that doesn’t feel like a rote evocation of the 1980s, but more of a spiritual embodiment of an era where hotlines were weird and movie monsters were even weirder.
