I know, I know, the plots aren’t the exact same but Poor Things and Frankenhooker land on the same premise: a woman brought back to life in a Frankenstein story, exploring her body. Both on very different budgets. And sure, Poor Things wasn’t as camp.
Yorgos Lanthimos’s 2023 film gives Emma Stone’s Bella Baxter the brain of an infant in the body of a grown woman. Frank Henenlotter’s 1990 comedy horror gives medical school dropout Jeffrey Franken the same problem after a lawnmower kills his fiancée Elizabeth, so he rebuilds her from the body parts of Times Square sex workers he blows up with super crack.
Both women wake up new. Bella lurches through Victorian Europe discovering appetite and autonomy. Elizabeth reanimates as a killer who stalks the streets repeating her old pickup lines in a Frankenstein monotone.
Frankenhooker had its own run-ins with the establishment. Henenlotter said an MPAA official called his secretary to announce, “Congratulations, you’re the first film rated S,” with the S standing for “sh*t.” Bill Murray, who’d been hanging around the crew while shooting Quick Change, volunteered the pull quote of a lifetime: “If you see one movie this year, it should be Frankenhooker.”
