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Conor, played by Conor Sweeney, appears in a scene in Frankie Freako. Steven Kostanski’s latest genre trash horror is set at some point in the 80s. Few details are available to set a precise time, but every character uses a landline.Supplied
Frankie Freako
Written and directed by Steven Kostanski
Starring Conor Sweeney, Kristy Woodsworth and Matthew Kennedy
Classification N/A; 85 minutes
Opens in select theatres Oct. 4
Critic’s Pick
There is a wickedly stubborn unstuck-in-time quality to the movies of Steven Kostanski.
Ever since the brilliantly demented Canadian filmmaker made his feature-length directorial debut with 2011′s Manborg – a dumpster-dive-funded sci-fi action-comedy shot mostly in his garage – Kostanski has ingeniously commodified a super-niche stream of 80s-junk fetishism. Like a reverse alchemist, he turns hazy memories of genre trash, from cheap Saturday morning cartoons to late-night synth-soundtracked slasher flicks, into wildly entertaining fool’s gold.
Sure, his movies, including the note-perfect 2020 splatter comedy Psycho Goreman, might only appeal to a very specific kind of nostalgia hound, including younger audiences who rue the fact that they were born too late to appreciate the VHS boom first-hand. But to steal the slogan of a famed Canadian beer commercial that likely lives inside Kostanski’s own brain, those who like it, like it a lot.
Which is exactly the case with Kostanski’s latest film, Frankie Freako, whose title alone should send off a Klaxon-loud alarm for Canadian moviegoers of a certain generation who, say, pretended to be sick from school so they could stay home to watch whatever lightly edited Tax Shelter Era goop Citytv was playing as part of their weekday “Great Movies” slate.
When ‘Conor’ succumbs to temptation and dials a skeezy 1-900 party hotline, he finds it run by a creature named Frankie Freako. Director Steven Kostanski has commodified a 80s-junk fetishism with his brand of horror comedy.Supplied
A cinematic smoothie made possible by tossing Gremlins, Little Monsters, The Gate, Critters, Ghoulies Go to College, Garbage Pail Kids, and a heaping scoop of Puppet Master into a blender – and then forgetting to put the lid on, so that the kitchen is painted by the confection’s sloppy chunks – Frankie Freako is designed to melt your brain. The only question is whether you might welcome such cerebral liquefaction or not.
Set some time and somewhere in the 80s – no details are ever given, but every character uses a landline – Kostanski’s film follows the everyday life of bland, sexless yuppie Conor (Conor Sweeney), who desperately needs to spice up his suburban life. After his preposterously attractive wife Kristina (Kristy Wordsworth) leaves town one weekend for a work trip, Conor succumbs to temptation and dials a skeezy 1-900 party hotline run by a cool little creature named Frankie Freako (voiced by regular Kostanski collaborator Matthew Kennedy).
Quickly, Conor’s life is turned upside-down by Frankie and his fellow freaks, who turn out to be hard-partying refugees from an alien planet run by a gross little gangster named Munch (which can only be interpreted as a reference to the mostly forgotten 1987 Gremlins rip-off Munchies). Chaos ensues, including a slapstick battle of wits that feels pulled straight from Home Alone and a mid-film interdimensional trip via mine cart that recalls the Super Nintendo game Donkey Kong Country. It is as if the movie needs its own set of on-screen footnotes – yet its core audience will likely clock each and every one without assistance.
Chaos ensues as Conor discovers Frankie and his fellow freaks turn out to be hard-partying refugees from an alien planet run by a gangster named Munch.Supplied
Yet unlike Kostanski’s previous films – to say nothing of his gnarly makeup and prosthetics work on this past spring’s surprise hit In a Violent Nature – Kostanski keeps the mayhem just this side of PG-13. Puppets’ faces might melt and some unfortunate humans might lose some Crayola-coloured blood after being nicked by various sharp objects, but Frankie is meant to appeal to both audiences who remember what it was like when they were 13 as well as today’s more adventurous 13-year-olds, too. There is a bizarre kind of backward innocence to Kostanski’s approach that turns the nightmare into a daydream.
For those in on the joke – and this is really a one-joke movie, maybe two – the punchline of Frankie Freako hits incredibly hard. So much so that it seems the movie is not a 2024 release, but one teleported here from an alternate version of our past. You already know, though, whether this trip is worth taking.
