Some filmmakers, it is clear, think beyond their individual films toward building a cohesive body of work; consider Quentin Tarantino’s goal of leaving a “perfect” ten-film catalog, or the way in which Paul Schrader’s “lonely man” films exist in conversation with each other. Steven Kostanski, formerly of the Canadian genre film collective Astron-6, appears to be on a mission to fill the shelves of a struggling Blockbuster Video in a mirror-universe 1992. Each of Kostanski’s effects-heavy comedies hearkens back to an incredibly specific, once-ubiquitous sub-subgenre of VHS-era entertainment, from post-apocalyptic robo-thrillers (Manborg) to kiddie action comedies of the Suburban Commando vein (PG: Psycho Goreman). For his latest film, Frankie Freako, Kostanski has revived his most niche genre yet: the Party Goblin Film.
You’ll be forgiven if you’re unfamiliar with the Party Goblin Film; for one thing, it’s a term I just made up, but I promise you it is a real genre which will be instantly recognizable to those born in or around the mid 1980s. The origins of the PGF can be traced back to Gremlins, Joe Dante’s wildly successful horror comedy about a rampaging band of mischievous, malevolent puppet creatures. As I’ve written in this space before, Gremlins begat an entire wave of similarly puppet-based imitators: your Critters, your Ghoulies, your Hobgoblins, all the way up through Full Moon Pictures’ ever-expanding Puppet Master cinematic universe. Eventually, a separate strain split off from the Gremlinian evolutionary tree, emphasizing family-friendly comedy over anything resembling horror– 1992’s Munchie, for example, or the truly bizarre buddy-cop comedy A Gnome Named Gnorm, which paired Anthony Michael Hall opposite a horrifying and hirsute creation from SFX great-turned-director Stan Winston. The beasties in these films were debaucherous but benevolent, teaching their uptight human counterparts how to loosen up and embrace their inner radical dudes. You know– Party Goblins.
If that last paragraph read as nonsense to you, congratulations! You just might be a normal person. If, on the other hand, a single word of that brought a nod of recognition, Frankie Freako may be one of your favorite films of the year.
Kostanski’s fellow Astron-6 alum Conor Sweeney plays Conor, a cheerful but milquetoast office drone who risks losing both his job and his improbably attractive wife for simply being too square (he’s the sort of guy whose idea of a wild night is ordering a pizza– “half cheese, and half different cheese!”). Left to his own devices for a weekend, he finds himself intrigued by a late-night TV ad for a hotline called 1-900-FREAKO– think phone sex, but instead of talking dirty you’re connected with a weird little demon to discuss his love of partying (admit it, you’d be curious too). Inevitably, Conor breaks down and calls; just as inevitably, Frankie Freako instantly comes crashing through his wall like the Kool-Aid Man, along with his friends Dottie Dunko (a sharp-shooting cowgirl monster) and Boink Bardo (a laid-back cyborg whose vocabulary seems to consist entirely of variations of “Shabba-doo!”). Can Conor wrest control of his life from the claws of these party animals, or will Frankie and his crew teach him the ways of “getting freako?”
Much of the humor of Frankie Freako is derived from the way it tweaks the tropes of ‘90s-era slapstick comedy just past the point of recognition. When Conor first meets the Freakos, for example, Dottie fires a comical “warning shot” at him, leaving Conor with a gaping neck wound which he sports for the remainder of the film. Later, the Freakos extend an infamous Home Alone gag to an absurd degree, with paint cans swinging from every conceivable plane of Conor’s home. This is, of course, on top of the prerequisite layers of tongue-in-cheek period cheese: chunky cell phones, chunkier sweaters, and characters who speak in the familiar aw-shucks cadence of a TGIF-era sitcom. Like Wet Hot American Summer, it’s a gleefully silly parody of an idiom that was pretty damn silly to begin with.
Yet what could be a shallow exercise in empty nostalgia is elevated by the sheer amount of effort put into Frankie Freako. Frankie and his buddies are very clearly puppets (they tend to reside in the corners of the frame, and one can frequently sense the arm of the puppeteer swinging them into place), but they’re great puppets, made with care by people who have clearly seen dozens of these stupid movies. A sequence in which Conor is whisked away to FreakoWorld is a triumph of visual invention reminiscent of Phil Tippett’s Mad God; likewise, every inch of Conor’s party-trashed home is lovingly covered in nonsensically profane in-jokes. Even the score, from synth trio Blitz//Berlin, is a pitch-perfect recreation of a low-rent ‘90s comedy score (think less “John Carpenter” and more “presets on a Casio knockoff from Radio Shack”). I spent a lot of time as a child renting questionable entertainment from the kids section of my local video shop, and I can confidently say that Kostanski and company did the same.
More than anything, I’m astounded that Frankie Freako exists– not in the Megalopolis sense of being a so-called “impossible production,” but in that someone thought of it, and that they were then able to assemble a cast and crew who perfectly understood their vision. Frankie Freako will not be for everyone, of course. It is willfully, blissfully idiotic, and anyone who isn’t on board in the first five minutes will likely have a rough go of the following 80– but then, those are exactly the sort of squares begging to have their lives upended by a certain hard-rockin’ demon. For the rest of us, Frankie Freako is the party goblin we’ve been waiting for.
Frankie Freako
2024
dir. Steven Kostanski
85 min.
Opens in theaters Friday, 10/4 (though sadly nowhere locally as of yet)
