Frankie Freako
Written and Directed by Steven Kostanski
Starring Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy, Conor Sweeney, Meredith Sweeney
Runtime: 82 minutes
In theaters October 4 - premiered at Fantastic Fest

by Kimberly L, Staff Writer

Do you long for they days of Tales from the Cryptkeeper, the OG slime Gak, and the ankle breaking glee a free-swinging Skip-It? Are you sitting cross-legged on the IKEA futon of your mind as a lava lamp silently squelches out fluorescent globs of wax and glitter in the distance? If you think you missed all your opportunities to call one of those mysteriously alluring 800 numbers that colored the second half of the last millenium, director Steven Kostanski and crew are here to offer you one last shot.

Frankie Freako is a film made for children of the 90s who have yet to accept 1999 was more than ten years ago. The film follows Conor played by Conor Sweeney, starting out with a painfully mundane glance into a week unraveling into a nightmare that promises to ruin his life before he can even realize it. Conor is not bright or strong, his initial appearance plays out as the disappointing type of nerdy despite his Dana Carvey Wayne’s World-esque looks, but give Conor a chance.

Nostalgia and horror are so cloylingly intertwined at times it can feel painful to intentionally tap in. Franke Freako is unapologetic in its familiarly rubbery and warm embrace. There is the untouchable, lofty reminiscence of films like this year’s I Saw the TV Glow that cast neon spectres of something intangible at the wall, and then there is Frankie Freako—a film that feels made in a Creepy Crawler’s Oven in your best friend’s basement in the summer of 1994. You can smell the rubber bake in the back of your mind as the story unfolds. The puppets are soft and almost adorable, with hard nods to Ghoulies 3, Munchies,and The Garbage Pail Kids live action film, most of all as the real villians of the story appear critter by critter.

Conor’s initial screentime has us realize what would happen if every character in Mike Judge’s Office Space became one abominably dull, 9-5 buffoon. He is oblivious to his conniving boss Mr. Buechler (Adam Brooks), his seductive girlfriend Kristina (Kristy Wordsworth), and the way his life passes him by. I didn’t root for Conor in the beginning. He irritated me, and seemed too pathetic to hold his own against a toddler or a frog, and we are lead to believe he is no match for the menace and his gang summoned by the sacred phone call.

The only thing that catches his eye is a late-night hotline number to connect him an impish little menace named, you guessed it, Frankie Freako, who promises to alter the way he lives and parties. Foxy Kristina puts Conor’s personality on full display reminding us he already had a traumatic run-in with a hotline character in the past when he dialed the Nightmare on Elm Street hotline and couldn’t sleeo for weeks. “He was just so mean to me,” Conor laments.

Frankie Freako and and his impish friends gunslinger cowgirl Dottie Dunko (voice by Meredith Sweeney) and techie mini-orge Boink Bardo (voiced by Adam Brooks) arrive like googly-eyed rubber bats out of hell, immediately unleashing zany terror on Conor and Mr. Buechler.

Kostanski’s previous cult favorite endeavor Psycho Goreman is another film full of heart and memories for a bygone era three decades old. The filmmaker knows how to weave fabricated characters into the lives of his human cast members and viewers like a Dr. Frankenstein of critters, unleashing tiny monsters into the real world. As a lover of all things puppet, I hate to see the art of a little creature go overlooked. Frankie and his gang of soft-bodies accomplices take Conor into a world none of us expect with all the slime and rotting steam of 1991’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’s II: The Secret of the Ooze.

It feels like a privilege to be welcomed into this realm where imagination is required and belief in magic is a near religious experience for devout collectors of comics and action figures. Brought to you by effects artists and cinematographers behind In a Violent Nature, there is a balance of art and camp that goes overlooked in modern cinema. This is a film for anyone who can appreciate whimsy while blissfully ignoring how close to the surface the production is made. This is to say if you go into an 80s film looking for boom mic bloopers as a detriment to the show, your mom dropped you off at the wrong house and you certainly can’t sit on the oversized beanbag chair with us. What I am trying to say is the world needs more films about wacky little critters.