By DEIRDRE CRIMMINS
Starring Conor Sweeney, Adam Brooks and Kristy Wordsworth
Written and directed by Steven Kostanski
Raven Banner Entertainment and Shout! Studios
FRANKIE FREAKO is the latest oddity to crawl out of filmmaker Steven Kostanski’s delightfully twisted brain. Known for Psycho Goreman, Manborg and The Void, in addition to his work with the Canadian film collective Astron-6, Kostanski has shown a particular affection for gore, mayhem and a heavy dose of elder millennial nostalgia. FRANKIE FREAKO world premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival this week to a laughing, charmed crowd.
The film hinges on a now-extinct entertainment form: 1-900 numbers. Back in the late 80s and 90s, television commercial breaks were flooded with ads enticing viewers to pick up the phone and call these premium rate numbers for some fun and excitement. The services ranged from meeting singles in your area, to talking to Freddy Kruger or your favorite WWF wrestler, to psychic services. The 30-second ads made the calls seem exciting and necessary to survive suburbia. In reality, they were not nearly that engaging, but instead a quick way to make your parents yell at the top of their lungs when the phone bill came in the following month.
In FRANKIE FREAKO, the titular character is a demonic yet cartoonish looking puppet who promises a fun night of wild partying if you just picked up the phone and dialed his number for 99 cents per minute. Conor (Conor Sweeney) is a regular, square guy, who feels pressured by both his wife and his boss to make himself more interesting. When the Freako commercial comes on after a night of watching an antiquing program, Conor decides to call the number and spice up his night. Unlike the disappointing reality of 1-900s, things get unfortunately wild, and fast. Three Freakos, including Frankie himself, magically show up at Conor’s pristine home. After waking from what must have been chaos, Conor finds his house destroyed and three moderately violent Freakos who refuse to leave.
The Freakos themselves have interesting designs. They are not elegant puppets, but rather the foam rubber molded types you would expect to see in this era. With only three of them – and their toddler-sized bodies – they don’t quite qualify to be labeled “tiny terrors” in the traditional sense. Much like Gremlins, they each have a particular schtick that they adhere to fairly closely. At times they are as rude as Bart Simpson, and at others they shoot real bullets and legitimately destroy Conor’s belongings. This potential for actual bodily harm and death nudges FRANKIE FREAKO from straight homage to a bit more sinister when it arises. That quick pivot adds to making the film more unpredictable than one that is afraid to introduce real danger.
Tonally, however, it is overall a tongue-in-cheek satire of other tiny terror films of the era (quite specifically Ghoulies Go to College) and Sweeney’s schlocky performances match this nicely. The character’s verbal conservatism and exacerbated reactions to all things Freako is dead-on for the square, dad-ish sitcom acts of the era.
There are certainly large swaths of the film that do not adhere to logic, the laws of physics or any version of human nature we are aware of. But the film never sets out to do anything but be a stupid, fun, silly little romp with one man and three obnoxious Freakos. There are fart jokes and hilariously G-rated graffiti throughout, and FRANKIE FREAKO never tries to be anything it is not.
At the Fantasia world premiere, the audience was laughing heartily with the film, and not at it. Such fun and frivolity was a welcome way to spend a Montreal summer night.
