Frankie Freako: A Film That Could Work… If It Were 1986

By John Kirk

Rating: C

Frankie Freako isn’t the film you’re going to rave about to friends. It will, however, be an excellent subject for conversation about how much films got away with in 1986. If you can watch this film through that lens, it’s definitely a freaky film you can appreciate.

Here’s the story: Conor Sweeney (Conor Sweeney) is a dud. A dud at work, a dud in the bedroom and quite frankly, a dud of a dud if ever a dud existed. His boss, Mr. Buechler (Adam Brooks) is bored by his business presentations and his wife, Kristina (Kristy Wordsworth) is frustrated by his bedroom… dudding. I just made a new word to describe sexual frustration.

To offset this condition, Conor dials a number for Frankie Freako, a service for squares to alleviate their dullness. What Conor doesn’t realize is that he is dialing into an extradimensional pocket of reality where a race of creatures — Freakos — have fought a rebellion on their planet Freakworld against an overlord called President Munch who has enslaved them to man phone lines.

Three freakos, Frankie Freako (Matthew Kennedy), Dottie Dunko (Meredith Sweeney), and Boink Bardo (Adam Brooks) escaped to Earth and make a living annoying people. When Conor gets swept up in the chaos, he embarks upon a journey to test his own limits of how freaky he can get.

The homage to 80s movies of puppeteering (Gremlins, Ghoulies, Critters, etc.) is clear. The stylings are 80s and that’s obvious from the fashions, the décor, the rotary dial telephones and yeah, even the phone services advertised in the interstitial TV moments. As an 80s kid, this was not lost on me.

Director Stephen Kostanski is well known for his skill with special effects, with credits on films like The Void, The Divide and PG: Psycho Goreman. The puppeteering is done well. Well, well enough. After all, Frankie, his buddies and the denizens of Freakworld are representative examples of the puppeteering technology of the 1980s, and this is in line with the story setting. If the goal of this film was to do a historically accurate piece, then it succeeds on that front. But it’s just not especially entertaining.

Still, this is clearly a labour of love. Conor is a frustrating personality to be sure, and the presentation of Frankie and his cronies is marred by the clunkiness of puppet performances. This prolongs the delivery of the action in the scenes and is frustrating to watch, but there is a story present and that has to be saluted.

While I can appreciate the homage to 1986, this might have been better received if it was actually 1986. Anyone who remembers the films that came out of that decade remembers the cheesy special effects but today, they get in the way of telling a story even though the intent was to present a film from that time. But it’s something to talk about, that’s for sure.

Frankie Freako. Directed by Stephen Kostanski. Starring Conor Sweeney, Adam Brooks, Kristy Wordsworth, Matthew Kennedy, Meredith Sweeney, and Rich Evans. In selected theatres October 4.