Frankie Freako

A workaholic businessman's bland little life is turned upside down when he unleashes a group of small trouble-making party animals into his home. Now, it’s a race against time to shut the party down before his wife returns from her work trip.

Frankie Freako is another one of Steven Kotanski’s low budget genre nostalgia films. Where Psycho Goreman was a spin on a Anime-tinged He-Man sci-fi horror movie, this one is more along the lines of Gremlins meets The Ghoulies meets Critters meets The Garbage Pail Kids meets Child’s Play meets, well… The Cat in the Hat, not to mention a little bit of the the classic 80s party movie genre like Weird Science or Risky Business.

And maybe you hear that and go… not interested. That’s fine. Kotanski’s target audience, especially with this film, is very clearly the Gen Xers who never lost their affection for that trashy 80s sci-fi/horror movie genre staple of “little monsters invading your home” with all its attendant cheap and cheesy practical effects.

So if that’s you, well… Here’s Frankie Freako.

Set in the 1980s, Conor is a workaholic yuppie. He has an aggressive ”sales bro” kind of confidence, but his pleated khakis and sweaters tells us that he is not just a man who is risk-averse, not just a man who is uptight and lacking in any sense of fun or imagination, he is actually a bland and mediocre nobody, and ultimately, nothing but a boring square.

Conor certainly dones't believe this, but after he is told by his ponytail-sporting boss that his latest presentation lacked “spice,“ and soon after that, he's told by his total smokeshow gun-nut of a wife, Kristina, that his romantic hand-holding in the bedroom has left her feeling somewhat disappointed and unfulfilled, he is at a loss. He just likes things as he likes them... neat, clean, and orderly, and it’s not his fault if the whole world is going to heck around him. Why, even his favorite TV show, an Antiques Roadshow-type program, allows swearing now. Jiminy Criminy! What’s a regular everyday middle class working guy supposed to do?

So, when Kristina goes out of town for work, Conor decides that he's going to prove them all wrong. He's going to show everyone he can be spontaneous and fun too!

That’s when he sees a tv commercial for a party hotline…

Frankie Freako is a strange alien creature.

The commercial doesn’t really explain what kind of alien Frankie Freako is exactly, where he comes from, why he’s here, or what exactly happens once you call 1-900-555-FREAKO, but one thing is for certain…

Don’t call Frankie Freako unless you’re ready to party!

Home alone, and left alone to his own devices, with all of the housecleaning finished, and with nothing to look forward to but the same boring pizza that he always orders, Conor realizes that this is his life, and it’s at rock bottom. That’s when, at his weakest point, he decides to call Frankie Freako. It is a decision that will forever change his life, as soon enough, Conor finds himself swept up into the intergalactic chaos of a Freako Party.

That one phone call brings the party king himself, Frankie Freako, and his buddies, the sharpshooting cowgirl Dottie Dunko, and the cyborg jam master Boink Bardo (who mostly only says a context appropriate variation of the phrase “Shab-ba-do") all the way across the galaxy to wreak havoc.

In short, it’s Party Time. Freako-style.

The Freakos intend to help Conor to learn how to loosen up a bit, and they’re gonna do it their way. And that means they’re gonna do it by party-hartying, while playing loud music from Boink’s boombox, and drinking nothing but Fart Cola, as they destroy Conor’s house.

But the party is soon derailed when a group of robotic Freako Killers show up, looking to drag Frankie Freako and the others back home, and this includes Conor too. Because it turns out, Frankie, Dottie, and Boink are all refugees from a distant planet called Freak World.

Once the most awesome world in the entire universe, a place of gnarly non-stop partying, where the Freakos lived a super cool life of peace, good times, and good vibes, where they were free to rock out and party-harty just as God intended.

But then, an evil dictator named President Munch took over.

Munch forced the Freakos to go work, and to live the dreary and decidedly not cool lives of telemarketers. The once bodacious Freakos of Freak World despaired, for it looked like their days of being totally rad were over, maybe forever. It was only due to sheer desperation and a little bit of luck that Frankie Freako, Dottie Dunko, and Boink Bardo were able to figure out how to manipulate the phone lines, set up the Freako party hotline, and use it to teleport to earth.

Now, it’s up to Conor to join the party, and save two worlds…

The story of a flawed man fighting an onslaught of tiny alien terrors, Frankie Freako is all about learning when it's time to be a whole lotta party animal, and when it's time to be a little bit of a bland square.

Like a middle finger to the trend of the more self-serious horror films, this film revels in its 1980s-like silliness. And again, much like PG: Psycho Goreman, it has no pretensions as to what it is. It’s just a wacky adventure, full of some light genre gore and horror story ideas, with a healthy helping of fart humor, and some pretty impressive, but obviously cheap, special effects to boot.

And that’s Frankie Freako’s best quality, despite very obviously being an ultra-low budget film, the love is clearly right there on the screen. From the puppets used for Frankie, Dottie, and Boink, to a miniatures sequence racing along a track through the Freako City, to the gore and splatter, basically everything on screen, was clearly created by people who cared about their craft, and did the best they could within the limits of their obvious budgetary and resource constraints. I loved that.

I also loved the joke of the graffiti scrawled across pretty much every surface throughout Conor’s house, most of which was things like: “Butt” and “Pizza” and “Oh, yeah!” That was just funny. And you could tell they had a good time making the set look "wrecked" from the partying. Even the Casio keyboard-sounding score is perfect in its very low rent 80s horror way. There’s real skill on display here, and a ton of humor. It's all just really well done, but that fact can be easily missed if you only see the low budget cheapness of everything. Much like with the films of Jim Hosking, Kontaski’s movies are generally much more clever and much more well done than they might initially appear to be.

As writer/director Steven Kontaski explained…

“Directing genre movies packed with crazy creatures and imagery is my way of staying connected to the little kid version of me, whose imagination was pure, unfiltered, and completely off the rails, unhindered by responsibility of the boring reliance on common sense that comes with adulthood.”

He totally nails that vibe here.

Reminiscent of the often extremely questionable kinds of "entertainment" one could find lingering on the dusty lower shelves of your local video shop in the 80s, Frankie Freako is clearly not going to be for everyone. It is willfully stupid, weirdly gross, and deliberately silly. And it’s not a film with any kind of agenda other than having fun, which it does, but at the same time, it’s not like anyone will watch this and praise the filmmaking or anything. It’s a silly movie, it’s a fun movie, but that’s it. It’s not deep. But it’s not meant to be, so, to me at least, it’s not valid to ding it for not being what it had no intention of being. But again, it’s okay if you don’t like it. In fact, you probably won’t. As I said in my Psycho Goreman review, Kotanski's previous film, you’re either already a member of this fan club, or you aren’t, and you’ll know whether you are or not within the first five minutes.

For the rest of us... get ready to get your freak on.