Reviewer David Leninhawk returns with a look at Lisa Frankenstein.
Growing up in the late 80s/early 90s, my grandparents had HBO. One of the big complaints from people who paid for HBO at the time was that they played the same movies over and over again. This meant, however, that as a kid I would WATCH a lot of the same movies over and over again. It was because of this that some of my favorite childhood movies were ones that HBO played ad nauseam and I watched to the point of memorization: The Monster Squad, Beetlejuice, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Little Shop of Horrors, Howard the Duck, and more. As a kid, I didn’t understand the concept of “rights” or “licensing”, so when HBO showed the same movies over and over again, I assumed it was because people liked them and they were successful. It was only around the age of 10 or so when I really started learning about the movie industry that I realized some of these films were bombs, or disliked, or otherwise not universally beloved even though they were MY favorite movies.
Lisa Frankenstein feels like a movie from the 80s that would have bombed, played on HBO a million times, and then get reclaimed as a nostalgic classic by the kids who grew up with it. Hell, it was written by Diablo Cody, who also wrote Jennifer’s Body, a film I certainly liked when I saw it in theaters, but was disliked and bombed upon release, only to be reclaimed years later. Aside from this general vibe, the film wears its many influences on its sleeve: Weird Science, Edward Scissorhands, perhaps even the little-remembered early-90s film My Boyfriend’s Back…there’s even some hints of the original film version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer here. Part of me was hoping it might have gotten slightly darker with its humor (think Heathers), but for a hard-ish PG-13 with multiple murders the film remains pretty breezy and fun throughout. There’s even elements of intentional camp, especially in the Mommy Dearest-esque narcissistic wicked stepmother character, played by Carla Gugino, who understood her assignment. It’s a Rocky Horror type of camp that works without devolving into annoying irony, thankfully.
Lisa Swallows, who somehow never gets made fun of for that name despite being in high school in 1989, lives with her dad (Joe Chrest, playing almost the exact same character he does in Stranger Things), stepmom, and stepsister, Taffy (Liza Soberano). Lisa is played by Kathryn Newton, one of the most charismatic and charming young female actors operating today, which is great since, as the film progresses, it’s not afraid to make Lisa unlikable at times. After Lisa’s mom was murdered by a masked slasher (which the film never follows up on or returns to, a choice I admired…it’s like the subsequent events about that killer are a separate slasher film we’re not watching), her dad quickly remarried, causing them to move to a new town and in with the new stepmom and stepsis. Lisa is pretty quiet and a social outcast, preferring to spend her free time alone at historic cemetery doing charcoal etchings of the tombstones, and pining for the dreamy poet-type hunk who works for the school magazine, Michael (Henry Eikenberry). Taffy is actually a good stepsister that tries to include Lisa in things and break her out of her shell, so she practically forces Lisa to accompany her to a school rager. At this party, Lisa accidentally drinks something spiked with maybe LSD or PCP, and is sexually assaulted by her nerdy lab partner, though it’s a PG-13 sexual assault so if you’re normally triggered by such content in films you’ll probably be okay here (it’s non-consensual touching over clothing). This leads her to wander to the cemetery as a storm arises, and she winds up at her favorite grave saying she wishes she was with him…dead in the ground. The grave is struck by lightning, and the inhabitant rises from the dead, all zombie-like.
The Creature, as he’s credited, is played by Cole Sprouse, who I only know as one of the twins who played the kid in Big Daddy but whom audiences younger than me are apparently familiar with through many popular Disney Channel shows. Sprouse’s performance is entirely about communicating via body language, and he does an excellent job pushing his hulking body in uncoordinated ways to sell this character. As the film progresses, Lisa will help him attain various body parts he’s missing, and zap him via a defective tanning bed which both seals the connection and makes the Creature a little less zombie-like each time. Of course, those parts will be attained from people who are killed for reasons and by methods I will not spoil here.
As perhaps the one person left on Earth who is not sick of 80s nostalgia, this film had many treats for me. Aside from soundtrack bangers like “The Promise” or REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling” (a song I most associate with the surprisingly depressing 80s sex comedy The Last American Virgin), the film does a great job of selling the 80s setting through set design and costuming, without the film becoming reference overload. Lisa herself, who through the film sheds her shyness and becomes more assertive and even mean, also transitions to dressing like either an 80s Goth or early 80s Madonna, with black lace gauntlets, blue eye make-up, and the like. Since this is an aesthetic I find very sexy on women (yeah, I know, send me to horny jail after my review) I hope this inspires Lisa Swallows cosplayers at cons in the future. Actually, two girls who sat next to me in the theater dressed up in theme with the film despite my screening not being a Costume Screening, so perhaps this isn’t an idle wish. Plus there’s some little touches like a reference to the Sports Illustrated shoe phone (which one of my aunts actually had growing up), and it’s sort of an intertextual companion to the Hamburger phone from Cody’s Juno.
The script by Cody is quite funny, and I didn’t find the dialogue to be nearly as snarky or look-at-me-clever as detractors of Juno and Jennifer’s Body can claim Cody to write. First time feature director Zelda Williams (daughter of the late Robin Williams) knows how to position the camera and edit an interaction with the right cut (or when to hold for a beat) to ensure a joke or a gag delivers properly as well. While I wish the movie was shot on film to truly replicate the feeling of an actual 80s comedy of this type, the framing and overall mise en scène do feel specifically staged to recreate the look and feel of those movies, as opposed to this just being an 80s-set movie filmed like a modern feature. Also, the PG-13s of the 80s were HARDER than PG-13s now, and Lisa Frankenstein had enough blood and up-to-the-line sex jokes that this did feel like an 80s PG-13 rather than a modern, neutered version. Man, I would LOVE this film if I were 10-years-old and seeing it, even if the references to douches and the sponge contraceptive would have gone over my head.
I really enjoyed this film quite a bit. If you grew up around the same time period I did and had the same experiences with watching certain movies repeatedly in the late 80s and early 90s, I think the film will scratch a certain itch for something new to replicate the feeling watching those movies gave you as a kid. At the same time, while teens or tweens watching this movie today will perceive the 80s as being as long ago as friggin’ WWII was to me at that age, I think they’ll have a blast with this film being the type of PG-13 teen horror/comedy that you just don’t see getting put out nowadays. I appreciated the pleasant flashback this film provided me.
Guest writer David Leninhawk sees a LOT of movies. Check out Letterboxd for more reviews.