FRANKIE FREAKO (2024)

3 stars

Lightbulb Film Distribution. Digital. 14th July

Conor (Conor Sweeney) works in a boring office. His boss tells him his presentation is a bit bland. He needs to spice it up or not get a promotion. Which doesn’t make Conor happy. He promises to ‘show them’.

At home his wife Kristina (Kristy Wordsworth) is making herself sexy for him and comes on to him. To her disappointment he ‘peaks’ early. Then his wife tells him he’s ’a little square’ as they only hold hands! Poor old Conor…

Watching TV late at night, as his wife sleeps, he sees an advert for ‘The party of a lifetime’ and to call Frankie Freako’s Funtime Fone. The ad features a puppet creature who wouldn’t look out of place in a Charles Band or Troma production.

Presentation day. A dull slideshow and bored colleagues – Conor also starts to see weird things. Oddly his boss, Mr Buechler (Adam Brooks), tells him it was the best presentation – mainly as he needs a favour helping at the weekend to cover something up, by shredding some documents, with the promise of a possible promotion.

However, with his wife away for the weekend, he has plans to do ‘fun’ things like hoovering and dusting, but he keeps seeing the gremlin like Frankie Freako. Ultimately he is tempted to call the phone number on the TV advert – and may well regret it. His house ends up trashed, with graffiti on the walls – even on his wife’s sculptures. Frankie Freako is joined by Dotty Dunko and Boink Bardo and mayhem ensues… can he get the mischievous miscreants under control?

Resolutely silly from the start there is no attempt to make the rubbery creatures particularly realistic – this is purposely bad and cheesy, and at times stupidly amusing with over the top acting. Cheap and cheerful trashy entertainment, this is the kind of movie that screams out to be considered a cult item. Echoes of the Puppetmaster movies but dafter or maybe the Ghoulies, with often idiotic humour – your appreciation will depend on your tolerance for absurd laughs.

Writer/director Steven Kostanski, is a Canadian FX makeup artiste and part of the Astron 6 production and directing company – as are Conor Sweeney and Adam Brooks – who are responsible for such films as THE VOID (2016) and PSYCHO GOREMAN (2020). If you know their work you kind of know what to expect. Slightly juvenile, this gets more bonkers as things progress – however it can’t sustain interest as the number and variety of monsters et al increases.

Steve Kirkham