[Editorial] Frankenhooker (1990) and the Attacks on Bodily Autonomy

The horror and science-fiction genres have always been queer and they’ve always been trans-inclusive.

That’s it.

The end.

The science-fiction genre was created by a bisexual 18 year old girl named Mary Shelley. It was the result of a literal perfect storm. 1816 became known as the “Year Without a Summer” after a volcanic winter was set off by the eruption of Mount Tambora. Average temperatures dropped, crops failed, and a haze covered the skies across the Northern Hemisphere.

Poet Lord Byron rented a private mansion on Lake Geneva where poets (and physicians) spent the grim summer, trying to salvage some fun out of it. After reading ghost stories from Fantasmagoriana, Byron proposed a fun contest where everyone would write their own ghost stories to share during the stay. After struggling with initial writer’s block, Shelley said the story for Frankenstein came to her during a terrifying “waking dream” one night. The tale grew from a short story to the full novel and was published anonymously in 1818, when she was 20 years old. Mary Shelley’s name didn’t appear on Frankenstein until 1823.

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Also pulling a monster story from the back of their brain when they needed to, was writer/director Frank Henenlotter who came up with the idea for Frankenhooker (1990) while standing in a producer’s office. Frankenhooker has become a campy cult classic horror film, making good on the tagline’s promise of “A terrifying tale of sluts and bolts”. While Frankenhooker may be the schlockiest version of Frankenstein out there, it has become the most relative telling of the story in recent years. 

The story of Frankenhooker opens at a birthday party for Elizabeth’s (Patty Mullen) father where Elizabeth is surrounded by voices planting ideas for her to change her appearance in the form of fat-shaming by her mother and husband-to-be/electrician/med-school-drop-out, Jeffrey (James Lorinz). Using his medley of talents, Jeffrey builds Elizabeth’s father something most dads would want for their birthday--a remote control lawnmower. Tragedy strikes when Elizabeth tries to give a demonstration and gets caught in the path of the lawn mower, finding herself chewed up and splattered across the lawn. After secretly absconding with Elizabeth’s severed head, Jeffrey takes control and builds her into his idea of a perfect body by attaching it to a more “idealistic” body, made from the skinnier and sexier body parts of murderedsex workers.

Discussions around Frankenhooker have predominantly focused on turning a more positive and accepting light onto sex workers, which is one thousand percent true, but there’s an angle that can be found when watching through the eyes of a queer trans horror fan that was assigned female at birth--Frankenhooker is about total loss of control of our own bodies.

In the months since the overturning of Roe Vs Wade in 2022, multiple states have introduced bills attacking women and trans people of all ages on countless fronts.Some states banned abortion almost instantaneously while others were ready to sign measures protecting abortion rights into law. Reproductive rights and transgender rights go hand-in-hand. While people were running to support Planned Parenthood to keep access to reproductive resources available, they were also helping Planned Parenthood provide gender affirming care to trans people.

What all of these bills and laws have in common is wording that is somehow both specific and vague at the same time. Anti-abortion laws are targeted at women with people continually ignoring the fact that it’s not just women who get pregnant. After an extreme anti-abortion law was passed in Texas in 2021, a trans man living there named Samson Winsor had a pregnancy scare but what was even scarier was the larger picture of the situation. Samson opened up saying, “They refuse to believe that we're men, but we're still having kids, we're still getting pregnant, and we still have to access abortions. What's that going to look like, when the thing they say doesn't exist looks them right in the face and says, ‘I'm a pregnant man’?” Anna Rupani, the executive director of Fund Texas Choice, noted that trans and non-binary people, “have been left out of the conversation, which means that the impact for them is even more significant.” 

As Jeffrey is looking for parts to rebuild Elizabeth’s body, he’s drawing checkmarks in marker on the perfect “useful” parts. And in the eyes of close-minded political leaders, they’ve come to solely define the “usefulness” of women by their means of reproduction. Bodily autonomy was at risk for everyone who was born with a uterus and it didn’t matter where you were in life or who you became--choices could be made for us. 

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In an article for Mic magazine, Katelyn Burns, the first openly trans reporter on Capitol Hill, summed it up perfectly when she said, “A large portion of conservative attacks on gender-affirming care for young people stems from a similar place and extends the power of the government even further into our private lives.”

Extremist politicians and right-wing-minded people, or in Frankenhooker a mad scientist, look at women and transgender people as they want to see them in their idyllic vision and they see them as their property. If their body parts aren’t appealing to the eyes then they’re shamed and even seen as useless. Jeffrey swears to the heavens that he loves Elizabeth and would do anything for her but his madness blurs the lines between love and control. At dinner with the severed head of his fiancée, Jeffrey shows her pieced together magazine photos Elizabeth’s photo as the head asking, “Can’t you picture yourself in this body?...I can make you into anything you want. I can make you into the centerfold goddess of the century. You just need the right parts.” Jeffrey promises Elizabeth’s head that “I’m going to make the body you want” but it’s really the body that he wants her to have. 

The attacks on Elizabeth’s body in Frankenhooker start right off the bat with patronizing comments, when Elizabeth’s mom looks at her and says, “for your own good, ease up on the pretzels.” Even the newscaster calls her a “girthle fiancée” after her bloody death. Elizabeth is being told by those around her how she should be existing--as an idealistic woman who is feminine and thin. 

As he’s finalizing the blueprints, he starts nitpicking and stops himself, saying, “Otherwise I’m not gonna be happy…I can’t feel guilty now,” when really he was nitpicking as he was “designing” her, down to talking about getting rid of moles on Elizabeth’s body. While he is pulling from the pile of severed female body parts, he tosses one aside because it looks “Like a man’s hand,” insinuating that a woman having masculine features is gross. After Elizabeth escapes Jeffrey’s lab a la Frankenstein’s Monster, she makes her way back to the streets she once worked. While on the subway, everyone freaks out, avoids her and makes comments with one woman cringing “I hope she’s not contagious.”

A record 315 anti-trans bills were introduced in 2022 across the United States. The most common ones are for limiting trans youth participation in sports, limiting access to gender affirming healthcare, and extremely limiting when and where drag performances can take place. Bill 43 passed in a landslide in Arkansas and is currently in the House for consideration. The bill would make drag performances be classified as “adult-oriented businesses” and they would be banned from spaces where children and teens would be present. 

At the time I’m typing this, a similar bill is in the legislature in Missouri. Felecia Kempen with Human Rights Collective STL expressed fear with the phrasing of these bills saying that, “We’re afraid that they’re going to be persecuted, you know, just walking the street. That’s a public area.” 

https://www.advocate.com/news/advocates-protest-missouri-bills

The gasps and gawking that Elizabeth experiences walking the streets after she’s been reassembled, purple hair and mini skirt to match, pale in comparison to the verbal and physical assaults on women and trans people in public places. 

Over the few days that I was drafting this piece, Utah passed a bill prohibiting surgery and hormone replacement therapy for minors and it was signed by Governor Spencer Cox the day after it was placed on his desk. It took less than two weeks for the bill to be drafted, proposed, and passed into law. At least 18 other states are proposing similar bills that would cut affirming healthcare for trans youth. It’s not an exaggeration to say that by the time this editorial gets published and shared through the website and social media outlets, there will be even more anti-trans bills and laws that I could have added to this discussion and that is absolutely more terrifying than any horror movie ever made.

Our choices are being taken away. Our bodies, from our appearances to our organs, are being controlled by others. 

During the climax of Frankenhooker, Jeffrey is beheaded by the pimp of the sex workers that he killed. In order to save his life, the tables are turned and Elizabeth attaches his head to a body assembled from discarded female body parts. Jeffrey wakes up in a body he is not at home in, against his own will and screams and grunts, “These aren’t my arms, this isn’t my hand, these aren’t my legs, this isn’t my breast!” It’s almost a twisted sense of karma delivered by Elizabeth. It wasn’t the body he wanted to be in but it was the body he was forced to live in. 

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