In an effort to present you with the most comprehensive coverage possible of horror movies with black significance, I stepped out of my normally moralistic ivory tower and degraded myself by renting a pornographic film. Of course, having never seen a porno before (ahem), I wasn’t sure what to expect. Do people REALLY have sex on camera, or is it just creative camera angles and mirrored ceilings? And what is this “money shot” I’ve heard so much about? Is it like those contests at basketball games where you can win a million dollars for making a three-pointer from half court? I sure hoped so; those are fun.
My delicate sensibilities, however, were shattered once Frankenhunter began — not so much because of all the explicit hardcore sex and crimes against nature, but because this is just a spectacularly poor film. I mean, really, would a little character development kill you? Having not seen many — er, I mean any — of these types of movies previously, I can’t say for sure, but this has got to be the Plan 9 from Outer Space of adult entertainment. I’ve never understood why pornos need to have plots, and Frankenhunter is Exhibit A in the case against porn folk stretching their creative muscles (above the neck, that is) by trying to write a script. To call this plot threadbare is an insult to thread.
The legendary Heather Hunter, unofficially the only black actress ever to star in a horror-themed porn flick, plays Dr. Brand, one of a team of doctors — with dubious credentials, to be sure — who discover an uncouth woman (Tami Monroe) they believe to be a long-lost Scandinavian love goddess. In order to bring the godliness out of her, they place her in an “animation booth” (AKA a shower curtain situated on top of a trampoline), where she’s zapped and emerges sexy…and naked! From then on, anyone she comes in contact with starts humping. The end.
Oh come on, are we supposed to buy this? First of all, serious scientists do NOT wear stilettos and fishnet stockings. Second, shower curtains CANNOT conduct electricity, people. And third, sex goddess or not, I can’t imagine a hottie like Heather Hunter wanting to bone this Dr. Donan guy, who looks like Chris Kattan’s Mr. Peepers character and speaks with an accent somewhere between Dracula and Shecky Greene.
If all of this weren’t bad enough, the film does the unthinkable: it tries to be funny. This includes classic bits like the four-doctor introduction scene from Spies Like Us (“Doctor.” “Doctor.” “Doctor.” “Doctor.” “Doctor.” “Doctor.”) and the exasperated Oliver Hardy tie flip. LOL, Frankenhunter, LOFL. As is usual with a movie this bad, the best humor is unintentional, such as Heather’s matter-of-fact line, “Were you playing with my vaginal orifice while I was unconscious?” Oh, to live in a porn world for just one day…
Speaking of vaginal orifices, people have sex in this movie! The quality is a bit iffy, though; there’s a lot of rabbity thrusting, sloppy tongue kisses and odd finger tapping movements that make me wonder if I’ve been doing it wrong for the past 20 years. Oh, and if you hadn’t guessed by now, there are no zombies in Frankenhunter. Really, the only things that make it horror (beyond the script, the acting, the special effects, the body hair…) are the random clips taken from Nosferatu and other black-and-white monster movies that are spliced in with no attempt to tie them into the story: “Hey, you’ve got plot in my porn!”
The ’70s slasher-porno Wet Wilderness had an uncredited black dude as one of the characters/victim (and yes, he had a XXX scene).
It was also a film that was seemingly designed to be as tasteless as possible, which gave me the awkward thought that the random-feeling (even by porn standards) interracial sex sequence was only thrown in to try and make it more “taboo” or “boundary-pushing.”