“If you see one movie this year, it should be Frankenhooker,” Bill Murray once declared. Almost nobody did. The 1990 theatrical release grossed only about $205,000, and Murray’s endorsement came after he befriended the crew while editing Quick Change nearby. Home video did the rescue work, helped by a VHS box with a sound chip that chirped “Wanna date?” when pressed. A 4K release would have sounded absurd then. It feels perfectly logical now.

Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz, King of New York) works for a New Jersey power company and spends his spare time experimenting with bioelectricity. He is about to marry Elizabeth Shelley (Patty Mullen, Doom Asylum) when the automatic lawnmower he built as a birthday present turns a backyard party into a disaster. Jeffrey saves Elizabeth’s head. Finding replacement parts for the rest of her takes him to 42nd Street.

Henenlotter sold producer James Glickenhaus on the movie by improvising the title and premise before the script even existed. Written with Robert Martin, the eventual screenplay started as a riff on The Brain That Wouldn’t Die and grew into a filthy valentine to James Whale’s Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. Lorinz keeps Jeffrey funny by playing him as a lovesick Jersey tinkerer instead of a cackling mad scientist, while Mullen, Penthouse’s 1988 Pet of the Year, turns Elizabeth’s stiff walk, wild stare, and barked catchphrases into the movie’s most memorable performance.

The jokes swing from inspired to juvenile, and a movie that treats sex workers as replacement parts was never going to age without friction. The MPAA famously resisted giving it an R, and the production later claimed a ratings representative joked that the film deserved an “S,” and not for sex. Critics were just as divided. Variety warned viewers with weak stomachs away, while the Los Angeles Times found it hilarious. It is a stitched-together movie about a stitched-together woman, and for once the seams are the best part.