FRANKENSTEIN GENERAL HOSPITAL (1988)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Given that the two writers of this AIRPLANE-wannabe barely have any other credits on IMDB, and the director mostly did film editing until the 2000s, it's surprising that there are even a few cases of halfway decent humor in this HOSPITAL.

Though I don't doubt YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN was the writers' main inspiration, the style is more like AIRPLANE, with lots of incidental jokes having nothing to do with Matters Frankensteinian. Young fanatic Bob Frankenstein (Mark Blankfield) and his shorty assistant Iggy (Leslie Jordan) set up a concealed laboratory at a Los Angeles hospital where Frankenstein presumably works (though he's never seen treating patients). Bob plans to vindicate the experiments of his great-great-grandfather by building a brand new monster out of body parts filched from the hospital. 

To be sure, the rest of the hospital is just as zany. The hospital's manager Reutger suspects Bob is doing something weird, but he never does anything to find out what, merely confessing his problems to resident psychoanalyst Alice (Kathi Shower), who doubles as his dominatrix. A randy lady nurse ambushes men in the elevator, the doctor's lounge includes a stripper, and a candy-striper gives Bob a shiatzu message that almost breaks his neck. Everyone on staff giggles when they hear Bob mention his "secret experiment," and the laboratory itself always looks like a black-and-white movie, for Reasons.

One of the movie's most boring attempts at comedy is when Iggy duplicates the brain-stealing scene from the 1931 FRANKENSTEIN, which doesn't even result in giving the General Hospital Monster a fiendish personality. Lots of silly things occur to kill time until Bob brings his creation to life. Eventually the monster goes on a low-energy rampage, with just one good scene to redeem it, and Bob's plan is exposed to all. In one of the more AIRPLANE-ish scenes Reutger and Bob duel, respectively with a medieval sword and a whip-stock, but everything turns out OK in a conclusion completely stolen from YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.

The one decent scene mentioned above involves the brutish monster stumbling across a hospital patient, a little blind girl. This schtick, combining the "little girl's death" scene from FRANKENSTEIN and the "blind old man" scenes from BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, is the only part of the movie someone might excerpt to make HOSPITAL appear like it might be funny.