For those unaware of the man (understandable, since he's been out of the scene almost as long as some of our readers have been alive...), Frank Henenlotter is a genuine certified child of the grindhouse movement. Not only did he experience the grimy cinematic era firsthand inside of New York's infamous 42nd Street theaters, but good ol' Frankenstein has helped to bring many a previously "lost" movie to the modern age by partnering with Something Weird Video to distribute all manner of hardcore, skeevy, and just plain fucked-in-the-brain flicks by those bygone days at the apex of exploitation. Thank Mr. Henenlotter kids. Good, now go play with the X-Ray machine at the old abandoned hospital where the police gunned down that escaped mental patient on this date 10 years ago. Anyway, like many of his fellow students of the bygone days of grind, The Hen went on to make a name for himself with his own set of slick sick flicks (say that 5 times fast... I dare ya!), starting with the horror-comedy that made him: 1982's Basket Case. This would lead to a small but memorable cache of cracked out coolness in the shapes of Brain Damage, Frankenhooker, and a pair of larger budgeted, goofier BC sequels. As of the writing of this review, none of Frank's other movies are enjoying the feature treatment here in the Tomb. Tammy, make a note in my schedule to remedy that. Thanks doll. You're a peach.

Here we are though, in the here and now. It's been a long time since Belial and his brats waddled off into the vomit covered sunset, and it's time to start anew. As such, we have Bad Biology, meaning Frankenhooker remains the sole Henenlotter movie that doesn't start with the second letter of the alphabet, as represented by Mr. B and his beautiful buttons... sweet Isis, I'm making references to the Letter People now! I hate being old.

To further avoid getting to the point of actually reviewing the movie (and furthering the case that I'm in need of Ritalin), the first thing that strikes your skull like an ice pick fired from a potato gun about Bad Bio are the opening credits. Not necessarily the computer generated background on which they run, because even though you never thought you'd see something remotely "budgety" like that in a Henenlotter movie, you realize it's little more than a glorified screen saver and not "budgety" in any way what-so-ever... though I do like saying "budgety". Kinda makes me think about buttered fudge... which doesn't sound appetizing at all. Blegh. I still like saying "budgety" though. Try it, it's fun! Anyway, the opening credits are more startling because some of the names sounds like stuff that dorky white kids from Tennessee would call themselves during their ill-conceived bid at budding rap careers (not far from the truth...), which they're all ultimately forced to give up because the manager at Sticky's Waffle Barn and Chewing Tobacco Depot says their do-rags, wife beaters, and misunderstanding that pants are worn around the waist and not the knees are all against the employee dress code. Some of the true stand-outs of this wacky moniker menagerie include "J-Zone" and "Reef the Lost Cauze". The "J-Zone" sounds like a specialty store that only sells overpriced Japanese pop culture merchandise and is run by a 40 year-old nerd who polishes his prick behind the counter while awkward teenage girls looking for an identity browse the shelves. "Reef the Lost Cauze" sounds like a bad environmental animated movie like Ferngully: the Last Rainforest that teaches kids not to pollute the oceans as told with hip "street talking" fish voiced by Coolio and Ice Cube. Oh Ice Cube, what the fuck happened to you? You went from being a Nigga With Attitude to just another tool of the family-friendly movie industry pandering machine. If there's an NWA reunion in the future, I hope Dre and MC Ren (& Stimpy) re-animate Eazy-E's corpse and he gives you zombie AIDS. That's right, I just wished zombie AIDS on Ice Cube. Speaking of things that are sexually transmitted...

Jennifer is a freak of nature (in a Henenlotter movie? NO!) as she was born with an alarming number of... Fingers? No. Toes? Nope. Eyes? Wrong again. Give up? Clitorises... or is it clitori? Whatever you call 'em, she's got 'em. Lots of 'em. Seven to be exact. For anybody that flunked Biology, or went to a podunk hillbilly school where sex ed wasn't part of the "learnin'", that's six clits too many. Even with all those extra clits though, you know that every guy she takes to bed is still somehow gonna manage to ignore all of them! Am I right ladies? Sorry guys, turns out women read this site too, so some of the dick and fart humor needs to be rededicated into clit and queef jokes. Just trying to be fair to everybody.

Jenny's myriad of love nubs make her an insatiable sexaholic, hence why when we first meet her she's prowling for someone to meat her. *rimshot* She settles on the only young white guy in a bar full of black and Latino dudes, and they go back to his place for some of the least convincing movie sex I've ever tried my best not to laugh at while watching. In the heat of passion she accidentally bashes the back of his skull against her floor repeatedly, but doesn't let that keep her from downing some leftover fried chicken and pizza from the fridge afterwards (resulting in another orgasm) before sitting spread eagle in the bathtub where she Lamazes herself into still another orgasm and then... gives birth?! Given the history of our director, try not to look too surprised when I tell you that this new bundle of joy brings none of said joy with it. Jen then leaves the freshly birthed tax write-off screaming it's freak-baby head off in the lavatory while she heads back out into the bar scene. This happens to her all the time though, as she makes sure to kick the so-called "fourth wall" square in whatever genitalia it is that walls have to defend her act of abandonment to us, the audience, directly. Since her offspring take less than two hours to spawn and thus come out "incomplete", they're not real babies and thus she's not doing anything wrong by leaving them to die.

Hold on a second kids, Uncle Anubis has gotta stop typing for a second. The abortion metaphor is so heavy handed that my fingers are starting to cramp.

When she's not being the poster girl for irresponsible socializing bitches who sleep around and choose to play it fast and loose with their baby makers ("fast" and "loose" also describing the very girls I myself know who fit into this category), Jen's a photographer. What does she photograph? Pissed off grizzled old auto mechanics getting rubbed on by chicks with their boobs hanging out. I think it's for a piece about the morals of our country being corrupted by the commercialization and sexualization of modern American society. Or it could just be for some tool company's annual "hot chicks and old guys" calender. As a side project, she also likes to "creatively develop" pictures of her sperm donors into weird black & white photos for a collection she's calling "Fuck Face". For a woman whose body rattles off more orgasms a day than most people fart, Jen can't always have a convenient piece of tube steak available, so time after time she relies on her favorite sex toy to get the job done. She can't be satisfied with a simple pocket rocket though. Instead Jenny likes to fire up something that looks like a vibrator Thomas Edison made to keep his wife occupied while he was busy grinding out new inventions in the basement all night.

Things get really uncomfortable when Jen relays her awkward childhood for us. Hearing things like how she started menstruating when she was five, how her eighth birthday was ruined when she lost 20% of her body's blood supply via the Crimson Tide, or how she used to break out into random multiple orgasms as a little girl disturbed me more than all the Italian cannibal movies I've seen combined. Pardon my weak constitution when it comes to graphic discussions of a little girl having orgasms and a "heavy flow day" that would choke Dracula. Blegh. Female viewers might be able to connect with Jen on a personal level, albeit not-so-extreme, but as a guy with young cousins around that age, hearing about it is psychologically tantamount to opening the Arc of the fucking Covenant. If my brain had a face, it doesn't now.

Jen's also convinced that her body isn't so much a Troma-like birth defect so much as it is a sign that she's the prototype of the ultimate woman. That God himself blessed her with her deformity and super freak-baby breeding powers to ready her. Not to repopulate the Earth after the coming nuclear holocaust, or so God can marry her and get himself a nice fat welfare check every month, but because only her hyper sensitive flesh vessel is capable of carrying his seed and giving the deadbeat dad of all things an heir to trucker hat wearing, Coors Lite swilling, trailer park cruising throne... of which he has to jiggle the handle on because he refuses to tap into his beer money to hire a plumber to fix it. I'm pretty sure that Jen's quest for the ultimate cock of ultimate destiny has something to do with a naked guy who was juicing his junk with a needle full of raspberry Kool-Aid briefly in the beginning of the flick. That, or Henenlotter just wanted to show us a naked guy sticking a hypodermic into his dick to further freak out his viewer for his own amusement.

After spending thirty minutes learning the disturbing intricacies of Jen, we do indeed get to meet the presumable nut to her bolt. Glen is the name for the guy who gave his willie the ER stab earlier, but all his friends call him "Batz" cuz he's "batty". I prefer to call him Glen though, so let's stick with that. Unlike Jen, who can't keep her cooch from crackling, Glen has the opposite problem: he can't get his hog to harden. It's not because he's like that grinning monstrosity from the Enzyte commercials though and requires a little blue sponsor of NASCAR to pitch his tent, it's because his member is just too damn big (and sentient?!) to stand at attention. How big is it? Forget wrapping that package with a Magnum, this guy would need a pup tent. Not one to give up on orgasm so easily, Glen goes to great lengths (no pun intended) to erect his skyscraper, which includes feeding it copious amounts of animal growth hormones, then waxing his Mighty Quinn with an industrial sized pecker pumper. Just like Jen, Glen too is apt to share the occasional monologue with the viewers to get his back story across. Seems the doctor cut the wrong piece of tubing after he was born and even though his wee-wee was re-attached, it never worked right afterwards. Spending his pubescent years with a wet noodle for a wang and unable to convince his parents that ED meds were essential to his emotional and psychological development, he started pumping his trouser snake full of steroids and other pharmaceuticals. The chemical cocktail (another non-intended pun) not only made Glen Jr. something an elephant would be proud of, but also gave his third leg its own consciousness. I used to say the same thing to my teachers in high school, but that never kept me out of detention.

Naturally these two colossi of coitus (who just happen to live within 20 miles of each other) are bound to cross fleshy paths, hence why it just so happens that one of Jen's photo crew suggests using Glen's big fancy yellow house for their next shoot. Naturally she walks in on him wrestling the python after everybody else has left and immediately becomes infatuated with the one man who might finally be able to tame her beast. Word of advice to the guys out there: never refer to your lady's hot pocket as her "beast". Trust me, your testicles will thank me when they aren't floating ruptured in a sac of blood and semen. Speaking of blood and semen, if you think Jen and Glen's "date" will be anything other than the nastiest social debacle since the minions of Dagon impregnated Jennifer Lopez in the middle of that LA nightclub last year, then again, you still don't know who the Hell Frank Henenlotter is, do you?

So, was the near two-decade wait for a spankin' new Frankie flick worth it? I'd be lying if I didn't say I was expecting more out of the man... but then I don't think I've done a single review on this site where I didn't lie to you folks in one way or another, so what's to keep me from doing it again? Nothing. That's right, everything I say is a lie... except for that... and that... and that... and that... and this: Bad Biology is a sweaty, unsightly, throbbing disappointment. Oddly enough, those are the exact words used to describe my own Snausage™ by my first (twenty or so) girlfriend(s). Granted, three stars may not seem like the kind of rating you'd expect somebody to give to a movie they refer to as "sweaty" and "unsightly", but taking into consideration that I considered all of Frankie Hen's prior filmography to be four-star-and-up pieces of inspired crazy, three stars doesn't sound so good. It's like the old saying about how a draw is like getting a hummer from your sister. Bad Biology isn't the greatness it should have been, it's not a taint kicking failure it could have been, it's a cinematic draw.

Both Charlee Danielson (Jen) and Anthony Sneed (Glen) distract from the movie with their sometimes stumbling, sometimes hammy delivery. I get the impression that neither of our leads were hired because of their ability to belt out emotional and believable lines, so much as because they both look good and were willing to get nekkid on camera for very little money. In Danielson's case, from what I've read she's an accomplished musician, so at least acting isn't her only source of income. Especially good since she couldn't mimic a believable orgasm if my erection depended on it. Sneed? I can't seem to find anything about him, so we'll either never hear from him again or he'll get a few bit parts in pilots for failed TV shows.

Speaking of TV shows, cinematically the whole thing looks for the most part like it was shot for the BBC. I understand the use of budget equipment to shoot it, but some of the editing between scenes has that weird "quick fade to black so we can go to commercials" thing going on that you get when you're watching shows on DVD. Audio wise things aren't all that great either. Some of the dialogue ends up drown out by background noise and there's one scene where one of Glen's neighbors stops by to bitch at him (Henelotter mainstay Bev Bonner... twice the size that she was in Basket Case) and she ends up with an irritating echo. She should really get her tonsils checked out. It sounds like she was delivering her lines over the loud speaker at a monster truck rally! The only thing missing was her bookending the scene with "This Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!". Continuing the complain train, even the structure of the movie bothered me. The first thirty minutes go to Jen, the next twenty minutes go to introducing Glen, then the last twenty minutes feel more like a muddled, premature ejaculation than a rock 'em cock 'em climax. It's like paying a hooker that you've heard does some really crazy shit to tie you up and "surprise you", only to get a sock stuffed in your mouth and your wallet stolen.

Unfortunately, even clocking in at a slightly diminutive eighty minutes, Bad Biology still feels as if its runtime is a little bloated given how little story is there to sustain it and the obscene amount of sex scene filler material dragging it down. That's right, I'm complaining about there being too many sex scenes. You can almost picture Henelotter and Thorburn during the last 20 minutes or so just sitting at a table, not quite sure how to end the movie, and just throwing down the most uninspired, half-assed idea they could agree on because it was getting late and they were tired. Speaking of the story, Glen's plight follows a little too closely to every other Henenlotter protagonist, only the innuendos have been dropped in favor of giving life to the world's biggest strap-on. Audiences are too stupid for subtlety today kids, so just give up now. I do like Jen as a character though because she's gotten over the emotional and psychological trauma of the female form and the sexuality that comes with it. Considering we just saw that acted out in Teeth last year, I like seeing Jen in the post stages here. She's embraced said sexuality, come to terms with the emotional and hormonal torments that it brings with it, and has moved on to the part of her life where she's not only accepted it, but she's proud of it. Good on her.

Henelotter can't take all of the blame for the short-on-substance story and over saturation of titty scenes though, since the flick was co-written and produced by Frank's rapper pal R.A. "The Rugged Man" Thorburn. That's not to stereotype and say that rappers only care about titties and good looking slutty pro-choice blond girls... they also like giant throbbing mutant cocks. As you can imagine, pecker-phobics should avoid this movie as much as possible. If you thought Watchmen went overboard with the dick displays, you'll do yourself no favors by watching Bad Biology. If you're of the belief that seeing another guy's schlong on screen will turn you gay, then (a) - continue to avoid this movie at all costs and (b) - you're probably already gay. Sorry to be the one to tell you, but it's true. You might as well start critiquing other people's fashion sense and stockpiling money for expensive haircuts now.

Bad Biology still carries a little of that Henenlotter charm to it, but not nearly in enough volume to make it a solid buy worth tracking down - at the time of this review it's only available in the UK, so the rest of us have to turn to the vast resources of the world wide wasteland. If the man never makes another movie for the rest of his life, I thinkBad Bio would be better considered one of those "lost films" so people can remember him best for his golden days. Seek it out if you're a Frankie completionist or if the wait time until your next Troma gross-out flick fix is leaving your bad taste taste buds anemic. Otherwise, you're better off letting it come to you rather than you going to it.