Frankie Freako (2024) ⭐️⭐️⭐

Workaholic yuppie Conor is in an existential rut until one night he catches a bizarre ad for a party hotline hosted by a strange dancing goblin: Frankie Freako. Could this be just the recipe to spice up his boring life?

There was such an air of fun, promise, gross-out, toilet humor and overt horniness in 80’s horror that’s been missing from the modern slate. Comin’ in hot to fill that hole is writer/director Steve Kostanski’s Frankie Freako. Kostanski, most recently known for pulling ancient alien overlord Psycho Goreman to small-town suburbia, burst onto the horror feature scene with 2011’s Divide starring Rosanna Arquette, Milo Ventimiglia and Courtney B. Vance.

But back to the lame-o, square subject of our film, late 80s yuppie, Connor (Connor Sweeney), who’s heckin’ stressed at work due to his weirdo boss Mr. Buechler (Adam Brooks) and at home, mostly because to his gorgeous wife Kristy (Kristy Wordsworth) always wants to have sex when all Connor wants to do is hold hand(s).

Enter a smooth-saxed commercial featuring the suave Frankie Freako, who’s voiceover artist coaxes you into joining his party-filled world if you wanna escape your hum-drum life. Connor fights the feeling to call for days until his wife heads off for a weekend work meeting. Alone at home and self-satisfied with a water and a cheese pizza, at the ghastly late hour of 8:30 pm, Connor can’t take it anymore, and he caves in to Frankie Freako’s hotline begging to party.

What can only be called “What the hell did we get up to last night?”, Connor awakens to a ransacked home and three little aliens, Boink (tech-whiz), Dottie (sultry Cowgirl vigilante) and of course, the man of the hour, Frankie Freako (good time extraordinaire). But life doesn’t stop when the party does and Connor must find a way to work, live, love and get life back to normal before his wife comes home. Not only do Frankie and friends make that unbearable and impossible, they open up a new can of worms when it’s revelaed that someTHING is chasing them, and now Connor must play reluctant hero to save the day and hopefully break his “square” persona for good.

A mix of misfits of old like Ghoulies, Critters and Gremlins and sensibilities of House as one man against the world, Frankie Freako was a hell of a fun standout and a wonderful homage to the 80s camp we’ve missed for so long!

Mo Moshaty

Mo Moshaty is an acclaimed horror writer, lecturer, and producer whose work combines visceral storytelling with the psychological insight of her Cognitive Behavioral Therapy background. She has lectured internationally, including as a keynote speaker at Nightmares from Monkeypaw: A Jordan Peele Symposium (Prairie View A&M), No Return: A Yellowjackets Symposium (Horror Studies BAFSS Sig), The Whole Damn Swarm: Celebrating 30 Years of Candyman (University of California), and with the Centre for the History of the Gothic (University of Sheffield). Mo has also presented at the BFI, Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, and Final Girls Berlin Film Festival’s Brain Binge on women’s trauma in horror cinema, Cine-Excess on The Creepy Kid Horror Subgenre and Mother/Daughter Trauma in Horror, and Romancing the Gothic on Cosmic Horror’s Havoc on The Body Electric Her short film, 13 Minutes of Horror: Sci-Fi Horror, won the 2022 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Short Film. As a core producer with Nyx Horror Collective, Mo co-created the 13 Minutes of Horror Film Fest and partnered with Shudder in 2021 and 2022, while also establishing a Stowe Story Labs fellowship supporting women creatives over 40+ in horror. A member of the Black Women in Horror Class of 2023 and featured in 160 Black Women in Horror, Mo’s short fiction appears in A Quaint and Curious Volume of Gothic Tales (Brigid’s Gate Press) and 206 Word Stories (Bag O’ Bones Press). Her debut novella, Love the Sinner, was released July 5, 2024, with Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment released in October 2025. The first of her five-volume non-fiction series, The Annex of the Obscure: The Afterlife, will be released in 2027 from Tenebrous Press. As the Editor-in-Chief of NightTide Magazine and founder of Mourning Manor Media, Mo champions marginalized voices in horror. Under her leadership, NightTide plans to launch a film festival in 2028, furthering her mission to reshape the genre through inclusivity and representation.