Fearless Frank

I first saw this film when I was 11 years old (on the KTLA 'Movies Til Dawn' at 2:00 am), and I didn't realize the impact it had on me until I saw it again a few months ago (17 years later). I found two scenes between Frank and False Frank had really affected me, SPOILER WARNING: One was when Frank, after he has fallen from grace, tries to fly and falls to his destruction on the pavement below and fades away. It affected me that the 'hero' of the film should die that way, the hero believing in his own abilities and dying because of his own failings. Second, when the False Frank is crying in the boat at the end of the film. I was again bothered by the image of the new 'hero' losing emotional control like that. Possibly these images don't mean anything to the vast majority of people who saw the film, but they had a profound effect on me. I am surprised at how few people have voted/commented on this film. I feel it is an undiscovered gem of film-making, waiting for a re-appraisal.

I loved the cartoonish aspect of the movie. Jon Voight was excellent and showed great comic flair. The movie Mystery Men reminds me of FF. I saw it as a kid and thought that it was coolest movie I had ever seen, but that was over 30 years ago. I would love to see it again.

Philip Kaufman is best known now for making art films for the masses but this early slice of madness is unlike any of his other films I've seen. Although looking very low-budget with shaky camerawork and bad on-location sound recording, this is a frenetic satire of comic book heroes with Voight as Fearless Frank and the bad False Frank. The bad guys look like they stepped out of a Dick Tracy comic with names like Screwnose and The Rat with cheap-looking makeup jobs to match. The anything-goes approach to the story seems like it was shot in an improvisational style which makes for a very disjointed film. I think Kaufman was trying to make an American pop culture satire in the style of self-indulgent European art movie directors like Jean-Luc Godard. This does not make it a good film, only an interesting one.

Wow. You actually have to wonder how Jon Voight got the Midnight Cowboy gig after being in this one.

I only watched it to see Monique Van Vooren who got top billing and she was in it much. David Steinberg, of all people showed up playing The Rat.

This tells you what a weird movie it is. The effects suck.

Knowing that Philip Kaufman directed movies like "The Right Stuff", it blows the mind that he once directed the cornball "Fearless Frank". Jon Voight plays a drifter who gets murdered and then reanimated as a superhero. With cartoonish action and speech that sounds like a recording of a recording, it's impossible not to laugh at this. It's going to be hard to find a copy, though. I suspect that Kaufman's too embarrassed about this movie to release it.

As for the rest of the cast, Monique van Vooren apparently is best known for appearances in Andy Warhol movies. Severn Darden was a character actor over a number of years (I best remember him from "The President's Analyst" and "Saturday the 14th"). Nelson Algren (Needles) was the author of "The Man with the Golden Arm", and Ken Nordine (the narrator) was a jazz vocalist.