Fearless Frank

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.

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.

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.

This is a bizarre, uneven film. I watched through it though for the awesome '6os Chicago film locations. There are many outdoor scenes including an alley on Diversey Ave just west of Clark St, Lake Shore Drive, Belmont Harbor, the River View amusement park, and the Prudential Building skydeck. River View closed in the 60s and now the Prudential Building, which was the the tallest building in Chicago at 40 stories, has been dwarfed by many other buildings

I just finished watching this odd movie which I had taped last year but forgotten until now. (I think it ran on Showtime.)

I think if Troma Studios had existed in the '60s they would have come up with this; it seems too strange for American International, no slackers when it comes to weird movies. Oddly disjointed story, cheesy production values, but the whole film is enhanced by narrator Ken Nordine (Word Jazz) and the appropriately chaotic jazz soundtrack.

This is a movie you should acquire and save for a late-night party with friends. It needs to be watched, not ignored as background, or you lose track of the surreal plot line. I wondered if it had been cut mercilessly because it seems too choppy. But seeing it without commercials helped immeasurably.

Somehow I doubt you will watch it more than once.