Boltneck aka Teen Monster (2000) – Mitch Marcus.

Playing fast n' loose with the Frankenstein mythos, Teen Monster is an affably camp iteration of Mary Shelley's Gothic opus, wherein the grislier discords are replaced with zany, ghoulish knockabout humour, and hormonal High School hi-jinks. While Wes Craven's cult fave Deadly Friend has moments of palpable horror, Boltneck aims squarely for a comedic jugular vein, and, happily, more often than not, it hits the sweet spot, boisterously evoking the fuzzier frolics of Teen Wolf, or a campy vampier Real Genius. The one thing I never quite understood about oft purloined Frankensteinian lore, if you pump major volts into a skell on Death Row, he's turned crispy critter, hook up a dead guy to a Universal doohickey, greatly increase the voltage, and you get a shambling icon of the resurrected dead? Digression aside, I surprisingly enjoyed Teen Monster more than I thought possible, which I put down to premature senility, induced from injudiciously prodigious exposure to doltish DTV pulp. I could never be hugely down on a goofy Gothic teen romp that featured a Cramps track, and provided decent comedy shtick from Charles Fleischer, Richard Moll, Judge Reinhold and Shelley Long. Hey! Teen Monster sure ain't rocket science, but, for me, it mostly remains a cutesy Happy Halloween spoof-a-rama, suitable for goofs of all ages!