Story Created:
Jun 5, 2009 at 9:57 AM PST
Story Updated:
Jun 5, 2009 at 11:28 PM PST
Taking a page out of the horror classic “Frankenstein” and the cultural slackitude of “Friday,” actor and stand-up comedian DeRay Davis stars in “Frankenhood,” a low-budget comedy that surprisingly delivers a good number of laughs.
Davis, who hosts “Mo’ Betta Monday” nights at the Hollywood Improv, teams up with relative newcomer Jasper Redd to play a couple of L.A. morgue attendants looking to score $25,000 in a 3-on-3 streetball tournament.
The problem is they kind of suck at the game, but a demotion to the graveyard shift one night changes their fortunes. That’s when they catch their semi-sane colleague (Charlie Murphy) trying to resurrect a monstrous dead man (Bob Sapp, “The Longest Yard”) with the help of Davis’ beloved Gremlin automobile.
As with any urban comedy, “Frankenhood” features its fair share of gratuitous female semi-nudity but mostly sticks to the knockabout interplay between Davis and Redd. In fact, Redd, who joined Davis and another of the film’s comic talent JB Smoove on the Improv stage to launch the DVD, has the kind of dry delivery that could quickly catapult him into the mainstream. But in the meantime, Davis — in all seriousness — recalled a dubious professional past.
“Oh man, I had some bad jobs back in the day,” he recalled. “I worked in a lot of fast-food joints when I was younger but dealing on the streets was the worst because that can get you killed.”
However, Davis, who’s featured with Will Ferrell in “Semi Pro” and Blair Underwood in “The Hit,” is a long way from those nefarious times and next stars with comedy legend Eddie Murphy in “Imagine That.”
“He’s one of the greats of all time,” said Davis, who plays Murphy’s best friend in the family comedy. “There’s a rumor that he might be coming back to stand-up. Now that would a miracle to see.”
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