Prolific character actor Brion James, so often the antagonist, gets to play the good guy for once in cheesy sci-fi horror Mutator - it's just a shame that his rare heroic performance is for such a z-grade stinker. James plays ex-genetic scientist David Allen, who goes undercover in the headquarters of Tigen Inc., to find out exactly what kind of monstrosities they have been cooking up in their labs. Also snooping around the vast corporate building are a trio of activists, Jennifer (Embeth Davidtz), Dan (Neil McCarthy) and Tina (Lindsay Orbach), who aim to free the animals being used in the experiments. Unfortunately for them, and the building's other occupants - corrupt boss Axelrod (Brian O'Shaughnessy), three security guards, a scientist, a receptionist, and publicity executive Taylor (Carolyn Ann Clark) - the Tigen HQ is also home to several large and very vicious escaped mutant cats.
It's not all that difficult to make an entertaining schlock horror out of something that daft: just chuck in plenty of rubbery monsters, an excess of blood and guts, and find a reason for the women to lose their clothes along the way... job done! Sadly, director John R. Bowey seems oblivious to these basic requirements of the genre: for the first hour and twelve minutes, he delivers just a couple of brief shots of the creatures' hairy claws, a few totally gore-free deaths, and zero nudity, the action primarily consisting of his characters wandering aimlessly through the badly lit, labyrinthine corridors of the Tigen building (which is wholly unconvincing as the headquarters of a powerful, high tech corporation, looking more like a derelict factory to me). All of this is boring and very repetitive (the animal activists get stuck in an elevator not once, but twice!).
When the cat creature is finally shown in all of its glory, it really is a disappointment, with a manky rubber puppet face that is funnier than it is scary; also adding to the very shoddy nature of the film is the generic synth/guitar music by Rene Veldsman. Poor Brian James does his best, giving a committed performance despite the film's many obvious drawbacks, but a bright new future as a leading man was clearly not meant to be. Bowey's directorial career also came to a screeching halt: he would never call the shots behind a camera again.
2/10. Tedious dreck enlivened only by an impressive full body burn stunt, and Tina having her face clawed by a cat beast (there's supposed to be several monsters on the prowl, but it's quite obvious that the budget only stretched to the one very shonky creature).
