O Mutilador

For a tiny budgeted little movie, the effects work is fantastic even when the thin script can make you scratch your head and twiddle your thumbs. Some of the actors are decent, but some are downright laughable. The killer isn't very imposing to look at, but he does some serious damage and there's a catchy theme song. The Mutilator might be middle of the road as slashers go, but there are fast worse ones out there and the effects give it that little extra bit of pizazz to give it a solid cult following.

A young boy accidentally kills his mother while playing with his father's gun. Distraught, his father has a break from reality and, years later, the young man takes his college buddies to his family's beach house for a little fall break fun and his father shows up, still angry at what his son did, so he decides to punish him and his friends by going on a bloody rampage.

You have to put together a lot of pieces yourself as you watch The Mutilator. Where has this nutty father been all this time? Why did he pick now to go on a killing spree? This movie isn't one for nuanced character development and deep psychological insight, but the murder scenes are a gory delight and a few scenes crackle with some suspense.

On the day of his father's birthday, the boy Ed decides to clean his father's hunting rifle and accidentally shoots and kills his mother that was baking a cake in the kitchen. His father Ed Sr. (Jack Chatham) is mentally affected by the incident. Years later, Ed (Matt Mitler) is in a bar with college friends and they do not know what to do in the holidays, since they have not reserved any place to go. Out of the blue, Ed receives a phone call from his estranged father that asks him to close his fishing house in an island since it is off season. His friends invite themselves to go with him and spend a couple of days on the beach. Ed drives to the island with his girlfriend Pam (Ruth Martinez) and the couples Ralph (Bill Hitchcock) and Sue (Connie Rogers), and Mike (Morey Lampley) and Linda (Frances Raines). They find the house open and an ax missing, but do not report to the police. Further, there is noone in the island but them. Soon a killer starts to kill them one by one and hang them in a locker in the house garage. Who might be the serial-killer?

"The Mutilator" is an amateurish and low-budget slasher with good special effects. The unknown cast is histrionic, but the girls are very beautiful. The storyline is very simple and gives only the reason for a haywire man to kill guests in his house. The deaths are original, like in most movies of the slasher genre. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "O Mutilador" ("The Mutilator")

I gave this picture 5 stars--dead center (a good slasher title, now that I think about it). Which is the quality of THE MUTILATOR aka FALL BREAK--mediocre. The flick does have some cred with me for being shot in my home state of NC, so it can go in that venerable hall of acclaim with FINAL EXAM and THE BODY SHOP (look that one up). It's technically fine--the director and crew seem to have known how to keep boom mike shadows out of the shots--but the tone veers back and forth between PORKY'S inspired levity and mild menace a little too much for my taste. After the prologue, we wait nearly 40 minutes (in a 1 hour, 26 minute film) for the first kill. Fortunately, the acting is competent, with the two leads coming out the best. The supporting players are fine, but their heavy eastern NC accents can be distracting. The final act contains all the goodies, as we get the full force gore we've be languishing in a wasteland of TV-sitcom level comedy and middling suspense for. One detail that sets this one apart: we know upfront who the killer is (who, by the way, has no dialogue--wonder why?) Watchable, but hardly extraordinary.

My guess is, if you're reading this review, you're already aware of those movies that are indeed so bad they're actually quite enjoyable. Well, THE MUTILATOR is a prime example of such a flick, at times comical and on the odd occasion impressively gruesome.

It opens grimly with a tragic and fateful accident. A young boy - who we later find out is called Ed - who's cleaning his father's rifles, accidentally fires one of them, killing his mother instantly. Daddy arrives home , and lets just say that he doesn't seem like the forgiving type! He slaps the kid round the face and points a loaded shotgun at him forcing the petrified child to flee from the house. We are then left with an effectively chilling scene showing the dad looking clearly disturbed, pouring whisky into the corpse's mouth before downing some himself. Fast forward ten years and Ed is now a wise-cracking teen. To make matters worse he's made himself some stereotypically cheesy early eighties friends that all look like they make up the perfect ingredients for a good old fashioned blood bath! Before long they're all of to close down Ed's dad's secluded beach house , and guess who's ominously creeping about armed with a chainsaw and watching them...

Ok, ok so there are certainly no Oscar nominees here (Watch out for Mike played by Morey Lampley, he's a real budding thespian!), and at times the film can seem to drag a bit - mostly in what seems like hours of character building. But what saves this surprisingly gory (in it's uncut version) little flick from becoming a total loss is how at times it manages to generate a genuinely macabre atmosphere. This is most evident when the maniac dreams of slicing his infant son's throat with a battle axe, or when he impales the heads of his victims on to spikes in a rack as if they're some kind of trophy. All the other trademark cliches are included: the clearly asthmatic killer (heavy breath, a virgin final girl, a dopey sheriff, an axe, chainsaw, pitch fork and even a giant fish hook! Mark Shostrom's gore is also a lot more visible now (in the UK prints) thanks to VIPCO's extreme version and a much more lenient censor!

So all in all not brilliant but not rubbish either, a worthy rental for a night of harmless and memorable cliches!