Mutilator

This film is many in a line of trash horror films. When I first read the back of the video box I laughed, six teenagers going on their summer vacation. Cliche? If you are a fan of rubbish horror films then you'll love this, the acting is so bad it's good. The characters begin to get on your nerves eventually with their pole up their backside style acting, and you begin to wish for them to get killed, which in turn makes the film even better as you egg on the killer, "go on ram a knife through his all American face...go on...go on...YES!!!" If you watch this film expecting Oscar winning performances then you'll be sorely disappointed, having said that, if you watch this for any kind of performance whatsoever you'll be disappointed. The violence is over the top and it's great. It's the only saving grace of the film. However, all this aside, if you don't expect too much, then you'll be rewarded.

The Mutilator (1984)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A young boy named Ed is cleaning his father's gun for his birthday but while cleaning it the thing goes off killing his mother. From this point on the father has nothing to do with Ed. Flash forward several years and Ed is in college when he gets a call from his father out of nowhere. The father asks for Ed to return to a beach front property and close it down for the winter. Ed takes along his girlfriend and four other friends but soon they start to get violently murdered.

THE MUTILATOR has a pretty big following among people who enjoy the slasher boom that happened from 1980-84. I'm a major slasher fan but for the most part there were a lot of movies that were made to try and get some of the box office dollars. More times than not these films were poorly made, poorly shot and featured very little gore. They were just cheap C movies that were thrown into theaters for a quick buck. THE MUTILATOR isn't one of those movies as it's fairly well-made, features a nice cast and best of all is that it actually delivers on the gore.

One thing that did surprise me about this film is that it really doesn't try to play up a mystery aspect. We're pretty much told from the start what to expect and we see who the killer is pretty early on. The screenplay spends way too much time with the characters as the murders are spread out quite a bit and there are some logical issues but I guess this here is to be expected. I think the film really benefits from the six main characters being likable and you at least don't mind hanging out with them while you wait for them to be slaughtered.

Of course, when it comes to a slasher the most important thing is the actual kills and THE MUTILATOR is a major success here. In fact, I'm really surprised that these effects got past the MPAA because they are rather graphic and gory. This includes a decapitation but the highlight of the film involves a hook. I'll just leave it at that but it's certainly very cringe-worthy and contains a great amount of blood. THE MUTILATOR certainly isn't a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination but it's a good slasher.

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!

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 man goes psychotic as a result of an event that occurred a decade earlier, where his son accidentally killed his wife when cleaning a gun. The boy, now a teenager, is invited by his dad to take a break with his friends at his father's seashore house. Once there, the homicidal dad starts picking them off.

You would have to say that The Mutilator is a pretty run-of-the-mill mid-80's slasher film. Like most, it has almost no story and the narrative is merely a means of linking one gory murder after another. But it does seem to me like this is one of the slightly better examples of the genre from that time in that the carnage is quite varied and it doesn't really drag too much. It knows what it is and just sticks to genre conventions but does so with enough over-the-top violence to ensure it never gets boring. There are several memorable death scenes sprinkled throughout and overall it's passably good stupid fun.