Plutonium Baby

Here's a first: a movie so unbelievably awful even I was unable to watch it all the way through.

From the title, I was expecting some kind of "It's Alive!" slimy puppet show... Instead I get the lamest "four teenagers enter the woods..." story ever scripted. The title character isn't a baby at all, he's a poorly socialized 14-year-old named Danny, and not particularly mutated at all. As far as special effects, there's a radioactive bunny sock-puppet that's amusing for a few minutes, and a couple of well-done corpses, including one whose small intestines are inexplicably tied in a bow, but by 20 minutes into the film, it's clear they've used up all their good ideas. A quarter-hour after that, the plot finally expires altogether, and the movie does something I've never seen before -- it launches straight into its own sequel: "Plutonium Baby II: Danny Takes Manhattan".

In this phase of the film, it's ten years later, and Plutonium Baby is now Plutonium Man, with a girlfriend (from whom he must hide his Terrible Secret, of course) and a festering leg wound. He's being stalked through the streets of New York by the now horribly deformed scientist whose radiation experiments caused his plutonious state. The tension *really* fails to build here, as by now you've lost interest in the survival of any of the characters, and the chances you're going to see somebody attacked by a radioactive squirrel or pigeon or something appear to be slim. Apparently the whole thing builds up to some kind of Highlander-esque final showdown, with creator facing creation in a battle royale, but I just couldn't take any more. I still haven't returned the video, so maybe I'll find out how it ends sometime this week, but I'm not sure I have the strength...

Danny is a bit unusual, due to his having been exposed to radiation as a baby. After his grandfather is killed, Danny's mum, who happens to also be a mutant, sets out to exact her vengeance.

Ten years pass, and Danny's all grown up. What started out as a very bad movie, doesn't improve one iota.

PLUTONIUM BABY is a sub-sludge -"Budget? What's a budget?"- horror movie, complete with the requisite non-acting "actors", acting as though they might be in a movie of some sort.

All of its trashiness aside, this movie's greatest sin is its extreme dullness. Even the nudity is boring! Sitting through to the end is like trying to keep a handful of angry bees in your mouth for an hour and a half!...

I was on my weekly trip to the video rental place down the street, where I normally rent about 5 mindless horror films a week, when I saw the case of "Plutonium Baby". I thought it looked rather amusing, so my friends and I rented it. I have seen "Leprechaun", I have seen "Leviathan" and I have seen "Lifeforce". I have seen "Pod People (Los Nuevos Extraterrestrios)", I have seen "Mitchell" and "The Wild Wild World of Batwoman". I have seen films of a quality so low that the average viewer would lose their faith in humanity. The foul abomination "Plutonium Baby" makes them look like "Citizen Kane". The longest scene in this film was the sex scene between the title character, named David if I recall correctly, and his wife. I sat through the entire film, and I still don't know what was supposed to have happened. The plot was unintelligible. The effects were sickeningly bad. There was even one radiation warped creature that my friends and I mistook for a muppet at first. The dialogue was also abomidable. I believe this is the only film in which an actor actually uttered the phrase "Don't pay any attention to that radioactive symbol, just put your beer in there." I would not have sat through the whole thing if my friends had not restrained me, and I reccomend that you locate every copy of this film that you can, and burn it.

To call 'Plutonium Baby' a stinker would be the understatement of the year. This is the second worst film I have ever seen. Don't get me wrong; I love bad horror - the worse the better. But what I simply cannot abide is the subgenre I like to refer to as Boring Horror. And 'Plutonium Baby' is excruciatingly, mind-numbingly dull - ten minutes into this Thanksgiving dinner of a movie, I was praying for it to end. It has a duration of only eighty-five minutes but it feels like forever. Couple this with low-rent special effects and dreck actors, and you have a thoroughly awful affair.

The only positive thing I can say about 'Plutonium Baby' is that it is marginally better than Troma's dire 'Igor and the Lunatics', which is the worst film I have ever viddied, and which was voted by 'Entertainment Tonight' as the 'Worst Film Ever Made'. Like 'Plutonium', 'Igor' is a crushing bore.

Other Boring Horror titles to be carefully avoided are 'Demon Wind' starring George Kennedy, and 'A Name for Evil' (or, as I prefer to call it, 'A Name for Tedium'!) starring Robert Culp and Samantha Eggar. Don't get burned!

Ray Hirschman's "Plutonium Baby" has to be one of the worst pieces of garbage I have ever seen.This film is awful in every department.The script is idiotic beyond belief,the direction is horrible and the acting is incredibly bad.There is some gore,but the special effects are so inept that you'll scratch your head in a total disbelief.The plot is as follows:Dr.Drake and his team of scientists are performing grotesque and illegal experiments involving plutonium's effect on pregnant women.The day Danny was born,Dr.Drake and his minions go too far in their experiments and kill Danny's mother.Fortunately Danny is saved while the callous doctors bury Emily's body in a toxic waste container.Twelve years passed and suddenly Danny's nightmare is relieved when Drake resurfaces to stalk and kill Danny.When the doctor moves in for the kill,a hideously deformed and mutated Emily awakens inside the earth's core and returns to rescue her son.Anyway,"Plutonium Baby" is truly painful to watch.It's definitely one of most stupid horror films ever made.Avoid this cheap load of crap like the plague.1 out of 10.