by: Dr. Boogie

...CONTINUED

Holly and the sheriff run into trouble first. Myra's clinic is a dump, but her discarded tape recorder fills Stewart in on what happened, namely that her assistant turned into a mutant and killed her. I wonder why the chemical turned some people into mutants immediately, while others lingered for days before making the switch.

I'd wonder about it some more, but the movie is finally starting to pick up the pace, and with only 20 minutes left.

The mutant assistant shows up, only to be swiftly gunned down by the sheriff. Then other mutants start popping up, one after another. Myra's clinic wasn't all that big to begin with, but now it looks like all the mutants in town were staying in it, secretly crouching behind what little furniture there was just waiting for an ambush.

Holly and Stewart become separated in the melee. He manages to duck into a storeroom just shy of getting a nasty palm hickey from a bunch of the silly-looking mutants. Therein, he finds Myra's dead body. On the plus side, when a mutant kills you, you're dead. No zombie rules here.

Ugh, and I was so getting used to not having to look at Josh's big head. By now, it is clear to Josh that Mrs. Mapes has been lying about his brother the whole time. Josh busts in, determined to root out her treachery, only to be locked in the cellar. What a dipshit.

Mike, lucky dog that he is, managed to get out of this movie early on. Look on the bright side, Josh: sure, your childish antics have ultimately led to your brother's death, but at least you met a nice girl. Two, if you count the female mutant in the cellar with you.

A fight breaks out. Josh struggles to escape, but he is no match for the small, emaciated mutant. Finally, he discovers something he can use to stop her:

A blowtorch. In the back of his mind, Josh has to realize that the whole "light hurts their eyes" thing was BS when he said it. Fire seems to be working just as well, if not better. It's certainly not giving off any more light than the light bulb at the top of the steps.

Fate continues to smile upon the boneheaded Josh when Mrs. Mapes, instead of letting her mutant daughter kill Josh, decides she would rather open the door and kill him herself. I don't blame her much, seeing as I would leap at the chance to kill that loser, too. Josh pulls the ol' switcheroo and tosses Mrs. Mapes into the basement for some bonding with her daughter. Sucking ensues.

Meanwhile, Holly decides to go back to the school for some reason. There, she happens upon Billy, whom she tried to send back to his presumably mutated parents. As you can imagine, Billy has a little less faith in his teacher now. He flees in terror, but Holly catches up to him in the bathroom. She reassures him that everything will be alright, which is about as big a jinx as anyone can imagine.

Mutants flood into the bathroom, snarling and waving their clown white hands at the pair. Holly has the brilliant idea of "hiding" in one of the stalls. Her plan fails. It fails so badly that the mutants wind up dragging Billy under the door. Personally, I think this one is all on Billy. He had the right idea in not trusting Holly. He would have survived if he has just stuck with his original decision.

Josh, having deduced that Holly would make an unscheduled detour to the school, arrives moments later to rescue her, climbing along the partial walls in the bathroom and pulling her to safety.

Holly is gone to hysterics at this point. The guilt over getting Billy killed, coupled with the fact that she's going to be dating Josh, is just too much. She gets Josh to go look for the sheriff at Myra's clinic, but now she's even less helpful than she was before. Josh leaves in the car like a fussy infant. Granted, she'll be a sitting duck if the mutants decide to attack, but the doors are locked and the windows are up. I mean, what are the odds that the mutants know how to break windows?

D'oh! Now the mutants have acid spewing out of their hands, I guess. That good luck was bound to run out sometime.

Screaming doesn't do much to stop the mutants, so Holly lays on the horn. I really don't see what Josh could possibly do this time. If he comes back outside, the mutants will swarm him.

Normally, that's what would've happened, but this time, the mutants come at him one at a time like in an old kung fu movie. Also, these mutants are terrified of wood. At one point, Josh asks Holly to turn on the headlights, just to keep the illusion of them not liking light alive. It does nothing, and the audience is left wondering why they bother harping on that point.

Josh eventually works his way back into the car and takes off. One mutant, however, stubbornly refuses to get off the roof of the car. Josh could slam on the brakes and launch the mutant, but he has a better idea: roll the car.

And it works. The mutant is gone, and their primary mode of transportation is destroyed. But hey, maybe the light from the burning gas tank will repel the mutants, eh Josh? Ha ha, no.

Holly and Josh climb out of the car and limp away from the burning wreckage. Now it definitely looks like their fates are sealed. Fortunately, the crowd of mutants completely gives up the chase, allowing them to break into the closed down gas station to hide out.

Wouldn't you know it; the station has ample supplies of rags, bottles, and gasoline. Josh starts cranking out Molotov cocktails like there's no tomorrow. When he uses up all the bottles, he sends his barely functioning girlfriend into the dark, unexplored back room to gather some more. I tell ya, you could set your watch to the scares in this movie.

It's everyone's favorite loveable psychopath, Albert. Shotgun in hand, he tells Holly that he has plans for her. It's not hard to imagine what, but he assures her that she is merely a distraction/bait so that he can escape.

Josh manages to surprise and disarm Albert, but a mutant distracts him long enough for Albert to grab Holly again. Fortunately, Josh is not the only one who gets pawed by anxious mutants.

A group of mutants breaks through the window and drags Albert outside. Josh and Holly make a very weak attempt at rescuing Albert, but seriously, the guy has tried to kill Josh so many times in less than 24 hours. Both the shotgun and the moltovs work against the mutants, but again, it's more about them not liking fire. Nothing really suggests that they don't like light, apart from the light bulb thing earlier in the film.

If anyone doesn't like light, it's the director. The following scenes look like they were filmed by candlelight. Not that the rest of the film was any easier to see, but for the love of god, show us something!

It's not clear what all happens, but Josh and Holly are forced back into the store by the mutant horde. They're finally pursuing the two of them in earnest, busting down the door, climbing through the windows, entering through the back, it's an all-out mutant party. Our young couple looks more doomed than ever before.

Suddenly, all the cops who weren't in the movie show up and start shooting the mutants. The ones at the front of the store go down quickly, as do the ones coming from the back of the store when they decide to storm the cops rather than escape the way they came. Soon, all the mutants are taken care of. Josh and Holly take a few tentative steps outside, only to be gunned down by their former saviors.

Okay really, they walk outside and see that Sheriff Stewart is alive.

Stewart explains that he went over the captain's head straight to the governor, got some backup, and returned to save the day.

Stewart fills out his deus ex machina roll by explaining that they got several New Era employees to "admit everything." Also, they searched Mrs. Mapes' house and found the body of an EPA inspector (the guy from the beginning of the movie). The best part: they did all of that in about 20 minutes! Good lord, if these cops had been at it at the beginning of the story, the film would have only been like six minutes long!!

Stewart wraps things up by offering to go out drinking with Josh. So much for his triumph over alcoholism. Josh takes him up on his offer, and who knows, he might just get a drink or two down before the stress of losing his brother and nearly being killed by rednecks, mutants, and redneck mutants causes him to have a nervous breakdown.

I've seen some bad movies in my time, but I can't remember the last time I was this happy to see the end credits roll. Mutant was a terrible movie with most of its action sequences filmed impenetrable darkness, but it was also incredibly boring. Roughly three quarters of the film is setup for a Night of the Living Dead-style siege that ends before you can even begin to start caring. The director hated lighting, that much is certain, but what he apparently hated even more is pacing, as this movie had none.

The only redeeming quality of the film was that its awfulness was so outstanding that it killed the company that produced it. You see, there once was a company called Film Ventures International, a company that turned out all sorts of B-movies back in the day. They were struggling to make ends meet after one of their rip-off movies was deemed too big a rip-off, so they tried to recoup their losses by making Mutant. It cost so much to make, and brought in so little money, that it basically sank the company. Seeing that bankruptcy was on the horizon, the man running FVI took $1 million out of the company, and then disappeared off the face of the earth. The company collapsed, and he is still missing to this day.

In short, lots are movies are failures, but Mutant is a cinematic tombstone.

Have any questions or comments about this piece?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS IN THE READER COMMENTS SECTION BELOW!