MUTANT (1984)

 

DIRECTED by John "Bud" Cardos

SCREENPLAY by Peter Z. Orton, Michael Jones & John C. Kruiz from a story by Michael Jones & John C. Kruize

STARRING - Wings Hauser as Josh Cameron,  Bo Hopkins as Sheriff Will Stewart,  Jody Medford as Holly Pierce,  Lee Montgomery as Mike Cameron,  Marc Clement as Albert Hogue,  Cary Guffey as Billy,  Jennifer Warren as Dr. Myra Tate,  Danny Nelson as Jack,  Mary Nell Santacroce as Mrs. Mapes

PLOT - Two brothers - Josh and Mike - are on holiday in the Southern States when their car is forced off the road by a gang of bullying rednecks.

They arrive in a small town and see the local drunk fall down dead, the man is seemingly suffering from some form of sickness. They alert the local Sheriff - Will Stewart - only to find the corpse has mysteriously vanished.

Staying overnight in town, its soon Mike's turn to go missing. Aided by a local teacher - Holly, Josh must attempt to find his missing younger brother.

What caused Mike's disappearance ? What has it to do  with the chemical company that have started dumping toxic waste on the outskirts of town ? And why are the townsfolk starting to mutate into hideous zombies ?...

PERFORMANCES - Wings Hauser isn't really an actor I've encountered before but here in the role of Josh he makes a pretty decent lead. 

Armed with an 80's perm he gives the character of Josh a cocky swagger that's both no nonsense yet likeable. He's pretty headstrong and hot headed at points, but at other points (especially in the scenes with Lee Montgomery playing his younger brother Mike - they both have a great brotherly style chemistry - you're really convinced that these two guys are siblings), he displays a more level headed maturity.

As the story progresses Josh falls in with a local teacher Holly (Jody Medford) who tries to help him clear his name when he's accused of murder by the local rednecks. Medford is also good as Holly - at first she's a typical fiery "Southern gal" but as the situation worsens she starts to crack. There's a great scene towards the end where she's a absolutely apoplectic with horror and seems pretty broken. It's very well played.

The other main character is Sheriff Will (Bo Hopkins). At first he comes over as your typical small town blowhard sheriff but as the story progresses we learn a lot more about him - he's a recovering alcoholic who turned to drink after accidently shooting a kid during a stakeout. We find that for all his bluster and no nonsense attitude there's a pretty broken man underneath the surface.

Will is initially scornful of Josh but eventually comes round to his way of thinking and ultimately stands back to back with Josh and Holly in trying to save his town from marauding zombies whilst trying to stay alive at the same time.

Hopkins is incredibly likeable in this role, you really find yourself rooting for Sheriff Will hoping he'll come out of this small scale zombie apocalypse in one piece. Easily the best performance in a film that's full of them. In fact for what is basically a B-movie the quality of acting is consistently good all round.

SFX - We've got zombies, zombies and even more zombies. They're quite cool looking too with a blueish tinge to thier skin which recalls the zombies in Dawn Of The Dead as much as anything else.

They also secrete a yellow puss from the palms of thier hands (which looks a bit like embalming fluid), this puss then serves to infect normal people and turn them into toxic mutant zombies.

The zombies also get some decent practical effects in scenes where you see normal humans transform into them. Thier face kind of bulges as if something is trying to burst out from underneath thier skin. It's pretty effective.

We also get a nice variety of zombies - we even see little kid zombies, which is quite a rarity as audiences tend to get pissed off if you kill kids in horror films. This film though - it doesn't care.

VIOLENCE - Pretty much as you'd expect from the zombie sub-genre - zombies get shot, blown up and hacked to pieces like there's no tomorrow. Human beings get swarmed by escalating numbers of the mutated undead and it never ends well for them.

Like I said above, even kids get killed - in fact one little lad gets it worse than anyone else in the entire film. This film just doesn't give a damn.

RATING - This a very good and massively underrated zombie flick. It's not George A Romero level but it's not far off the mark and is a lot, LOT better than many zombie movies of the time (and much better than a lot of zombie films that came afterwards).

The characters are well written and performed, the small town atmosphere is spot on and the zombie action comes thick and fast - it really sells the full magnitude of the story it's trying to tell, honestly - there's moments in this film where you wonder if ANYONE is going to survive till the final reel.

4 and a half toxic undead out of 5. Well worth seeing.

ART -