Plot
A boy accidentally shot and killed his
mother whilst he was cleaning his dad's shotguns. Now he's a
teenager and with a group of friends, goes and stay at his father's beach
condo for the weekend. But his now-crazy father is lying in wait and ready
to take out his bloody revenge for the murder of his wife. With a variety of
weapons at his disposal, it doesn't look good for the visiting teens.
Review
Sporting arguably one of the greatest
horror tag lines of all time with the immortal "By
Axe. By Pick. By Chainsaw.... BYE BYE," you would hope that the rest of
this mid-80s slasher would show as much creativity and originality. The
Mutilator is strictly a bargain basement splatter slasher with a nasty
edge. It wears it's low budget on it's sleeve and all
you'll get is a film which sticks closely to the rules and knows it's target
audience. Thankfully this target audience was bloodthirsty back in the day
The Mutilator delivers the goods wear it hurts.
The first half is
woeful. We get the slasher MacGuffin in the opening scene to give one of the
characters a reason to kill. Then after that it seems like an eternity
before any true mutilating is done. Pacing is definitely a big issue as no
one seems to do anything. There's hardly any story except for the fact that
the group of teenagers are partying within easy reach of a homicidal killer.
I guess you don't need it after the opening scene of matricide but I'm sure
there'd have been easier ways for the father to take his revenge than wait
for his little boy to grow up and kill him. There's little sign of "the
mutilator" in any form during this time and it's a good halfway through the
film before the crazy father finally starts living up to the tag line. The
cast are appalling and none of them could act their way out of a wet paper
bag. They deserve to get slaughtered for the most part so it's almost ironic
that the most entertaining character is one of the first to die, leaving
behind a vacuum of humanity waiting to be infiltrated. There's no murder
mystery to be had as we know who the killer is right from the moment the
little boy blows his mother's head in the opening scene. So once he does get
down to business, at least we're spared the clichéd "it was me all along"
moment where the killer confesses all. The film is also extremely dark and
the lighting guy must have been on strike or something. You just can't see
what's going on in a lot of the scenes of the characters wandering around
the dim basement and garage areas. It's not so much of a problem at first
but when it gets hard to distinguish what is going on, it gets annoying.
There's a solid
slasher waiting to leap out here and moments such as the game of "Blind
Man's Buff" are nice touches. I'll at least credit The Mutilator with
living up to it's title in the most gruesome ways possible. He kills one of
the girls by slamming a hook between her legs and gutting her like a fish.
Another dude gets an outboard motor rammed into his chest. There's a cool
decapitation too as well as a pitchfork to the neck. The body count is
pretty low but the manner in which they're all dispatched is at least
memorable enough. Like the earlier scenes, a lot of the time it's pretty
dark and you can't get a good view at what looks to be some awesome make-up
effects. However I've since come to learn that these scenes are only
darkened in the R-rated version. Anyone who watches the uncut version will
find them come to life in their splendidly gory glory. In terms of
cult status, gore hounds usually look to the likes of Intruder, The
Prowler, The Burning and Maniac for their fix of 80s splatter but
there's plenty in The Mutilator which seems to go unnoticed because
the rest of the film is so poor. Throw in some nudity and there's also a
synthesised music score which adds a little bit of eeriness and suspense
when it has no right to do.
Verdict
Make sure you
track down the uncut version to enjoy the gory delights the way they were
meant to be enjoyed. The Mutilator may not enjoy the same publicity
as it's more famous 80s slashers but deserves a lot more credit. It's not
art, it's not pretty and it will test your patience a lot but stick with it
and you'll get a fantastic slice of 80s slasher action.
