Again picking another fairly unknown, mostly forgotten 80s slasher from my evergrowing Arrow Video collection, i keep joking about how there’s apparently an endless supply of these for these companies to restore, but there ARE so many 80s slashers that many were bound to be forgotten over the decades, even by the die-hard fan of the horror subgenre.
So it’s still kinda fun to go through them, because you might find something fun, maybe not good, maybe even surprisingly well crafted, it’s a crapshoot, but that’s also part of the appeal in hindsight.
But due to the nature of the odds in question, they can’t all be winners, or interesting little products of their time with some value or some history to them.
Sometimes you land on the zero, you go all in and zoom, bang, your pants are gone, your ass on display for the croupier and players to see, and corporal punishment is back in the menù to make them cheek blush with shame, because why not kick you while you’re down?
Sometimes you get stuff like The Mutilator, where the good thing begin and end with the poster…. and the graphic design for the title with the little battle axe, which i will admit it’s kinda cute, and it’s indeed the main weapon of the killer, so it’s not false advertisment.
In this day and age, a lot of horror fans do appreciate a throwback to simpler times, simpler movies, especially for slashers, which did bring us stuff like the beloved Terrifier movies, but also many shitty ones that don’t exactly get it, so in a way this movie serves a purpose, as the proof that while making things more complex doesn’t necessarily makes them better…. there’s also a limit to how much “simplicity” can be stretched to excuse an absolute lack of any depth.
Or lack of anything, really.
Originally titled Fall Break (with the title kept as such in the Arrow restoration DVD+BluRay bundle box), the movie does at least not lie, because it does take place on fall break, and involves a group of college teens-not-played-by-teens that at the last minute manage to go at one of their father’s condo by the beach so they can have some “teen fun” during the break.
But a figure stalks the teens and anyone that snoops around the beach condo, and its ready to go mutilate all over them and nail their corpses in the house’s shed.
A figure as in his the main character’s dad, a big game hunter that years ago, saw his son accidentally kills his mom while polishing dad’s rifles in the cabinet, as a gesture for his dad’s birthday, too… which is a prologue that you’d think would build up to something, but nope, as it was clearly an accident the son isn’t put in an asylum (nor that he should), he grows up and he’s one of the main teens.
Which i guess makes some sense, from a realistic standpoint, but it pointless and makes any related plot point that could steam from the tragedy… if there were any, it simply means that the dad is now a serial killer… i guess, because he’s waiting for them in the house so it can pick them off, but it’s also ready to pounce and brutally murder anyone that comes near the house, because it’s a slasher movie and we need someone with strenght and bloodlust, regardless if it makes sense or not.
And by the way, it’s not even technically a spoiler because the movie doesn’t make any secret of who is doing the butchering around here, he’s seen early on clearly, so yeah, it’s clearly his dad, and i guess he murdered also his drinking buddies that he used to have at his beach condo, just “guessing” because you’re left trying to make any sense out of it by second hand exposition sludge, you’re never given any motivation or context as to why his dad has gone crazy NOW and most likely wants “late term revenge” on his son, but kills his friends because they’re in the way.
A 2 minutes flasback would have sufficed, but nope, nothing, why i’m left trying to fill in so many obvious, basic writing omission in order to give it any semblance of structure and logic?
Yes, this also means the entire prologue scene sets up NOTHING because his son isn’t somehow involved with the killings or doing a “Ms. Vorhees” thing, his dad being the killer doesn’t factor for shit, sure, he was a big game hunter so has many taxidermied animals and hunting trophies around the house… which has nothing to do with being one of the teen’s father.
I get it, he’s the one traumatized by the accident caused by his son, but you could have swapped him with a random “looney bin” resident and nothing of substance would have changed, let’s be honest, since his father motivation boils down to having gone crazy, mostly, because if the son isn’t someone got to, i guess.
This movie at the very least will “surprise you” because it’s too fuckin stupid to even know about playing with expectations, it will walk into rakes like Sideshow Bob and walk it off not because it knows you’re expecting him to, but because here’s nothing to the bit, there’s no plot or subplots to help flesh out the “narrative”, so it just bulldozes through all the cliches without even begin to consider thinking that it doing something anyone could easily predict, wallowing in its blissful ignorance while boring the piss out of the audience, as “nothing happens” here actually applies in full force, with most of the movie being the usual drawn out bullshit, lots of random “filler” about characters that are frustratingly hyper-stereotypical douches and dumbasses, and let’s just say the awful, wooden acting, doesn’t help, like even for the standards of the era, acting its pretty bad.
This is where thankfully we’re rescued from total boredom, because the effects are actually good for 1983, especially what’s an otherwise very amauterish production all around, and there is a variety of kills using various tools, including an old fashion battle axe, a fishing gaff, even a boat motor (though Zombie Holocaust still is the king of “boat motor kills”), and the characters are all cannon fodder, it should work, but even in this regard the movie can’t avoid tripping over itself as the editing skimps on seeing the kills proper, cutting immediatly after contact is made most of the time (or just editing around having to fork more money for the effects) so it kinda blueballs the viewer even if you don’t care about anything but the gore, the only thing this movie has going for it.
It’s kinda amazing, because this is exactly the kind of slasher where you expect to be a crazy, weird ass or shocking twist at the end, like, this one better have something cooking like the original Sleepaway Camp did…. but it just doesn’t, despite desperately needing it, even if doesn’t make any sense, it still could use a fun nonsensical twist in order to try and surprise the audiences a bit…. nah.
Semplicity is a thing, but being what some would call a “nothing burger”… is another, and sorry if it’s too memey of a classification, but there really is such an incredible amount of nothing in this barely 90 minutes movie, it’s staggering, and the surprisingly decent-good gore is too little to even start making up for the lack of substance or any ideas, because even if they catched the brain cell floating about they most likely would have mistaken it for a tumor, it’s THAT barren of a movie, that you’d wish it had jumpscares. Not even that.
And while it’s not outright unwatchable, The Mutilator its the kind of sub-subpar, amateurish slasher of the era that you feel was made mostly to market the title track named after the movie, which isn’t great but it’s a 80s pop song, so it’s kinda catchy, at the very least.
On the flipside, the Arrow Video release it’s excellent, the restoration it’s honestly nigh impeccable, and there are abudant extras, from making of videos, interviews, various trailers, 2 audio commentary tracks, but even to horror collectors always ready to expand their collection of vintage slasher shlock, i’d wait for a sale, because the movie itself it’s “bottom of the barrel” territory or pretty close, and not really fun, if you want a beach house setting, go see the far better The Slayer.
And yet somehow it got a sequel(?), as The Mutilator 2 just kinda released stealthily on streaming in early September… well, apparently it was uploaded yearlier by accident on Amazon Prime Video a couple weeks prior to its intended release date.
Wise Cafe (International) 