Drive-In Dust Offs: THE MUTILATOR (1984)

Some films are built from WTF moments. Case in point: I have finally seen The Mutilator (1984), an unnaturally entertaining hack ‘em up from a period when the dirt had all but covered the coffin of the overworked subgenre. And this film has more than its share of WTF – in fact, it acts as a Viking funeral for slashers of the era, an absurd catalogue of tropes transmitted with an ‘80s sitcom aesthetic and just as eager to please. What a sight to behold.

AKA Fall Break (a name that will be seared onto your brain pan within the first 15 minutes, trust me), The Mutilator was filmed in North Carolina by local boy Buddy Cooper, who came into some money and decided to either make a movie or buy a winery. And old Buddy boy sure made the right choice – no wine could be sweeter (or more fragrant) than this glorious display of splatter cinema.

Some story is in order, and that’s all they have to give – some: Big Ed’s wife is preparing a birthday cake for him while he’s out hunting. Little Ed, his son, being ever so helpful, decides he’s going to clean Big Ed’s rifles as a present. While polishing up one of Big Ed’s guns, he accidentally puts a bullet right through mama before she can finish decorating the cake. Big Ed comes home, notices that mama hasn’t finished performing her wifely duties (and never will), terrorizes Little Ed briefly, and then goes into shock, nursing a drink on the couch with his formerly warmer wife by his side.

Flash forward ten years, and Ed Jr. (Matt Mitler – Deadtime Stories) is now a well adjusted college student, who along with his friends, can’t decide what to do for their…Fall Break. Just then, Eddie gets a call from Big Ed (doing fine himself, I guess), who wants him to close up the family cottage before winter comes. Well, now that the kids have something to do, they hop in the car and head for the beach. Of course, someone is waiting in the shadows, lurking…and ready to kill. It couldn’t be Big Ed, could it? Get outta here!

The Mutilator passed me by as a teenager. I was living abroad at the time, and while we had access to most movies at our local video store, alas, this one never made it over. That’s okay – I hadn’t even heard of it. Originally entitled Fall Break, Cooper was told to change the title to something catchier if they were to receive distribution. He placed his trust in the hands of an advertising firm, who came up with the more horror centric title, as well as the brilliant tagline: ‘By sword…By pick…By axe…Bye bye’, not to mention the lurid poster (and subsequent video cover) of a shiny gaff in the foreground while a group of teens are hung against a wall (one of them is still alive!). A brilliant sell for the horror market – too good, actually. The rechristened film would have received an X from the MPAA, so Cooper et al decided to release it unrated. However, doing so guaranteed it wouldn’t attract advertising anywhere but the major centers – which is precisely what happened. After premiering in L.A. and New York (where it of course found a home in the grindhouses of 42^nd Street) it played in a few smaller pockets and that was that.

In ’85, it debuted on VHS and Beta (ooh…the Great Format Wars!) from Vestron Video, where it garnered a lot of rentals based on the cover art alone. It wasn’t until I felt an indifference to the later slashers of the day (for me the upper ‘80s) that I noticed The Mutilator gathering dust on the video store shelf, ignoring it in my quest for ‘better’ films.

But as I get older (every day, so I’ve been told), my bottom line is this: I want to be entertained. I still want to feel the same emotions that wash over me when viewing my favorite films, but the road to that destination is not always the same one travelled. The Mutilator arrives at its state of bliss through an anachronistic combination of jubilant tones and surprisingly first rate mayhem.

And I say surprisingly because The Mutilator is such a clearly regional, low budget offering that finding top notch splatter is not only a shock, it’s downright delightful. Catching talent on the way up is always fortuitous, and Cooper was able to nab Mark Shostrom (Evil Dead II) and Anthony Showe (Chopping Mall) to oversee the makeup effects. These are creative, well staged kills (oh the gaff is the worst) that Cooper and DP Peter Schnall (a million TV documentaries) don’t shy away from filming – in fact they linger on it, which is a sign of confidence in your effects department, and proudly earned here.

The tone of the film is bizarre from the get go. Actually, the prologue is a standard, right out of the box slasherism – without a past tragedy, you can’t have any present danger. It’s when we hit the college that The Mutilator veers way left. We’re introduced to our cast, and when they hit the road, we’re treated to opening credits that seem spliced in from some ‘80s sitcom, like Perfect Strangers on a Molly bender. The jauntiest theme song ever created for a horror film (hell, even for a sitcom) blares on as our youngsters laugh and cavort in their convertible en route to the beach. It really does discombobulate the viewer, and while I’m sure that wasn’t the intent, it lets you know this one is going to be different.

As do the actors. It’s not that the performances are bad, but they are awkward and definitely different (with the exception of Ben Moore as the sheriff, who earned his keep in some H.G. Lewis films in the ‘60s – he’s a little more at ease). Everyone is a little stiff and unsure of their line readings, which helps keep the film a kilter and gives it an endearing quality. You can’t be mad, because they’re trying, dammit. My personal MVP is Morey Lampley as resident jock Mike, and with his glazed stare and flat, halting speech, he comes on like Sam Jones’ slower brother. It’s his only appearance on film, and I salute him for making it count.

Perhaps if our auteur, Buddy Cooper, had more experience with directing, the performances would ring truer. So what? They’d still be fighting a losing battle against a script he wrote that plays fast and loose with reality (Big Ed has a framed picture displayed in the cottage of someone he accidentally killed with an outboard motor – but the photo is of the aftermath) and baffling attempts at humor that fail spectacularly, every time. But that’s precisely why it works. The Mutilator, thanks mainly to Cooper, operates in rarified air – when you don’t know the rules, you can’t be judged against other teams. And I think he did have some talent for this – he came up with the kills and frames them well, and stages some shots that are quite striking (the pool scene has a great giallo feel).

But this was his only film. If he had continued, he might have developed a rapport with actors, and created naturalistic dialogue that supported a better sense of plot structure and…yawn. Instead I’m going to remember the Buddy Cooper who unmoored the vessel, set the corpse on fire, and watched it burn across the waters. And after finally viewing The Mutilator, I can declare with a gleeful assurance that my ship has come in.

The Mutilator is available in a 2 Disc Special Edition (DVD + Blu-Ray) from Arrow Video. Tell ‘em Big Ed sent ya.