the mutilator

80s slashers are a lot like pizza, or sex - even when they’re bad, they’re still good (actually, there are some 80s slashers that are straight-up unwatchable - this wasn’t a particularly thought-out metaphor). Buddy Cooper’s 1984 contribution to the subgenre, The Mutilator (aka Fall Break), is a cult film of relatively minor (minor) repute… and it’s difficult to argue it warrants any particular fanfare beyond that. Cooper, unfortunately, was unable to build on his budding auteur credentials… it took him close to 40 years to make another movie, which happens to be his literally just-completed sequel The Mutilator 2 (starring friend-of-the-site Eva Hamilton - check her out in Ruin Me on Shudder). 

Ed (Matt Mitler) has been asked by his father “Big Ed” to close up the family’s beachfront condo in North Carolina for the winter. Ed’s college friends see it as an opportunity for a few days of alcohol-fueled “fall break” revelry, but - there’s a catch. When he was a kid, Ed attempted to clean his dad’s hunting rifles as a surprise birthday gift, but all he succeeded in doing was accidentally (and fatally) shooting his mother in the backside… which resulted in his father suffering some sort of psychotic break. Suffice it to say, I have questions. Their relationship in the ensuing years is only vaguely established (“The creep just ignores me and now he wants my help,” Ed claims)… but it seems somewhat relevant, since Big Ed lies in wait at the condo and just starts butchering his son’s friends one-by-one.

Let’s back up a step. Ed’s crew includes his (sexually inactive) significant other Pam (Ruth Martinez), obnoxious prankster Ralph (Bill Hitchcock), his own eternally patient girlfriend Sue (Connie Rogers), bland Adonis Mike (Morey Lampley), and his foxy squeeze Linda (Frances Raines, niece of Claude - just FYI). None of the cast are particularly good per se (Lampley in particular comes across like an alien poorly imitating a human meat sack), but it’s a decent enough crop of characters by the standards of the genre… and Pam and Sue in particular feel like actual girls you might have hung out with in college, and legitimately enjoyed spending time with (particularly playing Monopoly, because isn't that what everyone did in the 80s when they weren't having sex?). 

The movie’s main (arguably only) claim to fame are its above average death scenes, with makeup effects courtesy of the great Mark Shostrom (whose genre work includes Videodrome, Evil Dead II, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors). Big Ed is an accomplished fisherman and isn’t shy about utilizing the tools of his trade… hence Mike gets sliced-and-diced with a boat propeller (his drawn-out death spasms are easily the best/funniest shot of the movie), Ralph is stabbed in the throat with a flounder gig, and poor Sue receives a graphic crotch gutting at the receiving end of a fishing gaff (that oversized barbed hook featured on the poster - not pleasant). If you’re going to muster a measure of quality control in at least one creative department, well - it might as well be the violence.  ​

Watching The Mutilator, you keep waiting for the plot to evolve in some fashion, for some even rudimentary psychological dimension to take root, but nope. If anything, there’s a sneaking suspicion that the filmmakers don’t actually expect you to put two and two together… and that you’ll simply assume the killer is, like… some random beach drifter, or something. “Jesus Christ, it’s my Daaaaaaaaaaaad!” Ed wails, as if it’s as big a revelation for us as it is for him. By the way, I lied. The movie’s other obvious claim to fame is its bizarrely peppy theme song, which is straight out of an 80s sitcom (“…. and we’re gonna have a good time (GONNA HAVE A GOOD TIME), yeah we’re gonna have a good time!”)… suggesting a satirical self-awareness that the rest of the movie doesn’t really make good on. Oh well. At the end of the day, it’s another 80s slasher - no more, no less. I've seen better, and I've seen worse. Proceed accordingly.