Mutant Hunt (1987)

Reviewed on Mar 13, 2002 under "Cold", Sci-fi |

Written and directed by Tim Kincaid
Starring
- Rick Gianasi
- Mary Fahey
- Ron Reynaldi
- Taunie Vrenon
- Bill Peterson

As God is my witness, I’m not a man wracked by demons or filled with self-loathing. It’s not for some hidden, unforgivable sin that I subject myself to these things. See, here’s the thing: I know that Wizard Video, one of Charles band’s first pet projects, released some bad movies. In fact, they were all bad movies, except for the ones that were VERY bad movies. But the fact of the matter is that they had absolutely kick-ass cover art. A goodly number of them were in the oversized boxes from the late ’70s and early ’80s, and that proved the perfect venue for the covers, which were well-executed, colorful, evocative, more like a combination comic book and pulp cover than a movie poster. They beckoned like few video covers before or since; they enticed. They cooed in your ear, “You know you want to watch me.” And even though you knew damned well that you didn’t actually, you still could easily be lulled away. Or, in a less sinister vein, it was a futile but noble hope, the “impossible dream”: In a perfect world, the movie inside that box would be just as worthlessly fun as the front is, and I will rent it, not because I have any doubt as to the horrid mess it contains, but as a tribute to that ideal. Even if the movie was written and directed by Tim Kincaid.

Ah, Tim Kincaid. Some of the Wizard Video releases were foreign films that had not gotten any domestic distribution, for very good reasons. Some were domestic product of the same quality or lack thereof. But a few were actually produced specifically for video release through Wizard Video, and that’s where you hear Kincaid’s name pop up (usually preceded or followed by some words you probably wouldn’t say in front of your mother). He’s most renowned (or infamous) for three films: Breeders, Robot Holocaust, and this one. There were a few others, including apparently some pseudonymously-directed gay porn (!!!), but these are the ones that live in infamy. I’ve yet to subject myself to Breeders, but I did force myself through Robot Holocaust, which is probably his most popular movie because of its appearance on MST3K. Without the mitigating influence of the ‘bots, it’s a horrendously bad movie; it’s been known to force unsuspecting viewers into dissociative disorders as a form of mental defense.

I’m thus relatively pleased to inform you that Mutant Hunt is not as bad as Robot Holocaust. Which is somewhat like saying, “Good news, it’s not leukemia — just lupus.” It’s still a pitifully embarrassing excuse for a motion picture. And it’s sure as hell nowhere near as good as its cover art.

There’s a bad guy, because hey, there’s got to be a bad guy, right? This one is named Z, and is played by one Bill Peterson, and despite the black naugahyde suit with incredibly oversized shoulder pads/epaulets, he still comes off as someone who should be named Bill Peterson rather than someone who should be named Z. He’s the head of IntelTrax, a major technical corporation which nonetheless houses itself in a distinctly shabby-looking warehouse. (Heads of major corporations dress like faux-leather nightclub ninjas? I guess if you wield enough power, you can dress however you damned well please.) IntelTrax manufactures cyborgs, which just might be androids, since they’re full to the gills of circuitry and sparking wires and stuff. I suppose they might be cyborgs in the sense that the Terminator was, coated with human skin. That makes it awful convenient when you want to save money and have all of your cyborgs look just like short-haired guys in coveralls. (I’m guessing that Kincaid learned his working definition of “cyborg” from the similarly-confused Albert Pyun.)

Just for fun, we first see one cyborg knock another cyborg’s head clean off. XISH! PZAZZ! And then another half-dozen cyborgs fight each other into scrap metal on the floor. Z is pleased; this is exactly what he was hoping for. Unfortunately, scientist Paul Haynes, who designed this particular Delta 7 model, is less than ecstatic about seeing his work in a scrapheap on the floor. A quick analysis shows him that these cyborgs have been pumped full of euphoron, the new drug of the future, which has caused a psycho-sexual mutation in the cyborgs, causing them to kill for pleasure. And some of them (bahm bahm baaahhhm) have escaped and are running amuck!

Are we not men?

Wait, my head already hurts. So there’s more organic to these things than just the skin, I guess, because how else would a psychotropic drug have any effect on them? (To be honest, I thought it was just as bogus when The Next Generation had the same thing happen to Data.) Even given that, “mutation” is a bit hard to stomach, isn’t it? And why in the hell would you even build the possibility of a psycho-sexual reaction into a machine designed as a worker drone in the first place? Arrgh…

Haynes’ plan is to get in touch with his old mercenary buddy Matt Riker, of whom his sister and co-worker Darla (Mary Fahey) disapproves. But before they can solidify their plans further, some more cyborgs burst in to detain them on Z’s orders. While brother grapples with one, Darla runs out past the other one, who kind of stands there and watches her go. (This will be a recurring situation — a motif, if you will.) She runs down the dark city streets, chased by poorly-aiming cyborgs with laser guns, to Riker’s fortuitously nearby apartment, and…

…Uh…

Sorry. Got distracted. You know how it’s never a good idea to remind the viewer of something that’s actually better than the movie they’re watching (such as the clips of an old classic horror flicks in Funhouse)? Obviously, as the merits of the movie you’re watching decrease, the ease with which you’re distracted by something of comparatively greater appeal goes up proportionately. In this case, Darla dashes past a Chinese restaurant, and for a few seconds I couldn’t concentrate on the movie. Mmm… Chinese…

Right. Anyway. Darla hammers on the door of Matt Riker, soldier of fortune (Rick “Sgt. Kabukiman” Gianasi), who’s apparently just finished getting groiny with his bleached-blonde squeeze (LeeAnne Baker). (Tighty-whities. Gotta love’em.) Darla does a crummy job of explaining who she is while Blondie makes snide comments; fortunately, visual aides come in, in the form of two mutated cyborgs! (We can tell they’re mutated, because their faces are slimy and oatmealy, a condition exacerbated by time.)

To prove his manliness, Riker fights them single-handedly, dressed in nothing but his Fruit-of-the-Looms. Darla and Blondie prove their utter uselessness by standing around (or in Blondie’s case, lying in bed.) Not even screeching in horror or cowering in the corner. No, they relax and watch Riker fight for his life — and their lives, too — with all the tension of someone watching their roommate swat at flies. Not that it really inspires tension in the first place; the mutated cyborgs are slow, plodding, and not terribly well coordinated.

Eventually, though, Riker remembers the efficacy of handguns and lasers one cyborg. The other one… um… Sorry, I got distracted again by the memory of Chinese food, but he somehow shoos him away. Then Darla finally spits out coherent sentences about who she is and what the cyborgs are, while Blondie continues to act snarky and bitchy. Two relatively notable details:

“Well maybe I AM a bad actor, but at least I don’t have to stare at the cue card constantly!”

1) Her brother is actually being held by IntelTrax legally, since they have a special government contract based on legislation enacted after the “space shuttle sex murders.” Add that to the list of stories and events referenced here that would probably be more interesting to watch than the movie we’re currently watching.

2) The Delta 7’s have some limited telepathic powers too. (Again, who decided this was a good feature for an industrial labor robot?) Which means that the cyborgs will know that someone’s hunting them, and hunt back. In other words, Riker won’t have to do much detective work or anything. Gosh, isn’t that convenient?

After this easy-to-chew expository chunk, yet another mutant cyborg strolls in (nobody’s thought to shut the door since Darla first entered). For no discernable reason, although she sat through the first two attacks in a state of petulant annoyance, Blondie decides now to leap out of bed directly into the cyborg’s grasp; he gratefully tosses her out the window to her death. And then… um… Oh yeah, Riker stabs it in the eye with a broken lamp and electrocutes it. (Sorry. Mmm… Chinese…)

Darla’s quite shocked at the lackadaisical attitude Riker has toward his defunct ladyfriend on the blacktop two stories down until he reveals that she was just his pleasure droid. On top of the damage that such a revelation should do to the reputation of a hard-lovin’ mercenary, you have to wonder why any one would pay good money for a droid with such a bitchy attitude. Maybe it’s a futuristic fetish.

You should probably know that interspersed with all of this, we’ve had occasional scenes of a woman named Domina who out-Chers Cher, wandering around what looks like an unfurnished apartment and complaining about Z to her own cyborg, Hydro. See, she and Z used to be partners, and then he kicked her out, and now she knows all that’s going on in Z’s lab, and yadda yadda.

Why do I tell you this now? Because Riker immediately does what rough-and-tumble guys do in these movies: he goes to a seedy nightclub. This one’s called Club Inferno (wow, what an original name), and the dancer on stage, who deftly defends herself against two drunks who climb on stage to manhandle her, is one of Riker’s multi-talented associates by the name of Elaine (Taunie Vrenon). And as they discuss the case, who should be sitting right next to them? None other than Domina! Wow, imagine that!

Yup. A future where tighty-whities are Real Manly Underwear. Kill me now.

Time for another lump of exposition. The first part is verbal; Elaine informs them that although euphoron is still being smuggled in from the Lunar Colonies (leading one to assume that it’s made from, like, rocks and stuff), it’s not getting to the street, and normal junkies are gatting anxious; someone’s stockpiling it. The second part is visual, as Domina conveniently demonstrates that euphoron is administered IN THE USER’S EAR.

That’s okay, laugh as long as you need to. I’ll wait.

Ready? Let’s go on.

Apparently Elaine has to finish her shift before her bounty-hunting work can begin, because the next we see her, she’s walking down the night street when out looms — a mutant cyborg! Fortunately, as previously established, the cyborgs are pretty slow, giving her plenty of time to run to a public phone and call yet another mercenary, a short, scrappy, mustachioed, vaguely-Latino fellow named Felix (Ron Reynaldi) with red socks pulled halfway up his calf and a phone implanted in his ear. (Ooh, how prophetic.) He pinpoints her location on a wrist screen the size of a Kraft Single and manages to make it to her location before she has to run more than half a block, and dazzles the cyborg with a display of high kicks before he and Elaine scamper off. Seems that Riker should have just gone directly to Felix and skipped Elaine entirely.

The Mercenary Friends assemble at Riker’s apartment to divvy out duties. Since there are still two functioning mutant cyborgs out there, Felix and Riker will each take one. Elaine will track down the euphoron hoard, using a nifty little device that can pinpoint euphoron in lots of ten kilos or more. (Gee, you think the police would like to have a gadget so nifty?) Darla’s job is to stick around Riker’s apartment, with no company but the decomposing body of a cyborg Riker lasered in the earlier altercation. As Riker tells her, “Once we take out these two, there’s no reason for IntelTrax to detain your brother.” Darla does not reply that Riker obviously has all the brains of a naked mole-rat.

The plan having been settled on, everyone splits up — and Riker immediately shows up on Elaine’s doorstep because, hey, his pleasure droid’s broken, you know. When she points out that they’re actually supposed to be hunting killer mutant cyborgs instead of making whoopie, he opines that it’s too near dawn to start hunting them; after all, they all wear sunglasses, so they must have sensitive eyes, so they’ll lie low until nightfall, right? (And here I thought they were just making a pseudo-fascist fashion statement.) Apparently that explanation works for her…

…But the next scene has bit-parters on the street mentioning that it’s 2 AM. So either the sun rises real early in the future, or this is actually the next night. Or maybe Riker knew that Elaine doesn’t wear a watch and just fed her a line to get into her pants. In any event, a couple making out on a tenement step get an all-too-clear view of a mutant cyborg grabbing another couple and tearing them limb from limb. (Which, when you remember how easy it is to evade these bozos, is pretty pathetic.) Riker then shows up a little too late and proceeds to beat the cyborg into its component parts with his bare hands. Boy, I’m sure glad we’ve got seasoned mercenaries to take care of murderous cyborgs like this, because if it weren’t for them, there’s no one else who’d solve the problem — no one like, say, an actual law enforcement agency or anything.

Meanwhile, Domina wanders around her unfurnished apartment a bit more, moaning at how Z has hoarded all of the euphoron which she’s addicted to, and swearing vengeance on him — or, in her words, “We have one night, and I’m going to make it the night Z regrets for the rest of his life — if he lives that long.” Being a loyal cyborg, Hydro doesn’t point out how little sense that sentence makes.

Felix, Fighting Man of Menudo.

And what of the lone remaining cyborg? Why, he chooses to attack a guy locking up a Chinese restaurant! (It’s not even the same one; it’s a whole ‘nother Chinese restaurant. Mmm… Chinese…) And because everyone knows that every Oriental male is a kung fu expert, the guy starts in with the high kicks and stuff on his plodding assailant. Eventually, though, he realizes he’s not doing any good, and runs away. the cyborg looks after him, then stumps off in another direction, apparently as bored with the whole encounter as we were.

(A side note to the above: Felix, chasing this cyborg, is alerted to the attack by a message on the 27″ screen attached to his wrist: HUMAN LIFE TERMINATION SITUATION IN PROGRESS. Again, I’m betting the police could sure find a use for such equipment. Felix jogs off toward the action, but the fight ends before he gets there; his wrist thingie tells him it’s moot, and he shrugs his shoulders and wanders away.)

Riker, on the other hand, is visiting Domina. Why? I dunno. Maybe he’s done some actual detective work and has realized that she’s Z’s ex-partner. Or maybe, given that the entire city is about five blocks square, it was inevitable that he show up on the fire escape of her building. In any event, Hydro draws a gun on him and escorts him into the unfurnished apartment, where Domina chains him up and implants an explosive device in the back of his skull. Why? Because she wants Darla to use as a bargaining chip with Z. Riker assures her that he’d love to give Darla to her, so Domina removes the charge and unchains him, whereupon he slugs her and escapes. I’m guessing that euphoron use makes you remarkably stupid.

Oh, and Elaine’s managed to find the euphoron hoard — naturally, at the IntelTrax building.

Meanwhile (notice how Kincaid manages to give the illusion of story progress by cutting from one meaningless thread to another meaningless thread), Darla’s gotten tired of sitting around Riker’s apartment watching the cyborg decompose, so she goes and has a shower. Now, we’ve already gotten two sets of exposed breasts — Blondie’s and Elaine’s — but apparently Ms. Fahey wasn’t willing to go as far for the sake of her art. Thus the camera watches her very discreetly, even giving us tiny peeks at the top of the black strapless bathing suit she wears in the shower in order to assure us that she’s not actually naked.

But while she’s doing that, the decomposed cyborg reactivates itself, rips off its own hanging jaw, and joins her in the bathroom for a chat. See, he’s not really evil, and the effects of the euphoron only peak every six hours, so he doesn’t even want to hurt anyone right now. But he’s in a helluva lot of pain, and he wants Darla to come with him back to IntelTrax and fix him. Then he slings her over his shoulder and drags her out of the apartment and down the street. (Mmm… Chinese…)

In yet another meantime, Felix and Riker have managed to bring down the final cyborg (again, hand-to-hand all the way), then decide to join Elaine at the IntelTrax building (which, since Darla’s going to end up there, is a pretty convenient place for everyone to meet up).

“Don’t pick on me, or my big brother the Terminator’ll get you!”

Which is where Z is gloating over Paul Haynes, explaining his entire nefarious plan. Which really doesn’t make sense, but you take what you can get. See, his slightly-modified euphoron can turn ordinary cyborgs into crazed killers, so he’s selling it to terrorists and evil governments for purposes of havok and general nastiness.

Now, let’s review what we know about the mutated cyborgs. They’re slow. They’re stupid. They’re uncoordinated. They can be beaten to a dysfunctional state by unarmed humans. And the euphoron only causes them to be violent once every six hours. Boy, that’s a great “unstoppable army” there, Z.

Anyway. Elaine sets an explosive charge off in the euphoron storage area (the charge has a timer with numerals that take about three seconds to render, which kinda negates the whole point of a countdown timer), and the decomposed cyborg helps the good guys get to where Z is. Then the decomposed cyborg, enraged that Z did this to him, attacks Z, who accomodating stands there and lets himself get thrown around.

All done, right? But no — because then Domina shows up, with a secret project she’s kept under wraps (literally, standing in her apartment covered in mummy-like wrappings). It’s — the Delta 8 model! A hulking, mutated cyborg who looks like he should be in the choir worshipping a subterranean warhead. Wait, mutation was Z’s schtick, not Domina’s, so why’s he mutated? Oh, who the hell cares? Let’s just get done here.

Riker effectively volunteers to fight the Delta 8 unarmed. Now, maybe the sound dropped out on my cassette, but I didn’t hear Riker say, “That’s all right, everyone, don’t aid me in this life-or-death struggle, just stand around bored like you’re waiting for the bus.” Nevertheless, that’s what everyone does. Then Z’s last few mutants come up behind them, giving them problems of their own.

Eventually, everyone defeats their own cyborg, Z takes a last potshot at Paul (only getting his arm), Riker shoots Z with his own gun, and everyone leaves happy. (Except maybe Domina. I can’t remember what happened to her. But I don’t really care that much.) The end.

I realize that this is a longer-than-average review, but that’s because rarely have I encountered a movie in which every single scene has something worth ridiculing. It’s hard to believe that anyone could make a movie so bad without intentionally trying to, but even an intentionally bad movie would do “bad” better. (Does that make any sense? This movie fried my cerebral cortex.)

I will give credit where credit is due. The puppet head for the decomposed cyborg was well-constructed and consistently well-animated. That’s it. That’s the one shining moment of competence in a production replete with lukewarm acting, thudding dialogue, a medication-dulled plot, and a soundtrack that keeps veering into improvisational jazz.

The only thing that kept me together through the tortuously-long 75-minute running time (aside from “Mmm… Chinese…”) was the thought that, no matter how bad it got, it would still be better than watching a Kincaid-directed gay porno. Which is about as hard as I can damn with faint praise.