Plutonium Baby (1987)

Posted on Jan 14, 2004 under "Cold", Horror, Sci-fi |

Produced and directed by Ray Hirschman
Written by Wayne Behar
Starring
- Patrick Molloy
- Danny Guerra
- Mary Beth Pelshaw
- David Pike
- Joe Viviani

Perseverance. We usually use that word to evoke an admirable state of unwillingness to quit or slacken. To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe…. But there are times when perseverance isn’t so laudable. Notably, when the object of pursuit or effort simply isn’t worth it. In those instances, when someone displays a stubborn unwillingness to give up despite all indications, we use another word instead of perseverance: idiocy.

I’m not necessarily saying that producer/director Ray Hirschman was or is an idiot. I have no idea what behind-the-scenes arrangements brought this movie to fruition; maybe he was offered an obscene amount of money to bring in the finished product, and being paid to make a godawful movie is better than being broke. I’m not saying that writer Wayne Behar was or is an idiot; we all know that writers are hired for their unique ability to craft story and character, and then the very people who hired this person for that ability somehow thinks he knows better and proceeds to muck it up with reckless abandon. I’m certainly not besmirching the intelligence of any of the cast — who wouldn’t jump at the prospect of being credited and paid as an actor, despite a complete dearth of thespian ability?

Cool, moist, goes down slick!

No, I can’t put the dunce cap on any particular head with any confidence. But I can tell you that somewhere, in someone attached to this movie, there was a vast reservoir of ill-focused, blind-to-quality stubborn perseverance — in other words, idiocy — brought to bear on this movie. Because otherwise, something this relentlessly pointless and inept would never have been made, and the world would be a better place for it.

The movie begins with a preamble telling us that Emily Atkins died giving birth in 1965 to a boy so contaminated by radiation that he glows in the dark. (We also have a word that describes people like that: dead.) And the movie proper begins a dozen years later, with said son, Danny (Danny Guerra), playing in the secluded wood near his grandfather Hank’s (Joe Viviani) cabin. Near this same spot is the dumping ground from the government nuclear facility where mom Emily died. On the fateful day in question, workmen clearing the land have uncovered a casually-buried canister of radioactive waste; and Danny explores it once they’ve left. He find his mother’s old locket, and his grandpa exults; this is, apparently, enough additional “evidence” to re-open the unsuccessful wrongful-death suit which Hank had lodged against Emily’s employer — a shadowy government organization known as “The Organization.”

The Organization is not happy about this, and the former head of the defunct research project, Dr. Drake (Patrick Molloy) is given the mop-up job. He first has his crack hitmen take out Hank’s two “expert witnesses” in the city, then heads out into the hinterlands with a goon squad to deal with Hank himself.

Mmm… Tastes like chicken!

But that’s not really enough people to make a movie about, especially way out in the middle of nowhere. But not to worry, we’ve got that old standby waiting in the wings: horny campers! Yup, two couples have hiked past the “No Trespassing” signs around Hank’s land to set up camp and make with the nookie. You may not care much, but the couples are Ken and Diane (David Pike and Helen Rosenthal), and Brad and Wendy (Dan Tyler and Mary Beth Penshaw).

After some city-folk-in-the-woods komedy (what? there aren’t any bathrooms in the forest?),the couples get down to sweatiness. Unfortunately, Brad and Wendy get interrupted by — a mutant rabbit! It takes a chomp out of Brad’s shoulder, and immediately becomes my favorite character (an assessment that never has reason to change). Ken and Diane are interrupted a little more gently, by Danny spying them through the trees. Thus everyone in this tract of woodland gets to know each other. (And Danny cops a feel from Diane. Hey, he’s been sheltered.)

By the next morning, Brad’s bite wound is completely gone, replaced by a rash. Ominous! Even more ominous is Dr. Drake and his Evil Suits (you know, that was the name of my band in high school) trooping through the woods like a pack of lost Boy Scouts. (Evil Boy Scouts, of course.) And want to know what’s even more ominous? They run across — two dead bodies, slashed and splattered up! Wait, did I say “ominous”? I meant “stupid.” I’m sure we’re meant to start worrying about what deadly force may lurking in the forest; I was instead trying to figure out in vain exactly who these other fresh corpses may have belonged to.

Dr. Drake finds Hank and makes him sign a release at gunpoint, which of course would stand up in court once Hank testified that three men held him at gunpoint to sign it. Then, mainly because they’re evil, they shoot him anyway and tear up the release. Danny, who heard the shooting, runs off through the woods, and as they pursue him –

Ooh, looks like SOMEBODY forgot her exfoliant…

– A mutant zombie thing attacks them! There’s some slight “suspense” for about ten minutes as we wonder just who or what this is, but I’ll ease the tension for you: It’s Emily, Danny’s mother, either reanimated or just plain kept alive by radiation or somesuch. She kills one of the goons and strings his entrails through the trees.

Danny finds the campers, and together they try to get to civilization for help. But man, this just isn’t their day; once they find a road, they flag down a van — whose occupants turn out to be kung fu rapists! They beat up the men, steal the women, and drive off… until something goes “thump” on the roof. When they get out to investigate, Zombie Mom Emily kills all the bad guys.

And wouldn’t you know it, Danny and the campers give up on trying to make it to civilization. I think this is a notably extreme case of what Ken Begg has identified as the “Monster Death Trap Proviso.” (”This stipulates that any stratagem to destroy a monster, once it has failed, may not be attempted again, even if it only failed because of some bizarre fluke. Nor can the same plan be refined and tried again. Instead, a completely other plan must be formulated.”) I mean, what are the odds that the next vehicle they flag down would also be full of kung fu rapists?

Instead, they stay there long enough for Brad’s body to begin to be covered by weird scaly patches; for the mutant bunny to attack again, this time without casualties; for Brad to go into temper tantrums, accidentally kill Diane, and run off into the woods; and for Dr. Drake to make it back to civilization and back out into the woods with replacement goons. Why? I guess the shadowing government organization called The Organization thinks that a vaguely radioactive twelve-year-old who’s been raised in the woods is a serious security threat. Too bad they didn’t reckon on — mutant zombie Brad! That’s right, he shows up and kills most of the goons, leaving just Dr. Drake for Mutant Mom to deal with. She does so by cramming him into an empty radioactive waste container and sealing it shut; then she expires from bullet wounds. Which leaves Danny, Ken, and Wendy to finally figure out how to leave the woods and all go back to New York together.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

You may think that that’s a natural stopping place for the story, such as it is. But no — we’re only about fifty minutes into the movie! We now fast-forward a full ten years, which actually helps explain some things, like why Emily gave birth in 1965 to a boy who is twelve in a movie made in 1987. It also explains the uber-80s fashions on the campers, especially Wendy, though why the director allowed her to look so up-to-date trendy in scenes ostensibly set in 1977 is beyond me.

Anyway. Danny is now played by Ciaran Sheehan, and he’s reasonably well-adjusted, except for nightmares which have recently begun. But he does have a bedmate, Lauren (Julie Hays), who helps him stave them off for a while in the old-fashioned way, if you know what I mean. (Note to all you directors out there: If you’re going to have a sex scene, especially an interminably-long one, howsabout you try to make it sexy or something? Just a thought.) He’s working at a soon-to-open health club, run by — Wendy! (Cue too-long aerobics workout scene.) Yes, everyone’s still all chummy; nothing like a camping trip with mutant bunnies and mutant mothers to bond you for life.

But all is not well, because two idiot hunters in the woods decide that a sealed radioactive waste container would be the perfect place to cool their beer. Out pops Dr. Drake, all zombied out but notably well-groomed. And now a psychic connection between him and Danny is drawing Dr. Drake to New York. Danny knows it, too; he blacked out at the moment the canister was opened, and now he’s got mutant skin growing on his leg and hand.

Now, we’ve still got at least twenty minutes to kill before the credits roll, so we get several long scenes of Danny pensively walking the city streets (complete with a muttered, incoherent voiceover monologue). Then we get several long scenes of Dr. Drake shuffling down the sidewalk as if he were a garden-variety homeless guy (complete with his own muttered, incoherent voiceover monologue). And at the top of our scale of inadvertent comedy, we get a, um, tense scene in which Wendy puts away groceries, not knowing that Drake is lurking in the house. She takes food out of the bag… puts them in the cupboard… takes out more food… drops something… picks it up… puts food in the closet… takes more food from the bag… puts it in the fridge… takes out some more… puts it in the cupboard… CAN YOU STAND THE NAIL-BITING SUSPENSE?!?

“Pardon me, do you have Dr. Drake in a can?”

Eventually, though, after all of the stalling, things end in the most unimaginative way: Danny and Dr. Drake finally meet up, fight, and kill each other. And Lauren is left pregnant with the next generation of little mutants. The end.

You know by now that I’m a story guy, which is why a movie like this — with no arc to the proceedings, no reason for (charitably) half of the scenes to exist, with blind alleys and unpursued plot threads — is torture for me. For heaven’s sake, Danny has to be the least cool mutant of all time; during the first scenes, the juvenile version shows he has the abilities to eat live fish, start very small fires when they won’t help anyone, and sense the presence of Mutant Mom. But he is so inactive in the plot, he’s little more than a human McGuffin, the person around whom all the stuff happens.

It’s so disheartening to sit through, it’s almost inconceivable that anyone would have the drive to complete the thing, instead of leaving a pile of incomplete footage sitting unclaimed in a lab somewhere. Perseverance. Or idiocy. Call it like you see it.