Past Misdeeds: Mutant Species (1995)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.

A very special forces team under two guys named Hollinger (Leo Rossi) and Trotter (Ted Prior, director David A. Prior's brother and frequent leading man) is dispatched to salvage a mysterious something from an unmanned rocket that was bound for the moon but crashed down in the woods of Georgia. The special forces men don't actually know where they are dropped, nor what the actual goal of their mission might be, which, if you ask me, seems not very practical.

Soon, said mysterious something turns out to be a bio weapon in form of "mutant, virulent DNA" developed on behest of evil spy Frost (Powers Boothe). Secretly, Frost has ordered Hollinger to kill his troop once the bio weapon is secured, which he does, or rather attempts, for Trotter and a guy who might as well be called Deadman escape. Unfortunately for Trotter and his red shirt buddy, their kill-happy former colleague isn't just out to kill them but has also been infected with the DNA, which is the sort of thing that tends to happen when you just grab biohazard materials without protective measures. The stuff gives Hollinger awesome sniffing abilities but also makes him pretty difficult to kill and slowly but surely turns him into a guy in a rubber monster suit with a particularly large doglike head.

As if that weren't enough trouble for one protagonist, Trotter also has to survive the interest of a troop of goons sent in by Frost to just kill everyone in the woods. Help comes in form of a squatter (Denise Crosby) and her survivalist kid brother (Grant Gelt), as well as - on the home front - from General Devereaux (Wilford Brimley), Trotter's commanding officer, who does not like Frost's way to go about things at all. Let's just hope Trotter can kill the monster before someone nukes the place from orbit.

Mutant Species' director David A. Prior - whom you might know from his director/producer/writer role with Action International Pictures - was involved in quite a few attempts to transfer the local production model for the creation of independent genre movies from the times of the drive-in movie into that of the direct-to-video and direct-to-DVD-era. Prior's films usually have a distinctly Southern US flair, with no attempts made to hide the "local" in local talent. For a time, Prior and his Alabama-based gang must even have been financially successful, because - local cheap filmmaking or not - you don't get to direct more than twenty movies during the course of ten years without bringing in any money.

The film at hand was made right at the end of Prior's directing spree. I'd suspect a changing video market to be the reason for Prior's following (mostly) lack of productivity. Fortunately for people with dubious tastes (like me), the mid 2000s brought him back to making even cheaper movies, so the Prior story even has a kind of happy end, but that's not really relevant when talking about Mutant Species.

What is relevant is that by 1995, Prior had turned into quite an adept director of this type of low budget genre mishmash, a development his earliest films (see Sledgehammer), which were as odd as that duck Americans are always going on about, don't naturally suggest. Here, Prior has turned into the kind of director who knows how to pace a film, how to get the most out of fine yet limited locations, how to make things explode, and how much of a sense of self-irony a low budget movie can bear without becoming a self parody.

There's a sharp sense of (very odd) humour running through the proceedings, particularly the dialogue and the spirited casting of Wilford Brimley of all people as the grumpy general in the eye-killing shirt. The surprisingly effective self-consciousness of the script actually reminds me of the sort of thing John Sayles would have written for Roger Corman fifteen years earlier, though nothing here is quite as sharp or clever as in a Sayles script, and the politics are rather more Southern.

Prior also gets some fine performances out of his actors. Brother Ted (what is it with directors and their actor brothers named Ted, by the way?) is surprisingly laid back compared to the scenery-chewing madness I like and know him best for, but his bland semi-action hero good guy underacts to leave enough room for basically everyone else. For as long as he's on screen Leo Rossi really throws himself into the role of a guy slowly turning into a slimy dog monster dude, with all the sniffing (there is one of the great sniffing sequences in cinema in Mutant Species) yet not much of the howling that suggests; even without any howling, however, Rossi's approach to his role seems appropriately insane. Powers Boothe gives the very mid-90s evil guy in a black suit trading in secrets and evil with real glee, as you'd wish for from a bad guy whose master plan includes developing a method to turn his own soldiers into killer mutants that don't care who they kill, and attempting to let his creation run wild in the woods of Georgia, because what could possibly go wrong? Wilford Brimley plays exactly the same role he always plays, just that his grumpy yet kind-hearted grandfather guy just happens to be a gruff general. That's what I call inspired casting.


Of course, I basically eat this sort of thing up, so the mileage sane people can get out of Mutant Species and other Prior movies will most probably be quite a bit less joyfully overwhelming than my experience with the film. As usually, sane people miss out on the best things.

In short: Mortuary (2005)

The Doyle family – mother Leslie (Denise Crosby), teenage son Jonathan (Dan Byrd) and little daughter Jamie (Stephanie Patton) – move into some god-forsaken small town so that mum can fulfil her mortician dreams. Too bad their brand spanking new mortuary is actually a ruin and that strange stuff seeps from the septic tank. And let’s not even start on the blood-drinking fungus turning people into fungus zombies.

I’m usually giving Tobe Hooper’s later works a bit more of a chance than most tend to do, but when confronted with a confounding piece of crap like Mortuary, even my tolerance goes out the window. I do assume this isn’t actually supposed to be a pure horror film but rather a horror comedy – or Hooper’d have to be stupid, which he clearly isn’t. Unfortunately, it’s a horror comedy whose every single joke isn’t funny, and that also takes ages to get going.

Now, in other films you’d suspect the slowness of the first hour or so had something to do with the film building mood and character, but since everybody’s a cardboard cut-out, and the mood is mostly childish, there’s only boredom coming through. Afterwards, it’s thirty minutes of kids screeching while people in bad zombie make-up waddle around or puke at them, with no second of tension, fun, humour, or whatever. Despite some awkward attempts at the grotesque, the proceedings feel painfully harmless too, with nothing to even vaguely keep one’s interest, wasting the generally decent potential of what could be a tale of kids not being able to trust grown-ups anymore (with added fungus zombies).

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,comedy,tobe hooper,dan byrd,denise crosby

On Exploder Button: Mutant Species (1995)

I like David A. Prior movies and I don't care who knows it! It's not just because Prior and his Alabama posse were out to use the old local filmmaking philosophy to conquer the video market, it's because Prior very often made highly entertaining movies.

Case in point is Mutant Species, the best film about a special forces guy turning into a slimy, dog-influenced monster ever made. Just click on through to this week's column, and start believing.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,sf,horror,action,reviews,david a. prior,ted prior,powers boothe,wilford brimley,denise crosby,other places

Eliminators (1986)

When mad mastermind Abbott Reeves (Roy Dotrice, whose British accent clearly denotes his evilness) doesn't need the pilot he turned into a memory-less cyborg he dubbed Mandroid (Patrick Reynolds) for his time travel experiments anymore, he tries to kill him. Fortunately for Mandroid, Reeves main scientist Takada (Tad Horino) has developed a conscience and helps the human garbage can escape, paying for it with his life.

Takada has given Mandroid (does it show how much I like writing "Mandroid"? Mandroid!) the name of a Colonel Hunter as his best bet for help taking Reeves down. Colonel Hunter turns out not to be a brilliant military lawyer but highly competent scientist Nora Hunter (Denise Crosby). Nora is shocked when she realizes that Reeves has used some of her inventions for EVIL. So off she, Mandroid and her little surely not R2D2-inspired scout robot that can turn into a ball of light go to Reeves base somewhere - and I quote - "in the wilds of Mexico" to kick evil mastermind ass.

They have to fight through evil lesbian river guides, a tribe of Neanderthals, Reeves's security force that isn't led by Richard Lynch but by a fat guy named Ray (Peter Schrum) who is fond of lumberjack shirts and a suspected escapee from a Burt Reynolds movie, and their own lack of a decent plan.

Fortunately, the duo also makes new friends in form of roguish river guide Harry Fontana (Andrew Prine channelling his inner Han Solo), and Takada's son Kuji (Conan Lee) who just happens to be a badass ninja. But will even the awesome power of cyborg, scientist, rogue and ninja combined be enough once Reeves - as part of his plan to go back in time to ancient Rome and become god king of the world - has turned himself into Cyber Cesar?

I know I'm beginning at least two thirds of my write-ups of Charles Band productions that don't feature dolls, puppets, or muppets with declarations of happiness regarding their absence, but you know what? Eliminators does not feature dolls, puppets or muppets, and I am pretty happy about it. Even better, Eliminators is that rare exploitation film that keeps the promises its marketing material makes, as it does in fact feature a team of a cyborg, a mercenary, a scientist and a ninja in an awesome attempt to try and milk (at least) four slightly different exploitation markets at once, just as its poster promises.

It's awe-inspiring to say the least. Of course, that sort of character mix can only lead to a movie full of classical comic book silliness (a fact the film even jokes about) with cartoonish humour, cartoonish characters, and a decidedly cartoonish plot. Naturally, if you go into a movie like Eliminators expecting anything else, the joke's on you right from the start.

I for my part was mostly surprised by how generous director Peter Manoogian provides all the semi-thrills his budget allows for, with quite a few not exactly riveting but enthusiastic fights (when your only vaguely talented on-screen fighter is Conan Lee, you have yourself a problem; let's not even start talking about him not being Japanese), equally enthusiastic action scenes, and a whole lot of moments of gratuitous strangeness. While the former two elements make for a pleasant enough watch, it's the last which truly brings Eliminators charms to the surface. This is, after all, a movie that shows Roy Dotrice donning a plastic version of the Iron Man armour without a helmet but with a red cape as part of his plan to go back in time and conquer Rome all on his own, and a film whose Mandroid is a) called "Mandroid" and b) in possession of an awkwardly awesome tank "mobility unit" (off go his legs and on goes the rest of him onto a mini-tank thing) that to describe properly goes beyond my abilities and that will turn out to be good for nothing but making him less mobile.

You can't argue with that (nor with a tribe of Neanderthals that has invented whooshing powder and bow and arrow), and really, why should you? Eliminators is a movie that enjoys its own cheapness but isn't lazy about including everything it can afford, leaving a boy like me with the pleasant impression of having watched a film made by people who may make horrible nonsense but who also care about making said nonsense as entertaining to their audience as they can.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,peter manoogian,andrew prine,denise crosby,patrick reynolds,roy dotrice,conan lee,adventure,comedy,reviews