THE MUTILATOR

THE MUTILATOR DOESN'T KNOW WHAT IT IS, AND THAT'S WHAT MAKES IT SO GOOD

★★★☆☆ (Good for One Viewing)

Director: Buddy Cooper

1984

The Mutilator (originally titled, Fall Break) starts with a boy accidentally killing his mother while cleaning a rifle, a scene that ends with the boy’s distraught father giving his dead wife a drink of whiskey. The opening is not just minimal and poorly acted; it’s also a depressing setup ripe for an origin story about a serial killer. HARD CUT TO-

We’re goin’ on a Fall Break! Oh yeeaaah! (snaps fingers). We hear peppy jukebox music playing as the boy, now in college, sips a beer at a restaurant with his friends. His estranged father must have E.S.P. because he calls his son at the bar and tells him to close up the beach house for the winter as he’s unable to get there to do it himself. After being convinced by his buddies to make this a vacation for all, the protagonist sighs and says, “I gotta bad feeling about this,” and he might have E.S.P. too because he just read the audience’s mind.

As the “college kids” drive down highways to get to the beach house of doom, we’re treated with the jukebox song again. They laugh and cheer as they wave their arms around like normal people do when riding in a convertible.

When the leaves of summer turn red and gold and the football games bring a hint of the cold

Time to get away…

We’ll pack the car with escape in mind, forgetting about classes, leaving books behind

Time to get away…

Empty cottage sittin’ on the shore, tourists all left about a month before, and we’re gonna have a good time…

We’re goin’ on a…a fall break! (snaps fingers) Fall break! Walking hand in hand in the moonlight! Breathing that sweet salt air…

You’re no longer in a slasher flick, you're in a sitcom in ABC’s TGIF lineup, and I’d like to remind you that only moments ago, you saw a kid shoot his mother in the back as she baked a birthday cake.

The original title of Fall Break was obviously chosen because it’s the only holiday not taken, and I’m guessing they couldn’t change the theme music after moving onto The Mutilator because it would be too expensive. A title switch might be confusing you, so I’ll explain. Many horror movies have different titles for multiple reasons (Blood Rage is also known as Slasher; The Horrible House on the Hill is also called People Toys), but I can’t recall one with such a disparity between titles that the brand is completely altered. You’ll get a sore neck watching the tennis match between two different movies—one, a horny comedy, and the other, a teenage massacre.

The Mutilator is a film that’s so bad, it’s good. There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before, nothing you can’t predict, but there’s a charm in watching amateur actors give their all with a script that sounds like it’s still in the first draft. Here’s an actual line: “Hey, look at this a minute.” There are abrupt cuts, editing mistakes, and dad jokes that fall flat. The best example of tone inconsistency is when, in the middle of the carnage, the film speeds up the movements of a guy about to get laid to slapstick Benny Hill music. This is the kind of bad movie that turns you into an anthropologist as you try to figure out why writer/director Buddy Cooper made the choices he did.

When the small group arrives at the lonely cottage, they don’t think anything of the house being ransacked or that a battle-axe is missing from the wall or that the protagonist’s dad has a blown-up photo of a dead guy he ran over with a boat. Our hero’s girlfriend immediately establishes herself as the sensible one by insisting they call the cops, but that’s shot down with no real argument. As you can imagine, their decision is fatal, but as the body count rises, this enjoyable film entertains. The Mutilator is not the only entertainment, stick around for the credits, a perfect end to a movie with multiple personalities.

GENRES: Funny, Serial Killer, Teens in Peril

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