Yes! THIS exactly what I feel BAD MOVIE MONDAY is all about. This is why I spend hours and hours trying to find the craziest and weirdest stuff to show to my friends. MUTILATIONS is a ridiculous and batshit insane movie about a group of college students investigating cattle mutilations and being stalked by an alien. No bad movie is ever more entertaining than one made by people who legitimately yearn to make a good movie but simply don’t have the skills or money to pull it off. This is all of that and more. So much more.
Quick Recap! When COVID shut down everything in early 2020, I started an online bad movie night get-together with some friends that we eventually dubbed “Bad Movie Monday”. The premise was simple: We’d torture each other every Monday with the worst trash we could find, tell a few jokes, cheer each other up, and in the process maybe discover some weird obscure cinema that we might never have seen any other way. This series of reviews will feature highlights of those night so you can all share in the fun and maybe get some ideas for your own movie night.
I want to make something very clear before I go on. Sometimes I may come off like I don’t like these movies. I mean, the reviews are titled BAD Movie Monday after all, and I do crack quite a few jokes. However, if I’m bothering to write a review about something then it’s because I love it. Trust me, I wouldn’t waste hours of my life writing about movies I hate. I’m too old and too cranky for that anymore. The “Bad” in Bad Movie Monday is more playful than critical. Yes, these movies can be a bit of a chore to get through. Often the only thing that keeps me going is the fact that I’m laughing like an idiot, but so what? Is that any kind of reason not to love this shit? Just because it’s terrible???
Please.
A movie should be an experience, not something that just helps pass the time because you’re bored and you don’t know what else to do with yourself. MUTILATIONS is the kind of movie that makes you feel like you’re participating in the process of its creation, and you learn a lot about moviemaking by watching it.
In fact, I legitimately think I’ve learned more about filmmaking from guys like Larry Thomas, the guy who directed MUTILATIONS, than from Stanley Kubrick. I’m not kidding. Kubrick was a genius of course, but it’s easy to be a genius with a huge budget, the best actors in the business, and unlimited takes. Larry Thomas had thirty bucks, whoever showed up on the day of the shoot, and a maximum of two takes per shot. So he had to work with he had, which more often than not wasn’t much. I respect the hell out of that.
What does the back of the VHS box say???
STRANGE aerial sightings and mysterious cattle mutilations have been taking place in a small farming community. Enter Astronomy Professor Jim McFarland and a group of outsiders and we begin a journey into SCIENCE FICTION and HORROR. Along the way we meet the locals: A feisty restaurant owner, Buck Jenson, and gun-toting rancher, Charley Hill. Then we meet obsessed recluse, Oliver Matson, who knows the secrets of the valley and it’s HORROR. Elaborate special make-up effects and stop-motion animation create a horrifying mood in this exciting fifties flavored science fiction tale of Aliens invading earth.
This is a fairly accurate synopsis. It doesn’t promise too many things it can’t deliver, and for the most part it describes what happens in the movie. The only correction I’d offer is that this movie does not have elaborate special effects but rather ambitious special effects. They’re not super great or anything, you won’t think Rick Baker or James Cameron secretly worked on the movie, but the SFX guys are giving it their all and there are a LOT of effects scenes.
Okay, onto my favorite part of the review! Ten things that went through my mind as I watched this movie:
#1 – Narration by Deep Voice Guy. Soundtrack by Generic Synthesizer Guy. Don’t get me wrong, I think it sounds amazing and I am absolutely in love with both.
#2 – The film is only seventy minutes long and knows when and how to keep things moving at a brisk pace. That alone makes it more watchable than most Hollywood films.
#3 – Acting? Hahahaha! No… we don’t have that here.
#4 – If you took a shot of tequila every time an actor read their lines from an off-screen piece of paper you’d be blasted in about five minutes and dead within thirty.
#5 – I am SO glad they shot this film on a 16mm newsreel camera rather than Video Tape. That way it looks low budget, but not cheap, if that makes any sense.
#6 – The lighting and cinematography are surprisingly good. Sam Raimi and Dario Argento have nothing to worry about, but this is leagues ahead of some other far most costly horror movies.
#7 – I don’t know if it’s the dialogue or the performances, but the script sounds like was WRITTEN by aliens. Then again, much of this weirdness was probably quite intentional and meant to be comedic.
#8 – When in doubt, Claymation. If still in doubt, MORE Claymation.
#9 – Gore? Yes please!
#10 – I think my takeaway from this film is that, even though it’s arguably terrible, the filmmakers have nothing to be ashamed of. They gave it their all and that means something.