Buried Treasures: MUTANT HUNT (1987)

If you really love BLADE RUNNER (Ridley Scott, 1982), you might not care for MUTANT HUNT (1987), a weirdo copy/tribute shot in five fruitful days for a fistful of nickels and dimes by Tim Kincaid in 1987.  On the other hand, if the prospect of seeing a science fiction film created by a director  usually specializing in gay porn productions under the name of Joe Gage or Mac Larson inspires you, MUTANT HUNT is your film.  Besides, all the actors involved in this joyful mayhem act with all the pathos and realism you would expect from any XXX movie productions.  

The story revolves around "Z", a vicious genetic engineer who spends too much time on videophone and  hatches a shaky plan to alter harmless mutant cyborgs into drug crazed bloodthirsty killing machines. Matt Riker (played with bovine intensity by Rick Gianasi), a mercenary for hire, and his crew of inept companions must track the stoned cyborgs down and destroy them, before they provoke the end of the world as we know it.

One of the stoned cyborg showing his range. Notice the nod to Schwarzenegger's eye-wear in THE TERMINATOR by having the killer robots sports sunglasses.

 

Thanks to MUTANT HUNT, you will learn that the cyborgs of the future will take drugs and have stretchable arms, that the scientists will dress like early-days DEVO members, that everyone will be equipped with a GPS watch, that the FBI will use strip-teasing agents who are bogus karate champions.  In this film, the future of New York city is foreseen as an amalgam of under-furnished apartments, more dark alleys than actual buildings, and a ton of abandoned places with metal trash container on fire. Who has the crappy job of lighting all those metal trash containers at dusk in this brave new world? 

As one may expect, nothing in this feature film is even remotely close to credible; the fights are ludicrous and absurd, the dialogues make no bloody sense and the actors playing the mutant cyborgs all turn out to be both clumsy and stoic. The staging of most scene resumes in letting the camera roll for a long time using long wide shots, not unlike porn. Special effects, of course, cheerily sucks with a chock-full of splatter moments, not to mention the sensationally sub-par makeup effects.  

 

One fine example of the outstanding makeup effects featured in the film. Ed French would move on to better things working later on films like STAR TREK 6 and TERMINATOR 2.

Kincaid aka Gage aka Larson is known to have directed some 79 films, his latest entry being Joe Gage Sex Files Vol.23: Jack's New Job (2017). Between 1986 and 1989, he also directed seven genre films including the infamous Riot on 42nd St. (1987), which can be seen here in its entirety. Mutant Hunt is considered as the second  entry in a Tim Kincaid’s Robot Trilogy comprised of the anticlassic Robot Holocaust (1987),  the unbelievable Mutant Hunt (1987) and the “voodoo” oriented The Occultist (1988).

The French poster for MUTANT HUNT, with its rather subtle moniker; ROBOT KILLER. The Terminator envy flagrantly featured on this version.

In a nutshell, MUTANT HUNT is 75 minutes of festive madness and delightful WTF. Unfortunately, as it is sometimes the case in straight to VHS production, nothing in the film is or even looks as cool as the cover would suggest. Even the DVD is disappointing, as it turns out to be a direct transfer from VHS copy. 

 

A very special thank you to Isor Sinyma from Eyesore Cinema in Toronto (a resilient still surviving, serving, renting and selling Video store) for having drawn my attention to this fabulous dump turnip confit with bacon fat. Oh, and the film is distributed by Full Moon Entertainment and comes with a Charles Band special introduction, so you know what it means…

Review by DJ XL5