The Mutilator (

1984

) ½

What the fuck is a Fall Break? Do they mean that long weekend you get in November to go home for Thanksgiving or the day off for Columbus Day? Because those were the only fall breaks I got while I was still in school. I ask this question because today's film seems to think that Fall Break is something I should have heard of before. For one thing, after a pre-credits hook to draw the audience in, the film opens with a bunch of college kids lamenting the fact that they don't have plans for their upcoming Fall Break, and are just gonna be stuck hanging around campus the whole time. Then the opening credits feature an original song, that extols the simple pleasures of a fall break. Indeed, the original title for this film, before a savvy film executive gave it it's much more lurid and marketable title, was Fall Break. I know this because there wasn't enough money left over to swap out the title card. Now, I'm not a total idiot (I'm like 75% idiot, tops), so I can figure out what Fall Break is just by inference, and a bit of research shows that yes, some schools do give their students a mid-Autumn break from classes. However, I have to wonder why anyone would think this was a compelling name for their slasher movie. Of course, there have been plenty of calendar-based horror movies before but those were about universal holidays like Black Christmas (1974) that are celebrated across the whole country or movies like Friday the 13th (1980) which is widely recognized as a day of ill omens and bad luck. Some, like Halloween (1978) are both well-known holidays and something inherently sinister. Fall Break has neither the familiarity nor the dread, so why go with this for a theme? Especially when Spring Break is a far better option if you want to make a movie about nubile teens getting carved up with a chainsaw. I suspect that the real reason for the setting and title is that the previous year saw the release of a successful boner comedy called Spring Break (1983), and director/writer/produce Buddy Cooper and his accomplice John S. Douglass, decided to knock off the title for some free marketing. Naturally, they couldn't just title his movie “Spring Break” as well without risking copyright infringement so they changed it just enough to get by. I'm glad to see that the spirit of Bert I. Gordon and the tradition of naming your film after a random semi-successful release from the year before lives on!

Before we have to wonder about what a Fall Break is, the film opens up with a real scummy scene that shows a kid, Ed, accidentally shooting his mom while cleaning his father's guns. His dad, Big Ed, handles this about as poorly as you would expect, descending into a drunken bender that lasts the next 10-15 years. It seems that dear old dad was already a bit cracked and this was just the trauma he needed to send him headlong over the cliff to crazyville. Big Ed was always a hunter, and over the years he's hunted just about everything under the sun. It seems like he's gotten into a bit of a Count Zaroff situation though, as there are no animals left in the world that challenge his hunting prowess. So, in his boredom and his madness he decides that the time has come to try his hand out hunting the most dangerous game: Drunk college kids.

Big Ed's sudden conversion to human-hunting couldn't have come at a worse time because after failing to make plans for their Fall Break, Ed and his frigid girlfriend Pam along with their friends Mike, Linda, Ralph and Sue are heading to Big Ed's beachfront condo for the break. It's the usual slasher victim plan of going to a remote location for a bit of drunken debauchery and harmless revelry. Naturally enough, Big Ed starts to hunt them down one by one, employing his considerable skill as a hunter and his small arsenal of weapon to systematically murder his son's friends, until only Ed and Pam are left alive. He also kills the only policeman on the beach for good measure... It wouldn't do to have our formulaic horror movie plot-line interrupted by a premature arrival of the authorities.

This is about as by-the-numbers a slasher as I have ever seen. We got the teenagers heading to a remote location for a contrived reason. We have the killer that hunts them down mercilessly without uttering a word until he is ultimately dispatched by the final girl. The final girl is explicitly a virgin (and kind of unreasonable about it too, going so far as to sleep in the same bed as her boyfriend and expect him to keep his hands off her the whole time. Does she think he's a member of the Children of the Mind of Christ?). About the only wrinkle to the classic formula is that there are a pair of survivors rather than the usual final girl. The mutilator is not going to win any awards when it comes to originality, that is for damn sure! However, if you're the kind that enjoys watching the classic slasher tropes play out, then there are far worse venues to see it in then right here. The gore effects are spectacular, and do a good job of ramping up until they crescendo at the climax where a man is convincingly cut in half. Each kill is unique from the others, and the killer employs a wide variety of gruesome weapons from a fishing gaff, to a battleax, to a re-purposed onboard motor. The variety and the skill with which the kills are depicted prevents the film from getting stale and wearing out it's welcome. In addition to the special effects though, The Mutilator can also boast a striking and eerie visual style. Part of this is just the smart decision to film on a desolate nighttime beach, with inadequate lighting that makes the characters look like they are floating in a darkened void. In general, the exteriors look like a grainy, wash-out version of The Blob (1958). This nifty look aesthetic is further enhanced by a few flashes of directorial brilliance, in particular the long shot that follows the kids out of the beach house and onto the beach, the camera lingering in the doorway as they walk out of frame. It gives you a great sense of isolation and the looming menace.

There are also some unintentional laughs to be had at the film's expense. The whole swimming pool scene with Mike and Linda, for instance, is hilarious. I suspect that in the original script had the young loves skinny dipping in the ocean because it seems pretty absurd to take a trip to a beachfront condo and then go swimming in a pool. However, if the exterior shots of them on the beach are any indication, there was no way that the film crew could properly light a shot in the ocean, so I suspect that at the last minute it was re-written to take place in a pool. This also explains the other absurdity of this scene: how Big Ed manages to sneak into the pool and carry off Linda without Mike noticing a thing. In the ocean with all the crash of the surf and confusion of the darkness, this would be perfectly believable, but here in a still indoor pool, it makes no sense at all. The film tries to cover it by having Mike dive underwater right before the killer strikes but this only makes the situation more absurd. Are we to believe that the killer is so quick he can strike before Mike resurfaces or that Mike has such incredible lung capacity that he can remain submerged for the whole time? It's stupid yes, but it's a kind of stupid that I find enhances B-horror movies rather than detracts from them.

What hurts the movie are it's occasional, and feeble attempts at deliberate humor. Ralph here is the principal vector for these odiously unfunny “jokes,” as he is the designated comic relief character. These jokes are worse than the usual unfunny pranks that slasher movie jokesters normally pull, in that I oftentimes cannot even understand how they are supposed to be funny. When some asshole jumps out in a rubber mask and makes his girlfriend jump, I at least understand why someone would think that is funny. Moreover, they serve the purpose of giving the audience a quick fake-out scare. Ralph's jokes don't even have that going for them. The “best” example of this anti-humor is when the kids are getting ready to head to the condo, Ralph tells everyone that he and Sue won't be able to go because of an issue with Sue's exams. Everyone expresses their disappointment and then a minute later Sue comes out and says she's ready to go. Oh wow! He said something that wasn't true. That's the Joke! Seriously, The Mutilator, stop trying to be funny. All your deliberate jokes put together aren't as funny as the scene where Ed gets out of bed and is still wearing his jeans and belt.