Every once in a great while I absolutely agree with IMDb's rating of a movie...this is one of those times. The Mutilator isn't particularly bad. It's not particularly good. It just sort of is. I know the holiday/sleepaway camp slasher flick was a staple of '80s horror, but some added a little something different to distance themselves from the pack. Unfortunately this isn't one of those movies. This movie kind of has the look and feel of the first Evil Dead movie but without any of the things that made Evil Dead really stand out.
Just looking at the cover of this I was kind of hoping for a real exploitation flick...the kind of movie that uses the story only as a vehicle for more gore. Sadly, no. Oh sure...there's some gore but it's pretty limited and only really comes into play towards the end. For the rest of the movie we're forced to watch a very poor attempt at character development which ends up with you still not giving a crap if anyone lives or dies. And far be it from me to split hairs, but I kind of expected a movie called "The Mutilator" to feature some...oh, I don't know...mutilation. No such luck. Instead it's just a guy killing some of his son's friends in a (I can only assume) drunken rage for an accident that happened 10 years earlier. Can this guy hold a grudge or what? Oh well...it's not exactly time wasted, but there are much better films of the same era/genre out there.
Just looking at the cover of this I was kind of hoping for a real exploitation flick...the kind of movie that uses the story only as a vehicle for more gore. Sadly, no. Oh sure...there's some gore but it's pretty limited and only really comes into play towards the end. For the rest of the movie we're forced to watch a very poor attempt at character development which ends up with you still not giving a crap if anyone lives or dies. And far be it from me to split hairs, but I kind of expected a movie called "The Mutilator" to feature some...oh, I don't know...mutilation. No such luck. Instead it's just a guy killing some of his son's friends in a (I can only assume) drunken rage for an accident that happened 10 years earlier. Can this guy hold a grudge or what? Oh well...it's not exactly time wasted, but there are much better films of the same era/genre out there.