Entry 103: The Mutilator (AKA Fall Break-1984)

The Mutilator (AKA Fall Break-1984)

Dir: Buddy Cooper & John Douglass

"By pick, by axe, by sword, bye bye."

   

I'm taking a break from porn for one or two entries.  Even I, your ever-sleazy host, can only watch so many hairy, questionably "attractive" bodies schtupping sweatily without a palette cleanser.  But fear not, perverts (and I use that term with great affection); I'll get to at least one more hardcore adult flick before the month is out.  Tonight, I'm going with something much more highbrow: yet another '80's slasher flick!  So have some premarital sex, wander off into the woods alone and join me in the Basement of Sleaze for The Mutilator!

 In a nifty, Halloween-copy prologue, young Ed accidentally kills his mother with a rifle he is trying to clean for his hunter father's birthday.  His father, Big Ed (Jack Chatham, not to be confused with Everett McGill's Twin Peaks character of the same name), covers up the crime, making it look as if the mother accidentally shot herself.  Years later, Ed has grown into college-aged Matt Mitler (Breeders, Deadtime Stories).  Tasked with winterizing the family cabin by his now-alcoholic father, Ed heads up north with his excruciatingly douchy friends Ralph (Bill Hitchcock)and Mike (Morey Lampley, who looks A LOT like Flash Gordon's Sam Jones), his girlfriend Pam (Ruth Martinez), Ralph's special lady Sue (Connie Rogers) and Mike's squeeze Linda (Frances Raines, Bad Girls Dormitory, Breeders).  The gang cruises some rural highways to the strains of the film's woefully-inappropriate '50's doo-wop-sounding theme song!  Anywho, our collegiate, sweaters-tied-around-their-necks arrive to discover the cabin strangely unlocked and littered with empty booze bottles.  When they discover a FRAMED FUCKING PHOTO of the corpse of a guy Big Ed ran over with his boat sitting on the mantle, Ed explains it away sheepishly ("It was an accident!")...Since they don't immediately leave upon discovering this, these preppy asshats deserve everything that's coming to them.  Unbeknownst to this flock of youthful yupsters, Big Ed is sleeping in a drunken stupor in the attached garage, clutching his prized battle axe (!?) and having fever dreams about violently murdering his son!  When Mike and Linda sneak off to go swimming and fuck, Big Ed drowns Linda and dices Mike with an outboard motor.  When a helpful cop (Ben Moore of Two Thousand Maniacs) shows up, Big Ed decapitates him with the battle axe in an unbelievably gory standout sequence.  While Big Ed hangs the corpses of his victims on hooks, Texas Chain Saw Massacre-style, we're treated to some pretty interminable scenes of the surviving kids playing Monopoly and blind man's bluff and wondering where Mike and Linda have disappeared to.  Shit gets back on track, however, when thoroughly obnoxious Ralph discovers Big Ed's abattoir and gets a pitchfork through the neck!  In the film's most unpleasant scene, Sue gets a giant hook through the crotch and out the stomach, leaving (of course virginal) Ed and Pam to fight off Big Ed...This all leads to a gloriously over-the-top finale, which I won't spoil here...

Y'know, when I have one drink too many, I tend to start talking like Nick Nolte or maybe try to piss on my friends' garage...Big Ed takes things to an ENTIRELY different level!  The Mutilator was one of those VHS tapes whose cover art haunted me as a child and, much to my satisfaction, the film itself pretty much lives up to that lurid illustration of young people screaming while trussed up in front of a hook-wielding maniac.  That's due in large part to the effective makeup effects by Mark Shostrom (Evil Dead II, From Beyond) and Anthony Showe (Sorceress, Chopping Mall).  Directors Cooper and Douglass lack the chops to conjure up any real tension or suspense, but they make up for it by lingering lovingly on the gory visuals.  A regional North Carolina production, the film had a limited release in theaters, but was widely-seen on video due to the then-booming VHS market.  With it's extreme gore and themes of matricide and filicide, The Mutilator joins Joe Zito's The Prowler in ranking amongst the most sadistic and unpleasant of the slasher cycle.  Gorehounds, don't miss this one!

Oh, and hey, I bet one or two of those victims might've survived if they'd been packing an OFFICIAL Basement of Sleaze travel tumbler!  Not only are they made of high-quality materials (no cheap paper inserts here!), they're also dense enough to buy you a few moments if you throw them at an advancing maniac's head!  They're available here:
http://www.redbubble.com/people/michaeljharmon/works/20837346-basement-of-sleaze-products?grid_pos=1&p=travel-mug