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Mutant
List Price: Unknown [Buy now and save at Amazon]
"Mutant" -- oh, back to the days of one-word horror movie titles. As the title suggests, similar to such refreshingly original titles as "Creature", "Demons", and another Edward L. Montoro production, "Grizzly", the monsters-du-jour are mutants, spawned from the unlikely combination of locals from a small town and ineptly-disposed-of toxic waste from New Era Corp. the obligatory evil corporation ("Hey, you got toxic waste on my redneck!" "You got redneck on my toxic waste!"). Plot-wise, "Mutant" is far from groundbreaking, but hey...it had redneck zombies years before "Redneck Zombies". It's sort of a zombie flick without the zombies; the mutants here are undead and feast on humans, but instead of eating flesh, the mutants suck life from people through slits in their hands. As a result, the gore quotient is extremely low. The zombie scenes are actually pretty intense, even in their infrequent appearances in the first hour of the movie. In the first half hour, the zombies are rarely seen, and their attacks are individual and sudden. Later, their attacks are longer, more disturbing, and slightly more frequent. The last half hour, though, is a seemingly endless barrage of awesome zombie onslaughts, and I apologize in advance for using 'awesome' in my review. "Mutant" stands out among most of the zombie schlock of the '80s enough for me to recommend it, and Elite's nice presentation makes that recommendation even easier to make.
Video: My introduction to "Mutant" a couple years ago was from an extremely negative review under its original title, "Night Shadows", at badmovies.org (meaning, of course, that I had to get it). A repeated complaint there was about the exceptionally dark and muddy quality of the VHS release. Maybe badmovies.org webmaster Andrew Borntreger would have felt better about the film if he'd seen the great job Elite did with this 1.85:1 16x9-enhanced transfer. The only recurring problem is light grain, which is rarely distracting with the exception of a few shots. There's quite a bit of smoke, and there was thankfully only one instance where I noticed any pixelization because of it. For a film shot in 1983 for $2.5 million, I wasn't expecting the transfer to appear as sharp and colorful as this. Another nice-looking release from Elite.
Audio: Equally spiffy is the Dolby Surround track. The score, one of Richard Band's better works, roars from the speakers without overpowering the dialogue, which is free of hiss and distortion. Even if it was just a remix of a mono source, I was pleased...an above-average effort.
Supplements: The only supplement is the trailer, which is actually one of the better trailers I've seen from this time period.
Conclusion: If you made it past the plot summary without closing your web browser, you'll probably enjoy "Mutant". The $24.95 MSRP is pretty easy to swallow, and it can be shipped online from several stores for under $20. Highly recommended.
Video: My introduction to "Mutant" a couple years ago was from an extremely negative review under its original title, "Night Shadows", at badmovies.org (meaning, of course, that I had to get it). A repeated complaint there was about the exceptionally dark and muddy quality of the VHS release. Maybe badmovies.org webmaster Andrew Borntreger would have felt better about the film if he'd seen the great job Elite did with this 1.85:1 16x9-enhanced transfer. The only recurring problem is light grain, which is rarely distracting with the exception of a few shots. There's quite a bit of smoke, and there was thankfully only one instance where I noticed any pixelization because of it. For a film shot in 1983 for $2.5 million, I wasn't expecting the transfer to appear as sharp and colorful as this. Another nice-looking release from Elite.
Audio: Equally spiffy is the Dolby Surround track. The score, one of Richard Band's better works, roars from the speakers without overpowering the dialogue, which is free of hiss and distortion. Even if it was just a remix of a mono source, I was pleased...an above-average effort.
Supplements: The only supplement is the trailer, which is actually one of the better trailers I've seen from this time period.
Conclusion: If you made it past the plot summary without closing your web browser, you'll probably enjoy "Mutant". The $24.95 MSRP is pretty easy to swallow, and it can be shipped online from several stores for under $20. Highly recommended.
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