#91 - Mutant Hunt (Tim Kincaid; 1987)
By Dan Kinem
Goddamn you Wizard Video and your stunning box art! DAMN YOU TO HELL!! I mistakenly thought that with stunning art like this the movie would be at least slightly decent. The fact I’m now bald because I ripped all my hair out should be an indication of the film’s quality.
Where do I even begin with this wretched plot? It starts with some bonehead cyborg thugs with black sunglasses talking about something no one could ever care about. Z, the bad guy in the movie, gives a drug, euphorion, to a bunch of the cyborgs. This drug causes them to murder people and also makes them telepathic. Ugh. There’s only one man out there to stop them, Matt Riker! Oh shit, a poor man’s stunt double of Kurt Russell’s here to save the day?! (You read that right, he’s not even good enough to just be a poor man’s Snake Plissken, he’s a third-rate, bottom of the toilet seat Kurt.)
Let’s get one thing straight Riker, you’re no Lorenzo Lamas so put a shirt and pants on! He fights in his whitey tighties for at least twenty minutes. I use the term “fight” loosely. This is the most boring exchange of blows I’ve ever seen. I was awake and my eyes still got that annoying sticky goo on them because my body must have just assumed I was sleeping as this was so unexciting. Each move looks like it was done in slow motion. Riker grabs some hand cuffs, cuffs one of the cyborgs up, then slowly back kicks another into a wall. Then they tussle for a few minutes while the handcuffed one chops his hand off in order to break free from his chains. Need I go on? He slowly but surely obliterates them. Yay! Not.
What I don’t understand is why in the hell would the future’s fashion consist of gigantic shoulder pads? You look like fucking Sub Zero from Mortal Kombat. There’s no reason at all for them, if anything, they would get in the way of all these boring as shit fights.
These “cyborgs” are regular guys who wear black sunglasses. How does that make them a fucking cyborg? They attempt to walk around like a robot, but it only comes off like Frankenstein’s Monster has a giant pipe in his ass. Not to mention I’ll never be able to hear the word “cyborg” again without wanting to jump out of a speeding car. They say it every other word. I could not take it. We get the movie is sci-fi, you don’t have to remind us every single word.
"Say 'cyborg' again. Say 'cyborg' again. I dare you, I double dare you motherfucker. Say 'cyborg' one goddamn time!" Insert me filling everyone involved with this movie full of lead.
For at least half the movie’s running time Tim and I argued about which movie is worse, The Carpenter or this. That’s seriously like arguing which shotgun blast hurts more, one to the heart or one to the head. We bickered on and on as Tim tried to tell me this is one of worst movies we ever watched and the fact I picked it makes him sick. You know what I did? I slowly picked him up over my head and then gently sat him down on the ground. Oh wait, I lie. That’s actually the cyborgs weak ass move. I understand they are actors, but please try to make it at least slightly believable. It's the dumbest shit I've ever seen.
Everyone seems to have green blood in the future, I guess. Riker goes on a killing spree looking for Z and boringly kicking some ass. He’s one of the least charismatic heroes I’ve ever seen in a movie. He was a complete cardboard cutout. As I write this sentence I completely forgot him. You get nonstop terrible synth (of course), lasers, and random nonsensical sci-fi explanations on tiny text screens. The cyborgs, besides using their over-the-head-gentle-sit-down move, also know karate. They also smile and show emotion? Ugh. Finally Riker finds Z and they have the most boring and forgettable fight I’ve ever seen. Z ends up melting, then you see a baby laugh, then the last shot is well over a minute long of two tiny dots walking up to the camera from super far away. They get to the camera and I have no clue who it was, then credits. Are you serious?
We have the Wizard Video slipcase. It's pretty faded and even faded the art is amazing. Sadly, most of the Wizard Video releases have stunning artwork with hideous actual movies (like Zombie Lake, Robot Holocaust [same director], Dreamaniac, Psychos in Love, etc.). They have a bunch of "too gory for the silver screen" releases, too. Nice try Charles Band, "too shitty for an actual audience" is more like it. We also reviewed The Boogey Man before, released by them, which wasn't nearly as terrible. Despite this being hands down one of the worst movies ever, though not the very worst we've reviewed, I still want to get every Wizard Video release and if I ever see this not as faded would definitely pick it up again.
Stay away, stay far away. If this is the future, kill me now.
