Mutant (1984)

Sometimes a film makes an impression on you because of the advertising. Sometimes it makes an impression on you because of the poster. There were a number of films that became must-sees for me in the 1980s because of both. Two of the most memorable were The Return Of The Living Dead and Mutant. The former has remained a firm favourite of mine since I first saw it. As for the latter, well, it seems to be a film that I remember fondly for no other reason than having seen it at a relatively young age. Because it’s not really a very good film, but it still feels like the kind of thing you should watch on VHS.

Wings Hauser and Lee Montgomery are two brothers, Josh and Mike Cameron, who end up in a quiet little town where some recent unpleasantness has occurred, resulting in a number of deaths. Sheriff Will Stewart (played by Bo Hopkins) seems to suspect something isn’t right, but cannot get close enough to the truth.

Directed by John ‘Bud’ Cardos (who also delivered the spider-centric chiller Kingdom Of The Spiders), Mutant is an acceptable time-waster that suffers from too few attempts to make things properly scary, instead turning the third act into more of an action thriller. This isn’t how the film was intended to play out, according to writers Michael Jones and John C. Kruize (Peter Z. Orion is also credited, but Jones and Kruize birthed the whole story). So what you have is an action movie without impressive action set-pieces and a horror movie without enough atmosphere and scares.

Hauser isn’t bad in the lead role, although the script doesn’t play to his strengths. At all. Hopkins fares better as the Sheriff, playing the typical flawed hero, on this occasion it’s someone who has battled for a long time with alcoholism. Jennifer Warren is good as the doctor who starts seeing the full picture as she puts pieces of the puzzle together, Jody Medford is decidedly okay in her role, Montgomery doesn’t make much of an impression, and many of the better supporting players get to pop up with very pale complexions and murderous intentions.

I cannot suddenly stop having a soft spot for Mutant, all thanks to that poster/trailer combo that had me so keen to see it before I had turned ten years old, but it’s not one to revisit if you are hoping for the viewing experience to match your memory. The first half drags, the mystery element never feels very mysterious, and the third act will make you pine for some simpler action movie fun.

5/10

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Ben (1972)

Following on immediately from the end of Willard, this is a mediocre film that suffers greatly in comparison to the greatness that preceded it. Although you still get some dangerous rats, there's very little else here that we got in the first film, from the characters to the quality of acting to the overall tone of the whole thing.

Where Willard gave you a young man that you could root for, Ben gives you a boy who is very hard to like. His name is Danny Garrison, and he's played by Lee Montgomery. Danny is a bit lonely, so that makes him the next obvious choice to be friends with Ben and his large pack of ratty friends. While the police try to track down all of the rodents and kill them off, Danny amuses himself by making up songs about his new friend ("Ben" sounds pretty good when Michael Jackson is singing it, not so much when Montgomery is doing the vocals), playing with marionettes, and not dutifully handing over all rat information to the relevant authority figures.

Directed by Phil Karlson, Ben doesn't really know how it wants to play out. The script, by a returning Gilbert A. Ralston, doesn't help, moving from the finale of the first movie to an uninteresting tale of a boy finding a rat and holding on to him like some kind of fluffy action figure. There are moments of rat mayhem here and there, but they don't feel like anything other than filler in a film where they should be some of the main set-pieces. Hampered by the central idea, Karlson makes everything worse by keeping the whole movie tension-free and strangely chipper.

The cast also don't do anything to help. Well, the human cast anyway. Montgomery isn't very good. In fact, he's pretty awful for most of the movie. Rosemary Murphy and Meredith Baxter are better, playing Beth and Eve Garrison, respectively, and Joseph Campanella, Arthur O'Connell, and Kaz Garas are able to stand around, ponder the rat problem, and look determined about sorting things out.

It may be unfair to compare this so much to the first film, and I get that every film should be judged on its own merits, but the fact that it uses the opening scenes to show the end of the first movie and to then continue the storyline "seamlessly" doesn't do it any favours. Viewers are immediately reminded of just how great Willard was, to then be almost immediately disheartened by how lacklustre this is.

There are pluses. Not many, but they are there. First of all, some scenes do feature an impressive number of rats scrabbling around and over one another. Second, you get to hear Michael Jackson singing over the end credits. Third . . . actually, no, there is no third. There are two main positives to take away from my viewing of this film, and I'll give it a point for each, plus one whole point for the acceptable work of the actors who aren't named Lee Montgomery.

3/10

This is the best way to buy the film (because you get a better film with it).
Americans can get the movie here.

The Midnight Hour (1985)

A horror comedy from the mid-1980s, The Midnight Hour has maintained a small, but loyal, fanbase, and with good reason. It's a cracking little movie, and something that would fit perfectly in any Halloween schedule. If you haven't seen it yet then do give it a go. If you have seen it then do your bit to promote it to everyone else.

The plot is quite simple. A bunch of teenagers decide to pretend to raise the dead one Halloween night, and end up actually raising the dead. Of course, they don't know it at the time. The town starts to be overrun by strange ghouls and evil creatures while the teens focus on enjoying a Halloween party. They can't remain oblivious to the situation forever, but will they realise what's going on before too many people are transformed into creatures of the night?

Written by William Bleich, and directed by Jack Bender, this is an atmospheric movie that makes up for a lack of any real frights with a great sense of fun, and that Halloween spirit poured over almost every main scene. It also gets away with a musical moment that's genuinely enjoyable, despite the fact that it should be eye-rollingly cheesy. Bleich may not have written the best dialogue, but he sets everything up quickly enough and allows for a lot of satisfying character moments throughout. Bender takes the material, and boosts it with great visual style, and plenty of dry ice.

The cast is a good mix of great actors and likable folk, with my particular favourites being Dedee Pfeiffer, LeVar Burton, Kurtwood Smith and Kevin McCarthy. Lee Montgomery is the nominal lead, and does okay, while Shari Belafonte and Jonna Lee stand out as two very different young women hoping to make the most of their Halloween night. And the voice of Wolfman Jack bellowing out of the radio is a huge bonus, as is the quite wonderful soundtrack (seriously, this is a soundtrack that I would buy immediately).

If you like the horror movies of Fred Dekker and Joe Dante, and I can't think of too many people who don't, then this is for you. It has a similiar vibe, both in the way it's respectful to the genre conventions while also playing around with them slightly and also in how it shows darkness seeping into an unprepared small town in America.

A perfect film to watch while sitting in the dark, perhaps accompanied by the flickering light of a jack-o-lantern.

8/10

http://www.amazon.com/Midnight-night-NON-USA-FORMAT-Reg-2/dp/B00B6581IG/ref=sr_1_4?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1401893717&sr=1-4&keywords=the+midnight+hour