Mutant Hunt (1987)

Starring Rick Gianasi, Mary Fahey, Ron Reynaldi, Taunie Vrenon, Bill Peterson, Mark Umile, Stormy Spill, Doug Devos, Warren Ulaner, Mark Legan, Asie Kid, LeeAnne Baker

Directed by Tim Kinciad

Expectations: Low, but I hope for some good B-Movie fun.

On the general scale:

On the B-Movie scale:

Mutant Hunt is another Tim Kincaid joint that delivers on the promise his previous films Breeders and Robot Holocaust built up: shitty plots with shitty acting. Where Breeders had little to redeem itself (unless ridiculously gratuitous nudity or women bathing in alien cum is your thing), Robot Holocaust was actually enjoyable in its shittiness. Thankfully, Mutant Hunt continues the upward trend and is easily the most enjoyable Tim Kincaid movie I’ve seen yet. That’s not to say it isn’t a piece of shit though.

I’m really not capable of summarizing the plot of Mutant Hunt. I seriously zoned out every time the characters spoke; my mind compelled me to think of something else every time they started speaking, something of a fail-safe system I guess. What I was able to pick up between battles with my mind dealt with an evil genius with a bunch of cyborg mutants that have been given a drug that makes them find pleasure in killing a human every six hours. After one robot mutant rips the head off of another (the movie has my full attention at this point), the fleet of mutants goes out on the street to kill some mortals. Somehow a few people band together to hunt said mutants, but I was unable to grasp why or how they were connected to the story overall. I know they were at some level, but like I said, I couldn’t fight that fail-safe on my brain.

So if the plot is nearly non-existent what fills most of the runtime you ask? Kick-fucking-ass, amazingly shitty, phenomenal karate fights, that’s what! I might get a bigger kick out of these than the average Joe because of my affinity for martial arts films, but I absolutely loved every moment of on-screen fighting Tim Kincaid decided to grant me. Every fight is a comedy tour de force with more roundhouse kicks than even Chuck Norris could dream of throwing in one film.

The first major fight scene comes in the apartment of our main hero Matt Riker (Rick Gianasi, who was also Sgt. Kabukiman in Troma’s classic flick). Matt is aroused out of bed by a girl who seeks his help in defeating the mutants chasing her. Good thing Matt is prepared for war; he literally sports an entire arsenal of weapons from around the world on the four brick walls of his dwelling. He also fights off the two robot mutants wearing only his tight-fitting briefs, fulfilling the bullet point that every Tim Kincaid has to have a “dude in his underwear” scene. Inexplicably with all these weapons around him, his first instinct is to grab the pair of handcuffs on the table and shackle one of the mutants to the radiator. While he fends off the other one with one lackluster kick after another, the handcuffed mutant stretches his arm like Mr. Fantastic to grab a machete off the wall and then hack off his own hand.

Later we’re introduced to Matt’s buddy (and fellow roundhouse kick practitioner) Johnny Felix played by Ron Reynaldi. Johnny isn’t just a fan of the roundhouse, he takes that shit to new levels of awesome. Have you ever seen a half roundhouse to the back of a mutant’s knee? Neither had I, but after experiencing it, I can safely say it was something I needed in my life. At one point he roundhouse kicks two mutants to the face with one kick, and then stomps on their heads after they hit the ground! You can’t argue with his martial cred at that point; the guy is just flat-out tough as nails. In addition to the wonderful fights and their “incredible” choreography, every time a fight starts the same synth track plays over the soundtrack. There’s a lot of fights in this, so every time I heard the opening notes I struck a big-ass grin because I knew I was about to receive solid gold bars of B-Movie joy.

mutant_hunt2 — After jumping on the mutant’s heads, Johnny Felix needed desperately to find a shoe brush.

Amidst all the fights there’s also a pretty fair amount of gore and low-budget FX. I gotta say, the FX are really good for a film of this budget and really add a lot to the experience. My favorite is the mutant that gets left for dead in Matt’s apartment early in the film. Slumped in the corner, he slowly disintegrates over the course of the film until the third act. He comes back to life at this point, but he’s missing his jaw and he’s a serious candidate for some experimental skin grafts. The guy’s got a heart of gold though. His drug-fueled murderous tendencies abated for now, he offers his assistance to help hunt the remaining mutants, or some shit. Like I said, I didn’t really pay attention to the dialogue. In any case, the FX look great on this character, as do all the severed hands, green squirting goo, mutants punching through concrete walls and decapitations. I’m positive the FX budget was where most of the money went so it’s nice to get such pleasing results.

The finale features all three of our heroes each pitting their shitty karate against some mutants. The scenes are crosscut, but in the loosest sense of the term as the editing does nothing to increase the tension or the feeling of danger. At this point it’s a little late to get critical of the filmmaking though. What the film’s finale lacks in traditional storytelling, it makes up for with a ton of roundhouses and one of the most hilarious jump kicks I’ve ever seen, so that should be enough to satisfy.

Mutant Hunt is a piece of shit film, for sure, but one that packs in so many horribly awesome karate fights and really fun, good quality gore that it was an absolute blast to watch. I even watched the finale twice I enjoyed it so much. This is definitely high-level B-Movie watching, so anyone who enjoys such things should get a full-spin, roundhouse kick to the face out of this one. Mutant Hunt was recently released to DVD for the first time by Full Moon as a part of their Grindhouse series, so if you don’t have Netflix Instant, that’s the easiest way to check this one out.