OGROFF(aka Mad Mutilator) — OGROFF(aka Mad Mutilator)- DVD
The 1983 feature was created( I don’t think one can really say directed) by one N.G. Mount ( aka Norbert Georges Moutier). At the time of the films production Mr Moutier ran both a popular Paris based horror fanzine & a video shop, and OGROFF was his stab( pun intended) at the slasher genre, which of course was still semi-popular in 1983.
The slasher film genre of course has a long history of lo-grade, lo-budget & odd additions, but really OGROFF takes both lo-budget & strange-ness to beyond what even a seasoned horror fan could expect. Firstly the film has just about no dialogue at tall, and instead replaces it with truly bizarre & often out of sink sound effect recordings, over loud field recordings, murky synth dirges, extremely lo-fi sample based sonic experimentation, and all manner of screams, groans & kill tool sounds.
Next is the film made clearly less than the tread of a shoe string, is often jarringly cut, and at times nonsensical - for example about half way though (and for seemingly no reason) it decides to add zombies into the mix.
Lastly there is a really attempt to be as transgressive & OTT as possible; the first victim of the killer is a small child, who eventually gets chopped up into pieces. And the gore effects are certainly very low-grade, but are fairly prevalent & often deranged- for example a mans leg is chopped off then left to gush into his mouth.
The killer (OGOFF) lives in a broken down wooden shack in the French countryside- he wears a lopsided & bedraggled brown gimp mask, a blue woolly hat, and green Wellington boots. And really he attacks pretty much everyone & everything that comes into his domain, for example at one point he’s attacking Citroen 2CV with an axe.
As expected with lo-grade/ zero budget movie making the cast is mostly completely unknown, though in the films last quarter we do get the appearance of Jess Franco regularly Howard Vernon- who plays a Vampire priest!
Extras wise- you get double sided cover artwork( which comes in two variations)- the version we where sent features a monochrome/ lo-fi cover on one side, and more garish, bloody, deranged collage artwork cover on the other. You get a 12 page inlay booklet, featuring writings on the film by Andy Bolus, who is known for his weird & deranged noise/ electro project Evil Moisture , as well as working with Romain Perrot( aka French HNW legend Vomir). And Joseph A Ziemba who co wrote Bleeding Skull!( on Headpress) the definitive resource on 1980s trash-horror cinema.
On the disc it’s self you get two versions of the film- original 1983 version, and re-colourised/ cleaned up 2016 version. You get the option of multi language sub-titles as the films in French, but as mentioned before there is very little dialogue. You also get DVD- Rom content taking in a selection of cover artwork, stills etc.
So if you enjoy very lo-fi, deranged, and truly bizarre horror films then OGOFF( aka Mad Mutilator) really is something you should experience. Though I wouldn't hand around too long as this is fairly ltd with only 600 copies made. As mentioned at the start this review is a Canada /US region one version of the film, so you need to either live in those regions or have a player that will play region one films. To find out more & check out a trailer head over to the Videonomicon site here.