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 Review archive:  # a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

OGROFF(aka Mad Mutilator) - OGROFF(aka Mad Mutilator)- DVD [Videonomicon - 2016]

OGROFF(aka Mad Mutilator) is truly derange, ultra lo-fi, and bizarre blend of slasher & zombie genres. The film is French, from the early 1980’s, and it’s a real brain frying experience, which moves between shock ‘n’ gore, and puzzlement ‘n’ oddness.  I’m reviewing the region one DVD release of the film which appeared not so long back on Canadian retro focused DVD & VHS company Videonomicon.

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.

Rating: 3 out of 5Rating: 3 out of 5Rating: 3 out of 5Rating: 3 out of 5Rating: 3 out of 5

Roger Batty
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