Mutant Hunt - Mutant Hunt(DVD) [Full Moon - 2018]Mutant Hunt is a cheesy splat of 80’s sci-fi/ action Schlock- with a paper-thin budget, tacky effects like stretching arms ‘n’ melting cyborg's heads- it features black shoulder padded bad guys, dumb heroes, and sloppy kung fu fighting. Originally released in 1987, here we have a recent(ish) region free DVD of the film as part of Full Moons Grindhouse collection. Mutant Hunt was written & directed by Californian Tim Kincaid- who has between now & the early 1970s seventy eight credits to his name, and he’s put out low-grade horror/ sci-fi sleaze like the alien raping Breeders, micro-budget action pictures, softcore/ possible hardcore, & all manner of exploitation fare. The film was originally released on Wizard Video, hence why it’s turning up on Full moon.
The film's plot is based in near future NYC, and finds a cheapy maniacal & greased back villain putting a psycho-sexual drug into a group of cyborgs- who all have crew cuts, shades & wearing button up black shirt with smart trousers. Into the story comes slack mouthed hero Matt Riker- played by Rick Gianasi, who is clearly reading his lines off a cue-card. Ricker teams up with a small kung fu-ing Hispanic man, and a rather unbelievable stripper assassin to track down the three rogue cyborgs before they terrorizer & kill the denizens of NYC's backstreets.
Mutant Hunt is mostly filmed in a series of apartments, and vacant offices- from time-to-time we venture out into night-time New York, and later scenes play out in a rundown fairly futuristic looking concert building. The addition of a psycho-sexual drug may suggest sleazy bound attacks/ kills- but really all the lumbering cyborgs do is pin people to walls & thrown them around, we do get a few off screen/ in shadow kills- like heads ripped off- along the way we get fairly neat stretching arm effects, gradually face meltings, and fairly creepy Terminator-like half skinned cyborg talking heads. As you’d expect it’s full of dumb & silly dialogue, it’s often badly lit, and the acting goes from the bad, amusing & over-the-top- so the whole thing whizzes by in a most entertaining & silly manner.
As with the other releases in the Full Moons Grindhouse collection the print here is pretty much VHS quilty- with slight tiding up/ balancing goes on, so don’t expect a Vinigure Syndrome like a job here…but if you're ok with that classic VHS griminess, then you’ll be ok. With all of the films in the series we get the same extras- there’s an eight-minute featurette from Charles Band discussing the general concept behind the Grindhouse series, a trailer for the early releases in the series, and a general selection of Full Moon trailers.
In Conclusion, if you enjoy ultra low-budget Sci-fi cheese feasts like Creepozoids or Shocking Dark- that liberally rip-off more known/ cult Sci/Fi films like Terminator, Robocop, Aliens, etc- you’ll have a lot of fun with Mutant Hunt....I'll most certainly be checking out more of Mr. Kincaid filmography!. Roger Batty
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