Last night, the Alamo Drafthouse hosted a special one-night showing of an infamous horror film.  It was a film that was first released in 1985, the same year that I was born.  It was a film that was obviously made for a very low-budget, featuring a cast of unknown actors, many of whom appear to have been amateurs.  Much like Savage Weekend, it was a remarkably inept film that somehow managed to work almost despite itself.  It was also a film that featured a scene with a giant fishing hook that made me and my BFFs Evelyn and Amy all go, “AGCK!” at the same time.  The name of the film?  The Mutilator.

That’s right, The Mutilator.  Say what you will about this film, you can’t criticize that title.  When you see a movie called The Mutilator, you know exactly what you’re getting into.  And, though the film does get off to a bit of a slow start, it does ultimately live up to that incendiary title.  There is a lot of mutilation to be found.

(And some it involves getting stabbed in the vagina with a giant fishing hook … AGCK!)

The film also features perhaps the most brilliantly generic theme song in the history of the movies.  It’s called Fall Break and it’s all about teenagers having a good time.  There’s no mention of fish hooks or anything else like that!  Instead, it sounds exactly like something you’d expect to hear in a Crown International high school film, like The Pom Pom Girls or The Beach Girls.  Just listen to the song below and tell me that it isn’t the most insidiously generic thing that you’ve ever heard.

Anyway, as for the film itself, it opens with a kid named Little Ed finding a shotgun and accidentally shooting his mother in the back.  This leads to his father, Big Ed (Jack Chatham), becoming a drunk and declaring that his son will pay for what he has done.

Jump forward several years later and Ed Jr. (Matt Miller) is now in college.  When Big Ed calls and demands that Ed Jr. spend his fall break taking care of their beach house, Ed Jr. is reluctant to take the job.  But then his friends convince him that this would be a great chance for all of them to spend their fall break hanging out on the beach.

When they finally reach the beach house, Big Ed is nowhere to be found.  Ed Jr. figures that Big Ed has already gone back home.  After all, Big Ed’s battleaxe — which he usually leaves hanging on the condo wall — is gone.  “Dad loves his battleaxe,” Ed Jr. explains.

Of course, what Ed Jr. and his amazingly stupid friends don’t realize is that Big Ed is still in the house.  He’s in the basement, surrounded by empty bottles and sleeping with his battleaxe.  When Big Ed wakes up and discovers that his son and his friends are in the condo, Big Ed decides to kill them all.

And that’s pretty much what he does.

The Mutilator was directed by Buddy Cooper and the end credits are full of other people named Cooper.  This was Buddy’s only film and, for the most part, it’s definitely an amateur production.  And yet, that amateurishness works to the film’s advantage.  The start and the middle section of the film are so inept that when the murders start and when they turn out to be shockingly brutal and the gore effects turn out to be surprisingly effective, it’s a total shock.

Along with that fish hook (Agck!), we also get decapitations, drownings, strangulations, pitchforkings, and disembowlement by outboard motor.  Making all of this all the more disturbing is that nobody really struggles or screams and tries to escape while being attacked.  Instead, it’s almost as if they all realize that they’re in a slasher movie and the appearance of Big Ed and his latest weapon of choice almost puts them in a trance.  It’s as if almost all of them have accepted their fate.  And I realize that’s probably more due to inept directing and bad acting than anything else but still, it gives the film a disturbingly dream-like feel.  In the end, The Mutilator becomes one of those films that should not work and yet somehow does.

The Mutilator will be released on Blu-ray by Arrow Video in September.