Mutant Hunt

Mutant Hunt

United States - 1987

Director – Tim Kincaid

Wizard Video (distributed by Lightning Video), 1985(?), VHS

Mutant Hunt is one of the eight or so films helmed by Tim Kincaid during his brief detour from adult film. That story is far more interesting than the plot of this film, but I digress.
An evil scientist named simply “Z” turns on his not so evil coworkers and sics his cyborgs (also known as mutants in this film, keep in mind, the terms are interchangeable.) on them, but they escape. They find a mercenary, Riker and his pal Felix, who will help them kill the evil cyborgs. Another scientist meanwhile, a rogue, named Domina is cooking up her own cyborg scheme for her own reasons; she’s a Euphoron junkie.
Euphoron? What’s that in English? They kill for pleasure stupid, ever since the Space Shuttle Sex Murders.
In the future, all the apartments, (do they have those?), have hardwood floors and baseboard moulding. At least except for Riker’s fly joint, a second floor walk-up (boxing gym?) with jagged whitewashed brick walls that have carefully positioned nails laden exclusively with melee and missile weapons. It might be hard to call out Chekhov’s Gun here, because Riker does use a few of these weapons on the spot while wearing tighty whities, but there’s plenty enough that don’t get used either, and none of it after this one scene.
Felix, Riker's sidekick is called on his implanted earphone by Darla using a touch-tone pay-phone only to spend the rest of the movie (not only as the quasi spastic awe inspiring fight choreographer) looking like he’s hoping this film will bolster his burgeoning (mid 80’s NYC) rap career. Despite the use of laser guns in the first 10 minutes of the film, everything else is strictly lo-quality grappling.


At Darla’s converted basement/loading dock crib, which is furnished with 70’s laminated wood furniture, she and Riker knock the dust off, proving my childhood memory of this movie to be at least partially false at least on the extremely brief nudity front.
Hey, the gore effects in this baby are pretty damn good for being on the cheap, hell there were movies coming out in the mid 90’s that wished they had effects this good. That little tag on the box cover is obviously exaggeration, but what with all the gooey mutants and dismemberment it aint bad. I still gotta give it up to Mister Kincaid though for successfully hanging all the rest of this trash on that.

Here is the text of my original review of Mutant Hunt published roughly in 1997, in my zine “Sorority Slasher Massacre on Planet B” which reviewed only tapes that were available for rent in the local shop "The Video Stop":

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT rent this movie, under any circumstances. This is the most horrible movie I‘ve ever seen. The plot stinks, the acting reeks, the sets suck. The whole thing seems like a porno movie with a wannabe premise. But there isn’t even any nudity! Ugggghhhhh this was so horrible. Gag gag gag.
Well, wait a minute, if you like super horrible movies, or you wanna suffer, this might be good for you. But so might a bullet to the head. Plan 9 From Outer Space looks like an epic classic masterpiece whatever compared to this crap! (I have since also changed my opinion of Plan 9)

In 2009, I honorably submit an appeal to my former self to commute my death sentence to a sentence of suffering, through Tim Kincaid movies to which I now happily submit.

Oddly, or not so perhaps, I was right about one thing way back before (my hippie parents allowed me to have) the internet, Mutant Hunt does come across as a porno without the fuckin’. Tim Kincaid is the maestro of early gay porn from back in the mid 70’s, properly revered and honored in the community. Mutant Hunt was part of a three year period of non-adult filmmaking which was underwritten at least in part by Charles Band of Full Moon Features. Much of the music from Mutant Hunt and other of Kincaid’s “standard” features was lifted directly from Richard Bands scores for Full Moon movies. In any case, Kincaid returned to porn in 2001 to fill those empty sets with sweaty friction. In the meantime he did leave a legacy of "straight" trash for us to suffer through happily (including a film hilariously titled "Breeders". Get it?).

Watch the Mutant Hunt trailer at Cult Trailers
My friends at Direct to Video Connoisseur have a great review as well.

Here's a Dutch video cover courtesy of Rolfens DVD with the same artwork. I think it's awesome that artist C. Winston Taylor made sure the mutant/cyborgs shirt had a sleeve that extended along with his arm, and that the incredibly voluptuous victim has camel toe.

Mutant Hunt Promo Art

Thanks to an extra wide reproduction of the poster artwork for Mutant Hunt in the new book Destroy All Movies, I finally noticed the signature of C. W. Taylor on this amazing piece of video history. It also led me to Tim Kinkaid's other Charles Band produced sci-fi gem Robot Holocaust which, sure enough, features poster art by Taylor. Jeeze, how did I miss this?
Follow the link HERE to my old post about the artist, and HERE to my post about Mutant Hunt, a film that has haunted me for over a decade.

Ubiquitous Punk Lady

If you watch splatter movies from the 80's then you'll recognize this face, or more likely, the haircut. This woman was the ubiquitous punk rocker that gave so many low budget horror and sci-fi films legitimacy.
I don't know who she is, I can't figure it out by looking at the cast list for any of the movies she's in because I can never remember more than one or two at a time.
For all I know, this is a mystery that has long ago been solved by other movie nerds. Not me. Hell she probably has her own website.

The above image was captured from Tim Kincaids Mutant Hunt, a film in which Punk Lady has a mystery role. I have no idea what her purpose in the plot actually is.

Here she is in Street Trash about to set a homeless guy on fire, and later getting booked at the police station.

And making an ass of herself as one of the freaks in a Hitler moustache in Troma's Class of Nuke 'Em High

Anyway, if you know of any other movies she's in, or who the hell she is let me know and send an image please.

The ongoing list of movies featuring Ubiquitous Punk Lady:
Slammer Girls
Mutant Hunt
Street Trash
Class of Nuke 'Em High

C. Winston Taylor

In my recent post about Warriors of the Apocalypse I noted the sheer awesomeness of the box art that accompanied the totally wacky movie therein. The main thing that appealed to me about this cover in particular is its concise encapsulation of the ideology behind men's pulp adventure magazines of the Cold War period. The adventure pulps (and their close siblings the sex pulps) have justifiably garnered their own attention both for sociological and artistic reasons.

On the latter subject it seems to me that the VHS box art, and prior promotional materials from which most of it was derived (in the pre-Straight To Video era) are direct descendants of the pulp tradition. The themes are virtually the same, horror, adversity to evil, sex and machismo, and the coarse appeal to masculinity that is as obvious as the list I just made. Stories popular in trash magazines were easily as popular in trash movies, it just required a new marketing framework. The poster and box art is without a doubt the post-video continuation of exploitation media promotion.
Hence my fascination with VHS/poster art in general, of which C. Winston Taylor's art for Warriors of the Apocalypse is an almost perfect example of the pulp art lineage.
Taylor is a Vietnam Veteran, turned highly talented American artist who did quite a number of film promotional pieces between the 70's and 90's. He seems to be one of the lucky few artists whose signature is regularly preserved on the downsized and cropped VHS box versions of their art.
Upon conducting a little research I found several more of his film illustrations which are included below. A few were credited to Taylor though I wasn't able to see a signature, these are noted. Sorry for the low resolution on some of them, they were all found online and I did what I could.




Guardian of Hell
a.k.a. The Other Hell
Italy - 1980
Director - Bruno Mattei (as Stefan Oblowsky)
image from impawards.com

Evilspeak
United States - 1981
Director - Eric Weston
no signature visible, credited to Taylor at emovieposter.com

Time After Time
United States - 1979
Director - Nicholas Meyer
image from emovieposter.com

Lone Wolf McQuade
United States - 1983
Director - Steve Carver
image from impawards.com

The Swarm
United States - 1978
Director - Irwin Allen
no signature visible, credited to Taylor at impawards.com

The 5th Musketeer
Austria - 1979
Director - Ken Annakin
image found on Ebay

Firepower
United Kingdom - 1979
Director Michael Winner
image from moviegoods.com





More posters and promo art by Taylor:
Mutant Hunt
Robot Holocaust
 
In the early 1990's Taylor was hired to illustrate the covers of the Quantum Leap comic book series based on the TV show of the same name. I don't remember liking the show much and I can't imagine the comics were any better, but Taylor's art is really particularly excellent. See the Quantum Leap images including several pictures of the artist at Al's Place: A Quantum Leap Fan Site. During this period Taylor also did some religious artwork which seems sloppy considering the QL work (his gallery is third from the bottom) but nonetheless showcases his terrific sense of depth.

I'm sure there is much more C.W. Taylor work out there, but these older pulp illustrators from the pre-internet era are hard to track down since they so rarely have websites. Any additional information you might have on Taylor of his artwork are greatly appreciated, send it my way. If more come to light I will post them here.

If you're curious about the pulp adventure and sex magazine illustrations I mentioned above, I recommend starting with It's a Man's World and Sin-A-Rama both excellent books published by Feral House and both chock-full of color illustrations of magazine covers and interior art.

I Was A Teenage TV Terrorist

I Was A Teenage TV Terrorist

United States - 1985

Director – Stanford Singer

Lightning Video, 1987, VHS

Run time - 1 hour, 25 min.

Produced by Susan Kaufman, the sister of Troma co-founder Lloyd Kaufman, I Was A Teenage TV Terrorist is billed on the box (in very tiny type) as a TROMA Team release. Fortunately, (or not depending on your opinion of them) it was not produced by Troma per-se, just distributed. It’s infinitely smarter than anything they’ve done.
Paul is kicked out of his mother’s house for general disorderly conduct at school and sent to Jersey City to live with his dad. Along with his aspiring actress girlfriend Donna, he shows up to find that his dad is the vice president of Romance Entertainment, an extremely low budgetTV station and a raging unmitigated jerk who in order to teach them some responsibility gives them both the lowest pay possible working in the basement cataloguing piles of junk for an equally vicious and cruel ex-military woman named Murphy.

Paul’s dad also sets them up in a seedy roach motel managed by Rico, the awesomest Cuban super the world has ever seen, and the subsequent domestic vignettes are easily the best parts of this film. Even though the production values are really low on I Was a Teenage TV Terrorist (and besides the mega cheap sounding midi-music this is the only similarity to Troma) the acting is actually pretty damn good. It comes across as a very intentional mockery of contemporary (1984-5) television (though it would help if I could remember any TV from those days besides Sesame Street) Paul and Rico deliver some truly hilarious dialogue, but unfortunately with the exception of Martin Scorsese’s Bad movie for Michael Jackson neither of them did much of anything else, ever. It’s the same with everyone in this film with the exception of J. Buzz Von Ornsteiner who was in, among a few other things, Tim Kincaid’s Mutant Hunt and Robot Holocaust and Chuck Vincent’s Slammer Girls before pursuing a career in forensic psychology.

Finding themselves more or less starving to death, Paul decides to make a little extra cash by selling some of the uncounted gear from the basement. Meanwhile Donna is fired by a director (Ornsteiner) when she tanks her first acting role in a commercial for frozen asparagus. When Murphy finds out about Paul’s side income she blackmails the couple into giving her a cut of the profits. So, abused by all parties concerned, Paul and Donna somehow come up with a crazy plan to get revenge by planting a fake bomb in the TV station. In the process of investigating, Paul’s dad finds out about Murphy’s doublecrossery, and she is fired, but Donna, taking advice from an acting instructional book, encourages Paul to continue with the terrorist scheme. During a subsequent attack, one of the news reporters sees Paul on the set and blackmails him into kidnapping the company CEO in such a way that he will get an exclusive of the story. During the kidnapping Paul takes matters into his own hands and delivers a diatribe on the mindnumbing effects of crap TV. Unfortunately this “message from our sponsors” comes across a little flat and too late in the movie to really have any impact, but it doesn’t seem to matter and I’m not sure it was supposed to considering the film itself more or less did this in a sortof subversive Dada-ist aping of television ridiculosity and our eager consumption of it. In it’s own way, I Was a Teenage TV Terrorist does the exact opposite by emphasizing the content at the conscious expense of visual gratification.

According to Wikipedia some guy was arrested for watching this movie on an Alaska Airlines flight to Moscow, but this doesn’t make any sense to me because last time I checked Alaska Airlines doesn’t have a route to Moscow, and the film is out of print and never made it to DVD. Lack of evidence online leads me to believe this is bullshit, but I’m still hopeful, both for the arrest, and the DVD because it’s definitely worth it.