It’s all about being a completist with my latest purchases, which include a sequel to an 80s slasher, a sequel to a 70s slasher, and a Hammer film with Christopher Lee in the cast.
MUTILATOR 2 (2023)
When I was a young teen, The Mutilator had one of the most disturbing VHS box covers in the video store. However, like most horror movies back then, the title and poster art weren’t exactly as traumatizing…except for one particular scene in this otherwise generic slasher from the 80s.
Forty years later, the director decided to make a sequel without going for the same tone at all. This one is meta, it’s humorous, and it’s shot with a clear, clean visual style rather than a grungy throwback to the look of 80s horror.
The plot is basic. A film crew is making a sequel to the movie. Members of the original cast have been invited for a reunion. And eventually, people begin getting murdered. Eventually.
The movie only runs 82 minutes long, but a majority of it simply features playful performances by cast members new and old. There’s not much in the way of a plot. It’s more like a series of vignettes of characters participating in humorous banter. It’s kind of like watching a skit on Laugh-In.
There’s one murder early on, and it is super gory with practical effects. Indy horror king Damian Maffei shows up as a detective on the case, but no one seems all that affected by the murder. Everyone just goes back to their comedy shtick.
However, 54 minutes in, the film goes into full slasher mode, with one super gory kill after another, mostly on a beach at night. The last half hour totally makes it worth the wait and earns this one the title of Mutilator more than the first film did. It even gives a nod to the heinous scene of a woman having her va- jay-jay hooked in the original, only this time, it’s a dude getting hooked so far up the ass it comes out his mouth. Personally, I just call that great sex.
There’s also a lesbian character, plus Art the Clown drops by for a quick cameo, but the final scene is weird, anticlimactic, and not much of an unmasking.
SILENT NIGHT BLOODY NIGHT 3: DESCENT (2025)
Someone needs to stop the madness of making messy, low budget sequels to the original 1972 film, but I imagine maybe it’s public domain at this point, so these sorts of things can’t be stopped.
It doesn’t even matter that this is a sequel to part 2. Different directors, different writers, different actress playing the same lead character.
After a few opening kills in a bar, including the murder of a nurse from an asylum, we are bombarded throughout the movie by segments of news reports and influencer types going on and on about the events of the movie. The film also ends with twenty damn minutes of these clips. Needless to say, there’s no reason to sit through them. Or through the movie itself, for that matter.
The main girl character from the previous movie wakes from a coma inside an asylum filled with sociopaths and psychopaths. That’s about the extent of the plot. Everyone is killing everyone else, Lloyd Kaufman is awful as always as the psychotic director of the asylum, someone in a creepy Santa costume arrives with an axe and takes care of killing business, and there’s eventually a cult thrown into the mix.
There’s no substance here, it’s all sloppy and cheap looking, and there are no scares or suspense. It definitely feels like Christmas time, though, so this one lands on the holiday horror page. And yet, as much as I’m putting this one on blast, not only did my unemployed, broke ass buy the regular Blu-ray, I also bought the 3-D version that requires red and blue glasses, not included. Not to mention, both discs are BDRs, not pressed discs.
THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH (1959)
Despite the 4k release of this disc including an “uncensored” version with a very slightly more graphic scene involving fire at the end, this is a low-key horror film. The odd thing is that the uncensored cut isn’t totally uncensored, because the other cut, called the “nude” cut, has a pair of boobs that are covered up in the uncensored cut.
This is sort of a Jekyll & Hyde situation. The main doctor has been around for a long time, because every ten years he undergoes a gland implant that keeps him looking youthful. As time for his transplant comes around, the surgeon that perfected the operation is late showing up, so the doctor is taking a temporary green potion that holds off the aging process…an aging process that also makes him monstrous. The potion also has a second duty; it glows green to provide eerie horror lighting.
Naturally, the doctor keeps falling behind for his scheduled potion-drinking, which leads to him murdering a few people, which then leads to a detective poking around in search of those now missing people.
In hopes of having someone else perform the surgery, the doctor attempts to enlist a very dapper looking Christopher Lee to handle the job. That’s pretty much it. It’s a straightforward plot with no real suspense or scares and a low kill count.
The doctor is at his most hideous when time runs out for him in the final scene, and that’s not even very hideous.
