The Mutations (1974)

Too much of everything

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Well, to keep the puns going, this grows on you after awhile. Really, it does. While I had never heard of it before, I was pleasantly surprised to find this film about a British bio-engineer/professor mixed up with a carnival and who uses bodies(inexplicably) to help with his experimentation to create an animal/plant race of beings. We get a Frankenstein type film, but when you add the oddities(most REAL) from the carnival - and who create scenes eerily reminiscent of Tod Browning's Freaks - we get so much more. While undeniably cheaply made - the special effects are ridiculous as is the final "invention" of man and plant, The Mutations(I saw it under the title The Freakmaker)does have some truly jarring scenes. The carnival freaks in this movie are allowed to act - and, quite frankly, are the scariest thing in this film as they lynch Lynch(played nicely by a heavily made-up Tom Baker - make-up here is quite good too!) - a deformed man who wants to be 'normal" whilst distancing himself from his freak brethren by calling them freaks and himself normal. Needless to say things do not work out well for him. This is the subplot of the film but I found it more interesting than the story of Donald Pleasance working with plants and creating some starved half-animal half-plant creature the size of a human. Pleasence is good as he always is - but really is given little to do EXCEPT for his wonderful lecture at the beginning of the film. There we are also introduced to four students(later Brad Harris will join them)who will come to know the doctor's work firsthand. The only thing you need to know about these four is that three of them are HOT, beautiful girls: blonde Jill Haworth, sensuous Olga Anthony, and the incredibly stunning Julie Ege - we also get to see them in various states of disrobe - a MAJOR highlight. Harris is OK, but it really is the real-life "freaks" that caught my eye. Michael Dunn plays the dwarf running the carnival - and I think he gives his best performance in film. I always thought he was a pretty good actor that went beyond his stereotyped image. This unfortunately was one of his last films as he died at the age of 38. The Mutations is a solid film with many undesirable elements but does, in my opinion, scare - why? Well, that will be for you to determine.

"The Mutations" is a middling, mostly forgettable horror movie from the mid 70's. Set in trendy London, it tells the tale of a carnival freak show who run a sideline in kidnapping innocent victims to be the subject of evil experiments! That's all the plot there is, really, and the film doesn't really do a lot with it. It just goes through the motions of showing the freak show, showing some victims get nabbed, and then showing the expected climax. The film has several very silly elements to it. All the kidnapped youngsters are from the same college, and in fact they are all from a single group of four friends! The experiments themselves are very vaguely explained, but they lead to very dramatic mutated monsters.As a London resident I also found a lot to enjoy in the locations...is Battersea Park (the location of the carnival in the movie) really such a dangerous foggy wilderness as it is depicted here? (Maybe it was in the 1970's...). And the exterior location for the students college is actually The Royal Albert Hall! They should be so lucky! Some good points are: Donald Pleasance does his usual good job as a softly spoken but deadly scientist. And Tom Baker does a great job, unrecognisable in ugly face make-up as the scientist's deformed assistant. And the monsterized victims look quite fun, and there's one grisly scene in which a walking plant-thing drains the life out of someone. Although check out a big goof here, where a really big gap between the monster's head and chest suit shows off the actors pink neck in between - which spoils an otherwise effective moment! There are also a few scenes that showcase some real-life "freaks" used in the film, which can't help but seem exploitative. They do get a chance to act, though, in the additional sub-plot in which the freaks rebel against the one among them who is "the real monster" - there are heavy echoes of Todd Browning's famous "Freaks" here.To sum up, it's not really very memorable. The whole story is rushed through at great speed, there's no depth to any of the characters (no time!), and everything seems pretty small scale. The scientist's lab is also filmed at Oakley Court, which stood in for a spooky mansion in dozens of British horror movies filmed around this time, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, And Now The Screaming Starts, Girly, and loads more, so personally, I have seen this place on celluloid far too often!

The Freak Maker (1973) is another one of the Mad Scientists movies that came out during this time period. Donald Pleasence stars as another crazy doctor who plays Dr. Frankenstein. People like him should find another hobby. Turning poor saps into human oddities is not right. Who wants to walk around looking like a "lobster man" or as if your mouth is full of sausages with a bad case of acne. I don't think there are freak shows around today (unless you want to star in a FOX reality T.V. show). Well like I always say, you reap what you sow. Donald Pleasence is very restrained as the mad doctor. He's tailored made for this role. If you enjoy bad sci-fi movies with cheesy make-up, over-the-top acting and a Donald Pleasence fan step right up. Otherwise it's time to look for another film. Fair. Cxx

Mostly dry and boring horror film, with shoddy special effects - yet quite creepy if you let your imagination do the film's work for you. It all seems quite disturbing on paper (mutated man-plants, sideshow "freaks", etc.), but the film's only real merit is another good performance by the ever-reliable Donald Pleasence. For a genuinely engrossing and dramatic "mutation picture", I recommend the original "Fly" (1958). (**)