There have been all sorts of creatures rampant in horror movies; each one trying to plant dread in our hearts in unique and horrendous ways. Mutant (aka Night Shadows) cooks up for us creatures spawned out of toxic waste; zombie-like ghouls out for human blood. Director John ’Bud’ Cardos (Kingdom of the Spiders) drops us off at a small southern town where danger looms once the sun goes down.

Josh and Mike are two brothers on a road trip who run into a shit-load of trouble. Josh, played by Wings Hauser, likes to joke around and thinks it’s funny to drive the convertible with his eyes closed. This almost costs the brothers their lives. Mike, played by Lee Montgomery (The Midnight Hour, Burnt Offerings) is the more sensible pretty boy who spends the whole movie with his shirt open trying to show off his washboard abs. Along come the rowdy country folk in a pick up truck led by local troublemaker, Albert, and run the city boys off the road and into a ditch. Upon arriving in town Mike finds a corpse in an alley. They go into a tavern looking for help but end up in a barroom brawl. When they get a hold of the sheriff, the body is missing. Sheriff Will Stewart (Bo Hopkins) takes them to Mrs. Mapes for the night and advises they get their car fixed and leave in the morning. So much for southern hospitality!

The brothers are put in separate rooms. During the night a hand pulls Mike under the bed and that’s the last we see of him for a while. It’s a pretty fucking potent shock moment too. He hears something, bends down to look under the bed and a gray arm shoots out and swiftly pulls him under. In the morning Josh starts to look for his brother and runs into a ray of sunshine in this otherwise god-forsaken crap town. School teacher/part-time bartender, Holly Pierce, is a beautiful young blonde who is sympathetic to Josh and they team up to find Mike. In the darkness of the school boiler room Josh finds the pale blue corpse of a young girl. Dr. Myra Tate, the local doctor, wants to examine the body. Several of the town’s people are becoming ill and that may be related to a strange yellow substance found by the bodies. Josh rejoins Holly at her sick uncle’s house. While an uncertain chaos is brewing in town Josh finds time to make out with the hot teacher.

Dr. Tate starts performing a preliminary autopsy on the child’s corpse. While she is doing this her lab assistant is MUTATING in the background. He attacks her and she tries to fight him off but gets killed. The ghoul has open wounds on the palms of his hands which ooze a toxic yellow goo. These mutant zombies kill using the leech like orifices on their hands. We also know they thirst for human blood. Later on Holly and Josh learn that a local chemical plant is dumping toxic waste outside of town. Now we know what’s contaminating people and turning them into homicidal monsters. The sheriff finally believes Josh and they shoot down Holly’s uncle who has mutated and become violent.

The third act really gets things moving. The sun is setting and now we finally get to see some zombie horde attacks. The Sherriff finds Dr. Tate’s medical room crawling with these mutant fuckers. Josh discovers that Mrs. Mapes’ daughter was a zombie and that her mother kept her in the basement and fed her the tenants, and Mike’s body is found down there. Holly is ambushed by mutant kids at her school. Josh pulls her out of there in the nick of time. They flee to a gas station as night settles in around the small town but the flesh hungry ghouls follow and invade the place.

I always try to make the review fun and interesting to read. The film may not be as exciting. This happens to be the case here. Although the ‘beast’ is somewhat original we get to see very little use of the leech hands in action. The mutant transformations are nice though. The characters and plot are standard and mediocre stuff. You know what your getting here because you have seen this story done time and again. The movie could have used some hokey humor and more gore. The kills are dynamic but bloodless, favoring spurts of the toxic yellow stuff instead. It’s a decent film but I don’t want to sit through decent films over and over again. I want something that’s FUCKING FUN throughout, and that will leave a scar!

- Jorge Antonio Lopez