Editorials
‘Mutant Blast’ – The Best Recent Troma Movie You Probably Haven’t Seen
The mark of any great studio or prolific filmmaker is the voices they uplift. James Wan handed the keys over to multiple Conjurverse filmmakers, Jordan Peele started Monkeypaw Productions, and Lloyd Kaufman can call James Gunn, the South Park boys, and other now-famous Hollywood celebrities Troma alums. The best ideas sometimes just need financial backing and a believer, which brings us to the best Troma movie released in many, many years: Mutant Blast. Kaufman and Michael Herz gave Portuguese writer, director, and editor Fernando Alle everything he needed to bring his madcap midnighter to life (er, within Troma means), and they were rewarded with a deliriously enjoyable slice of absurdist storytelling that embodies Troma’s down, dirty, and deranged signatures.
Any summarization of Mutant Blast will make you sound like an asylum patient. It’s unquestionably unique and bullishly original. It’s a Terminator riff until it isn’t. The word “z*mbie” is bleeped out until characters finally admit, yeah, it’s sorta a zombie flick. Actor João Vilas plays “Jean-Pierre” (the human-sized French lobster in a business suit who can talk), “Goblin,” “Zombie Head,” “Yellow Mutant,” and “Rat-hand” all in the same movie. There’s political commentary à la The Return of the Living Dead, dolphin-men with katanas, and ooey-gooey goop by the bucketful. The film marches to the beat of its own drum, in a parade led by the Toxic Avenger.
The gist is this: an incompetent military cell accidentally creates a wasteland doomsday. Our protagonist, Pedro (Pedro Barão Dias), wakes up hungover after a house party with a penis drawn on his face. While trying to piece together the night’s festivities, he realizes there was a zombie outbreak. Enter Maria (Maria Leite): a tough-as-nails soldier tasked with babysitting her company’s superhuman TS-347 experiment (Joaquim Guerreiro) and, eventually, Pedro’s reluctant escort. Together, they traverse lands covered with everything from traditional zombies to gargantuan rats with acidic milk squirters. They meet friends along the way (the romantic crustacean Jean-Pierre), and fight lab-generated enemies sent by the military cell.
It’s the end of the world, and while Pedro might not feel fine, he’s having a blast anyway—because nuclear blasts transform any survivors into mutants.
Mutant Blast is, without a doubt, the holy grail of lunacy. It’s Troma-coded in the ways that Pedro and Maria encounter increasingly batshit obstacles that don’t necessarily make sense, but that doesn’t matter. Alle has that special kind of control over madness that makes the ride so damn addictive, even if our guiding vehicle goes off the rails every few minutes. That’s what Troma does best after all these years, and what makes Mutant Blast such a standout success in their catalog. Kaufman’s niche filmmaking has spanned decades of independent oddities, but his antics now come with expectations (cemented by data). Alle is paying homage to his producers, yet it’s clearly his voice and vision with no attached preconceptions.
Alle blankets his film in satirization, whether that’s the moronic overlords who cause the apocalypse or tropes that are roasted over a spit. In how Tromaville has become a bizarro portrait of American follies, Mutant Blast openly mocks officials and corporate stooges who “accidentally” launch 10 nuclear bombs without accountability. Then you have the “will they, won’t they” jokes about Pedro and Maria, centering on how Maria has no lustful interest in her tagalong despite his scattered attempts. This isn’t your typical survival horror film where trauma bonds breed romance, nor does Alle care to sugarcoat his societal commentaries. That’s not the point of exploitation cinema or off-the-lease midnighters. Subtlety is for Sundance premieres and A24 movies—Alle’s here to ruffle feathers.
That said, he does so with more tact and deftness than what Troma’s recently concocted in-house with their regular team. Something like Shakespeare’s Shitstorm pushes boundaries with a brand of immaturity that’s doing so for cheap kicks. Mutant Blast is fun-loving and sweethearted as characters trudge through bloody puddles of guts, keeping its obscenities good-natured. Sure, Pedro pushes a joke too far when describing radioactive bukkake, but he’s immediately shamed. There are repercussions for such juvenility in Mutant Blast, where Troma’s other contemporary releases can feel like they’re pushing buttons in bad faith, like a 5-year-old that just learned their first curse word, who renders the shock value impotent.
Perhaps that’s what makes Mutant Blast so enjoyable. It’s a crude, bloodthirsty gorefest best described by film critic Rob Hunter as if “Astron-6 and a young Peter Jacker had a kick-ass baby”—but you feel icky. Combat boots squish undead heads like they’re rotten pumpkins, and yet there’s a wholesomeness to certain elements. The way Jean-Pierre pines over his wife, the most beautiful lobster in all the reef, or Maria and Pedro’s friendship, which becomes that of a charming zombie-hunting duo. Characters keep one another in check while having their laughs, while splatterfest exaggerations still retain moral decorum (to a degree). It’s a movie with heart, even if Alle rips it out and uses it as a prop to be smashed into a pulpy gunk.
Speaking of grotesque visuals, there’s no shortage of the gnarly stuff. Special Make-Up Effects Supervisor João Rapaz keeps things juicy whenever violence is at a premium. We’re talkin’ sloppy face melts like a popsicle on hot pavement, decapitations during fantasy-folklore swordplay dreams, and plenty of other inventive ways to brutalize a human body. There’s also an adorable ratty hand-puppet designed by creative consultant Adrián Cardona that Pedro wears for a bit, because a literal rat explodes out of his palm as a surprise mutation. Then you’ve got full(ish)-body costumes of Jean-Pierre (working claws and all), Dolphinman (in his acid-washed jeans), and a towering mother rat that took three whole crew members to operate. Paper mache, styrofoam, and other arts supplies are used to bring forth freakish end-of-days wanderers, all of which have that Troma-approved nonsense aura that works in their low-budget appearances.
Most of all, you can tell Mutant Blast is a labor of love for everyone involved. When the film ends, it doesn’t say “Directed by Fernando Alle” or a sole credit. The text reads “A Film By,” and then seventeen names. Alle’s acknowledgement of everyone involved is indicative of a leader who empowers his cast and crew, which fits the vibe of what’s on screen. Everyone is having a grand ol’ time and brings their sincerest A-game. This might be the most absurd Portuguese horror film ever released, but it’s hardly phoned in. Performances are rock-solid, storytelling keeps a steady pace, and effects will bring a smile to your face. You won’t catch elements lacking, despite how specific props—like a doodie-coated-looking duck abomination—are probably held together with duct tape.
Mutant Blast doesn’t just know the type of kitchen-sink weirdo flick it is—it’s loud and proud about every frame. With all due respect, Alle does Troma better than his mentors. His special effects background on films like Return to Nuke’ Em High Volume 1 and Return to Return to Nuke’ Em High aka Vol. 2 translates into a showcase for strange tales about altered dystopian states. Every scene there’s a new curveball, and they’re all worth a smile.
The Troma brand is alive and well in the hands of filmmakers like Alle, who evolve an addictive style of underground horror filmmaking with a newly minted and freshly reinvigorated appeal.
Troma returns to the big screen with The Toxic Avenger only in theaters on August 29!
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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