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Oh movies with two titles. How you make bookkeeping annoying. So the sleeve here says Forbidden World, the DVD says Mutant and oh we just went from 0 to goofy Master Chief looking robot and/or spacesuited guy piloting a UFO to the tune of classical music. Hello movie! Glad to see you're so eager to get things going! Also, uh... what uh... what are we doing here movie? OK, totally a robot, and it has the IN-TRU-DER A-LERT. IN-TRU-DER AL-ERT voice going. Anyway apparently he's thawing the captain out because they're being attacked, which is leading into a big awkward ship models firing lasers while people play with big crazy switchboards sort of space battle. That's all well and good, but when he's first waking up there's this weird montage of what I assume is the whole rest of the movie being shown in single frame blips. Seriously I hope that was some sort of prophetic dream flash forward or reminder of the events of some previous movie to which this is some kind of sequel. Otherwise it's just weird. Also, a fair number of these barely registering flickers seemed to contain full on naked girls. I suppose it could be the result of the most misleading without being a like "Sleep with me and I'll put you in a movie!" sorta deals, but I doubt it.
So yeah, boobs by paragraph 3 is already satisfied, and there's probably plenty more where that came because this is another one of those cool-stuff-tainted-with-sleaze early 80's Roger Coreman movies. Also the actual title of the movie popping up decided to go with Mutant, so, OK, I guess I'm going to have to go change the title there for alphabetizing purposes now. I hate when a movie doesn't have a consistent title/definitive version. Phenomena has that going too, but at least that's one of those deals where they retitled it Creepers for the American release, and replaced all the awesomely out of place metal with extra Goblin music.
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Anyway though, plot. "What is the gooey stuff?" Wow that's a great line. OK, so, we've got our main character here, who is AMAZINGLY stupid. He got called into this scientific research station, which has both a standard sci-fi horror strongjawed serious science guy in it, AND a goofy frazzled hair glasses and labcoat scientist. And a hot girl scientist. And... 2 kids who apparently just wandered off the set of a slasher movie, because they so don't match anyone else's style of dress. So anyway, main character gets called in because the researchers have, by their own admission, created some kind of hideous shapeshifting mutant monster. Captain Brickhead here wants to dump some acid on it while it's all cocooned up in the incubator, the one reasonable thing he's said in a string of really just not understanding the most basic concepts. I mean, he went to open up the incubator and poke at it. Male Slasherteen just did the same thing though while cleaning up the uh... 100 mutilated rabbit corpses they also keep in that room. Anyway, he's doomed. Out of the cocoon comes a uh... liver? It's just kinda this black slick diamond shaped tiny thing. This doesn't stop it from leaping off the table onto his face and killing him. We see this on a security monitor across the room from where everyone else is eating. Honestly, it's kinda surprising nobody notices. I mean, it's a pretty big monitor, someone's facing that way.
Oh, and this is funny. The lab found this weird super bacteria that breeds like crazy, lives off anything, and is nigh-impossible to kill, so they've been here just splicing its DNA in with everything they can find. You know, for food production! Also we have a token black guy who's only just now showing up. Think that's all the cannon fodder. The important thing though is that we've pretty much established that these people are actively trying to get themselves killed by an Alien knockoff. Or possibly a Thing knockoff. Or a combination of the two. Can you guess the year this movie was made? If you guessed 1982, you are correct. If you guessed any other year, you didn't do the math on how long it takes to make a decent looking knockoff right. Anyway, Liver Of Doom lobotomized Male Teen, and now Professor Frink is hooking him up to some hoses in goofy looking sick bay but then heading out for a smoke break. Also I see Dr. Fara Fawcett is wearing frelling high-heeled sandals as part of her Space Science ensemble... which is mainly weird because it otherwise is perfectly science jumpsuity.
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Now here's Female Teen putting her nightgown on. Apparently there was a pretty gratuitous boob shot there but it was so dark it doesn't especially count. Oh hi again awesome voice robot! I almost forgot you were in here what with how strongly the script is trying to fill this movie with pure suck. Oh hey, here's another character we apparently have. Some sleeveless rednecky kid. Also Dr. Fara Fawcett just kinda unceremoniously asked Captain Brickhead if he wants to have sex. So they are, and we've got a lot of gratuitous nudity and sleazy jazz... which apparently is being performed by Black Guy on some sort of space whistle in the next room. Anyway though, Redneck is just sitting here watching the sex scene on a security monitor while playing with one of those things where it's not quite a yoyo but it's yoyo shaped, with the string going through the center not around the edge, and you pull the strings and it spins real fast and lights up. I point this out because we keep cutting back between the sex and the redneck watching it and playing with his thing. Like, for a while. It's weird. Now he's grabbing a gun and going off monster hunting, but... hey here's 1 frame of the sex scene for the heck of it. And another. OK, this movie just really really really likes throwing things up for a single frame or rapidly strobing between two scenes. I only mentioned it with that initial I gues it's a weird dream sequence bit up front but I mean, what the heck. Did the editor for this movie just get some new equipment he really really wanted to use and just went crazy or what? Is the movie trying to pull some kinda Clockwork Orange shenannigans on the audience by making us watch sex and death simultaneously? In an attempt to brainwash audiences into a bunch of prudes and/or serial killers?
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Oh now here's a quick shot of Professor Frink looking at the gooey muppet that once was Male Teen and checking heart monitors. You know... if anyone out there is ever thinking of making anything in this sci-fi-horror vein, or really in anything, can you please not do the whole bit where the scientists are all actively encouraging the monsters to thrive and kill everyone? It has never failed to COMPLETELY shatter any sort of suspension of disbelief for me. Anyway, here's Female Teen just... taking all her clothes off and wandering around the ship. Oh, OK, she's in the sauna apparently. The totally steam free sauna where we don't wear towels. Captain Brickhead wanders in. "I just came down to see who's here." OK, seriously. Is he supposed to be mentally challenged? Slur this guy's speech a little and every word out of his mouth is Movie Special Person. Anyway, she invites him to have sex too. Uh... dude, didn't you literally JUST finish sleeping with Dr. Blondie? Yeah, here she comes barely getting her bathrobe on after the monster bursts in through the roof and scares them out. "Let's go bag ourselves a dingwhopper." OK, that is TOTALLY what they just said. That's what we're calling the monster, for some reason.
ANYWAY though, that scene of gratuitous nudity there actually also, for some reason, had some attempt at characterization and backstory for the main character. He's apparently all scarred up from picking a fight with a local Klingon type apparently. Oh, and this is actually kind of interesting. Male Teen... we're really calling him Jimmy? OK, so the big pile of goop he's been reduced to is lying on a table, dividing into two piles of goo. Professor Frink here has some big long-winded story about the monster doing something to him to make all the cells in his body uniform generic cells instead of eye cells and toenail cells and such (his words, not mine), which will just grow and reporduce as a pure simple meat blob.
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Also, oh hey! We're on a desert planet! I thought this was going to be a pure grungy hallways thing but no, the monster got outside, so now we have people with gasmasks and desert robes heading out into the bright desert to find it. Anyway, it's decided to transform into something more interesting than a liver, so... it made a new nasty cocoon. Wow. Thanks movie. Seriously. I really appreciate a movie that makes its shapeshifting monsters need to go all cocoony. It's easier to buy than just suddenly sprouting new limbs out of nowhere. Anyway though, it's a big spidery thing with a head stolen shamelesssly from Alien now, and meat boy is now like, 8 big blobby gross wads all over sick bay. Again, such a weird thing to do. They aren't turning into new monsters, they're just dividing meat blobs for dividing meat blobs' sake. Oh. So it can eat them. Thanks for expositing Professor Frink. So yeah, the monster injects you with meatification, and then you turn into a giant photosynthetic meat blob that divides and slithers all over the floor, so it can come back later and have nice boneless snacks whereever it goes. Oh yeah and they made it by splicing super bacteria DNA into a human cell. They're at least being science-y enough to note that they had another girl on staff who had to be pregnant with the monster rather than it just coming in a tube.
Speaking of female characters, here's the two girls arbitrarily slimey and giving themselves backrubs while having a science-y conversation. I guess they're in some kind of crazy Future Shower where instead of running water there's just crazy lights which leave you perpetually wet for maximum sleaze. Now here's a hamster in a terrarium with a groovy transparent spiral staircase. It's just kinda... in the middle of the room where everyone is planning stuff. Meanwhile, the monster is just, you know, in the medical bay, snacking on meat sacks. You could just, like, go in there and shoot it or something. Seriously, it's amazing how actively these people are avoiding any reasonable courses of action, ever. Oh now Dr. Blondie is going into the control room where it's taking a nap and asking if it wants to be friends and stop eating people or something. At which point the monster uh... turns on the radio? Oh, it also turned on the computer with a text prompt, which it's controlling, somehow. "Affirmative, what do you want?" is almost an awesome thing for it to reply with. "Yeah" would have been better. But anyway, before the conversation can really continue it just kinda gets bored and impales her from crotch to shoulder on it's Alien tail. This has been another ultimately pointless scene.
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Oh yeah and when everyone was out in the desert, someone else got slimed. Didn't really catch who though. Dr. Serious? Redneck with not-yoyo? No wait he died a while ago. OK, the last one of these Roger Coreman movies had the same problem. I just totally cannot keep the cannon fodder straight. Anyway, Frink has decided the best way to deal with the monster is to go against everything Gauntlet has ever taught us and shoot all the monsters' food. I... don't especially see his logic here though. I mean, the monster's big plan here, which he explained, is to convert enough people into self-replicating food blobs as to never have to worry again about finding stuff to eat. Killing all those is, at best, going to make it need to convert more people. So unless your ultimate goal is to kill EVERYONE so there's nothing left. Oh, there is another part to his plan here. Frink's plan: EAT CANCER YOU MONSTER! Like, literally. He has a big tumor, and he wants to feed it to the monster, because cancerous tumors kill monsters when they eat them. On a weirdly related note, just the other day I somehow got into a conversation with someone about whether cancerous grows were safe to eat. I can't for the life of me recall what the context was though. This is actually really bugging me now. How the heck did that come up?
Anyway though, monster is now chasing Teen Girl around, as monsters are wont to do, while Captain Brickhead is cutting the tumor out of Frink to feed to the monster. So... I guess that was Dr. Serious who's melting in the other room, and Black Guy electrocuted himself a little while ago trying to pry the monster off the computer. And OH NO! Silly robot died trying to attack it! He must be avenged! So yeah, Brickhead shoves the tumor down the monster's throat. It proceeds to vomit. For a while. It's like, really realistically violently ill here. Now we're strobing a bunch of scenes from earlier in the movie. Like... we're just flashing back through the whole movie here. Again. Then going around for another pass. So uh... are we done yet? Everyone's dead except for a guy and a girl, we've got a monster apparently dead. That's usually where we end these things, or at least fake end them then have the monster be surprise not dead. Ah good, here come the credits.
