“Who’d want to get robots high?”

Drake’s rating: Well, this is certainly traumatizing

Drake’s review: So that is one incendiary title, right? I mean, I read absolutely nothing about “mutant hunts” in my Mutant Contract, but here we are with a feature-length take on the activity, brought to the world at large by those prolific purveyors of trash cinema at Full Moon*.

I, for one, am offended. After all, my Mutantdom is not something I wish to be hunted down over. Honestly, there are very few who even know I’m a Mutant. I don’t have three arms, my skin isn’t scaly, and I only rarely glow in the dark. Yet here we have a veritable treatsie on hunting down Mutants like we’re in the “Days of Future Past” storyline from the old X-Men comics.

I mean, at least that’s what I assumed. Which, considering the title of this little film, is a very valid assumption. And a hurtful one, too, I might add. However, it turns out that the titular mutants in Mutant Hunt aren’t the devastatingly handsome, highly opinionated types who immerse themselves in cult movies in a vain attempt to garner attention from the internet masses. Instead, these are cyborgs, reprogrammed from performing their normal routines to become killer mutant cyborgs, which really would have been a far better, and decidedly less offensive, movie title.

So why does someone make perfectly harmless cyborgs into killer mutant cyborgs who roam the streets looking for hapless victims? It’s all about the money, of course. Inteltrax, an evil corporation in the far-flung movie future of 1992, is looking for fat stacks of cash and figures that it might as well come from the Military Industrial Complex, which could probably find a use or two for cyborgs programmed to bash people on their heads and throw them out of windows.

And if you’re thinking that this sounds like Blade Runner meets The Terminator, you’re absolutely correct. It’s not a horrible idea for a film, but when your budget appears to be whatever change you could find in your couch and the 20 dollars your grandmother sent you for your birthday, you should probably trim your concept down a bit. Like maybe just two characters at a restaurant or something. My Dinner with Killer Mutant Cyborg.

Instead, the filmmakers here attempted to go whole hog with the idea, employing a good half-dozen or so actors to prowl the dimly lit streets in search of human prey. Fear not, however, as Matt Riker (Rick Gianasi, Sgt. Kabukiman, N.Y.P.D.) is on the scene to employ some truly lamentable karate to keep those cyborgs in check.

It works, of course, since there’s no money for anything else with which to defeat killer mutant cyborgs, so we’re treated to fight choreography that looks ripped from the local elementary school’s playground at lunch time. And it’s all set to a soundtrack that was probably performed on one of those tiny Casio keyboards that you could fit in your pocket. I will say that there are a few sequences with some fairly decent latex and prosthetic work. That’s probably where granny’s 20 bucks went.

Look, I’m happy that no actual Mutants were hunted in this film, but that’s pretty much the only thing Mutant Hunt has going for it**. It’s a tedious 75 minutes to get through, and I really have to give this one three thumbs down.

Two! I meant two thumbs down!

*The actual studio was Beyond Infinity, but Charles Band was the producer so it’s certainly from a branch on the Full Moon family tree.

**Or against it. YMMV based on your personal opinions of Mutants.

Intermission!

• OK, the space shuttle sex murders are only mentioned in passing, but why aren’t we watching THAT movie?
• The special effects were by Matt Vogel and special makeup was by Ed French. Both men went on to have long careers in movies and TV (French in fact worked most recently on Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves), and I’m assuming they’re responsible for the best-looking bits of Mutant Hunt.
• Director Tim Kincaid also directed Robot Holocaust (he said, lobbing a softball to Sitting Duck) and scores of movies whose names I can never mention on this site.