“They were killing. And eating. The cattle. Raw.”

Justin’s rating: They won’t drink ice tea but they’ll make a slasher movie? Okay.

Justin’s review: Friends and fellow-beings, it is my pleasure to bring to you a snack of extraterrestrial delights that cost next to nothing (well, $100,000), was filmed next to nowhere (well, Tulsa OK), and somehow manages to combine a monster movie with teachings from the Church of Latter-Day Saints.

Indeed, Mutilations is one of the odder ’80s low-budget slashers to come out of that decade. It’s not every movie that starts with a strange classroom discussion stating that alien life is completely real because SETI and Mormons said so. This wisdom comes from Professor Jim McFarland (Al Baker), who is both our lead and — I assume — a first-time actor with serious back sweat as he realizes he’s in way over his head.

The good professor then takes a group of college students on a field trip to check out strange lights in the sky and local cattle mutilations, kind of like Twister except that they’re chasing aliens instead of tornadoes. One of their members, Eugene, is a hulking geek who takes every single opportunity to ham up his incredulity, horror, or whatever other emotion he wants to express at TOP VOLUME.

It’s not like the rest of this cast exudes any acting chops either. They pause, drift, and stumble over the unnatural dialogue that they read from cue cards, usually with a tone that doesn’t begin to match what they’re talking about. You could easily imagine Mike, Tom Servo, and Crow having a field day with the amateur hour on display.

It doesn’t take long before this crew finds an inside-out cow (dying in delectable stop-motion) and are attacked by a spaceship. They also find a crazy hermit who gives us a lecture on Joseph Smith and how his 1830s visions apparently foresaw this awful B-movie. I don’t think he does the Mormon church any favors also mixing in a whole bunch of conspiracy rants.

While Mutilations is uniformly terrible in the acting department, it’s actually great fun with its special effects (in a cheesy, 50s sort of way). There are lots of stop-motion effects, flying ships, wild makeup, and a gonzo alien critter that actually looks better than any Power Ranger villain.

In less than 70 minutes, this film zooms through a fast-forward tour of alien invasion where every scene manages to be a little more demented than the last, especially when the visitor starts using his non-specific powers to kill via mutilation.

Mutilations was filmed on 16mm film, which actually works well with these kinds of special effects and rear projections. It doesn’t look believable, mind you, but it also doesn’t look like it was made on one of those beefy camcorders your grandpa used in the ’80s.

It’s silly and dorky and possibly recruitment propaganda for a real cult, but I can’t help but love Mutilations for its ambition, creative choices, uniformly bad acting, and face sucking. Sometimes you need a Z-movie (look it up, it’s a thing) that manages to sparkle against all odds.

Intermission!

• Hey what you calling our sun an “average” star!
• Meteors are incredibly slow — especially when they’re actually an alien spaceship
• Roger, never let someone tell you that your mullet is out of style
• Sometimes an actor pauses in the middle of a particularly long sentence to remember the rest of his or her line
• Apparently the Old Testament is chock-full of aliens, if you’re reading the Mormon version. Babylon! Ezekiel! Chewbacca!
• Could extraterrestrial life be not human? WHAT DO YOU THINK?
• The nerdy guy overacting at every opportunity is both grating and glorious
• It’s a dying stop-motion cow with no skin!
• Let’s keep patting your little pistol while the synth score goes DUM DUM DUMMM
• “Yeah they’re going to need a lot… a lot of luck.” [ZOOM IN ON DEER HEAD]
• All of the times that the Professor introduces himself, his secretary, and his students
• And now let’s talk about Joseph Smith for no good reason
• About time Eugene got killed!
• How do you know their ship was “anti-gravity?”
• Don’t make fun of an alien running away from a fight, because that’s when they’ll come back to punch through your torso
• Wait, is the severed alien part warning him off telepathically?
• Well this was the easiest bootlegging tunnel to find, maybe because there’s just three loose boards propped up against it
• Random basement spear
• I like how Roger leaves them to go wander around in the mine by himself and everyone is more than OK with that
• Whoa, we went to Nazi references way too fast there
• So many ZOOOOOM shots onto faces
• Why would they all take a break in a life-or-death situation to sit around and ponder about the morality of aliens?
• CLAYMATION FIGHT!
• I like that the aliens wear uniforms, makes me think of them as a Star Trek away team that went horribly wrong