| Contact [email protected] |
| Mutant When I was in high school, my friends and I would routinely rent low-budget horror and science fiction films. Most of the time these movies would be unwatchable, but occasionally one would slip in that was worth remembering, like MUTANT. When I began writing these notes, one thing came to mind: blue. Yes, the color blue. MUTANT has an unusual production design - the movie is bathed in blue, and it gose beyond lighting. someone had to have made a conscious effort to give the film a blue cast. Most people wear blue shirts, carry blue purses, and houses are painted blue. Even some of the blinds and garbage cans are blue. The strange thing is, that as obvious as the blue coloring is, it works to create an eerie feel. Whenever we taled about MUTANT over the following years, the first thing to come up was the blueness of the movie. To refresh my memory of MUTANT'S plot, I contacted those friends with whom I'd seen the film seven years ago. We watched the film once again, along the way discovering some other quirks that will keep this film a nostalgic favortie. Two brothers, josh and Mike, are spending a vacation together for the first time in years. while traveling a lone highway in the midwest ( a veritable breeding ground for horror films), some country hicks run them off the road near the small town of Goodland. Their car ends up in a ditch, and as night falls they finally stroll into town. They're not in town more than a couple of minutes when they find a dead body in an alley. Unfortunately the body is missing when they lead the sheriff to the spot where they found it. The displeased sheriff, who thinks these strangers are jerking him around, infoems the brothers that they will be leaving town in the morning. After a night in a boarding house, Josh discovers that Mike has vanished. josh, extremely perplexed, searches for Mike - yet his disappearance is not the only strange thing going on in town. Bizzare, grizzly murders are occuring, and more townspeople are disappearing. Soon Josh has teamed up with the local school teacher, Holly, in order to discover the source of the odd incidents. the answer lies at New Era, a chemical plant on the outskirts of town. Josh sneaks in, discovering that the company is illegally disposing of chemical waste. Somehow this waste is causing the townspeople to mutate and turn, well, blue. Then they crave blood and start killing other townspeople. Just a day after Josh's arrival, virtually the entire town has become infected. Soon it's Holly and Josh, in the dead of night, fleeing from the starving mutants. They seek shelter in the school house, only to find that the children have also become infected and are roaming the halls. Odd thing is, this town seems to have a population of - at its largest - about 5,000. The school house can easily accomodate 4,000 students. Once again on the run, holly and Josh head into the heart of town, without a clue as to how they'll defeat the mutants. The film's most notable characteristic, second only to the omnipresence of blue, of course, is its musical score. The filmakers wanted a big sound for their small film, and chose Richard Band to compose not only an orchestral score, but have him record it with the National Philharmonic Orchestra in London. A wise investment indeed, for not only did it add greatly to the atmosphere of the film, but Empire Pictues and Full Moon Studios used it as library music in some of their future films such as ZONE TROOPERS and SEEDPEOPLE. The score opens with a cacophony from the orcheatra, starting the tension immediately. And it has, since under the opening credits we see an EPA agent collecting samples when an off-screen mutant surprises and kills him. The main title is enhanced by an eerie piano motif that will appear again and again throughout the film and becomes a musical cornerstone. The score maintains amelodic tone, rarely becoming dissonant, portraying its horror through pretty, forlorn, and atmospheric melodies rather than more predictable stingers or pulsating suspense cues. Richard Band's career in film scoring is well rooted in horror and science-fiction films, and that is where he thrives. His first score was a collaboration with Joel Goldsmith (son of Jerry Goldsmith) on the 1978 film LASERBLAST. From there he carved out his niche in the genre. his work accompanies many films released through the Empire Studios and now through Full Moon. Band's brother, Charles, headed both studios. With occasional help of father Albert Band they make film making a true family operation. While the financial constraints of creating low-budget genre films today preclude the use of orchestra ( making scores like MUTANT a rarity), Band has managed to somehow preserve an orchestral style and standard to his composition, even when purely electronic. Hear teh crisp clarinets in the opening of PUPPET MASTER, the smooth strings in BRIDE OF THE REANIMATOR, or the slick saxophone in THE ARRIVAL. He composese for full orchestra - even when he doesn't have one. His most recent work includes PREHYSTERIA and DOCTOR MORDRID. Notes by Roger Feigelson Mutant Track List Return To Richard Band |