The Mutations (1974)

A Masterpiece!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Not one of my fellow horror loving friends have seen or even know of this movie. I saw it on TV in the 80's or 90's, got a copy on VHS,later sold it but then find myself buying another one as it doesn't appear to be easily available on disc (it really does deserve a release). The late, great Donald Pleasence is a brilliant but crazed scientist working on mutating humans with plants (in his lab he has a laughably bad rabbit eating plant!). He is aided by the hideously disfigured Tom Baker (of Dr Who fame), who runs a circus freak show. Many real freaks (probably an incorrect word these days) were employed, in addition to obviously fake ones. No attempt is made to hide the fact that this was in part inspired by the original 1932 classic "Freaks", to the point where the "one of us" line is used. Add to the mix nudity, 1970's London locations, LSD references, time lapse photography sequences, a few amusing gaffs and a pretty haunting musical score, this is an enjoyable slice of British exploitation. Not to everybody's taste, for sure, but this film deserves to be better known.

OK i seen the mutations when i was younger at a movie theater in;Paterson new jersey and to this day i cant remember the co-feature. but it scared the hell out of me.its a basic mad scientist story,with a brilliant but unbalanced Dr played by the late great;Donald Pleasence who went on to play Dr loomis in the Halloween movie series(1978 to 1989)creating mutations from plants.i know very weird.it all takes place in england,much to the distaste of fellow scientist from America played by Brad Harris.he gets his subjects from a deformed man played by;Tom Baker(who played Dr who in the 70's)this guy is so gruesome he would give Frankensteins monster the willies.anyway lynch(tom baker)is co-owner of a traveling carnival.the main owner is a kindly dwarf played by Micheal Dunn,who does'nt approve of the Dr's intentions.and like the earlier movie;freaks this movie features real human oddities. the one that gave me nightmares was a guy called pop eye,i don't need to say what he does.also starring in this movie is Julie Ege and Jill Haworth.the mutations has been released to video under the title;the freak-maker.its not as good as Tod brownings freaks,but it is very unsettling.i re watched this recently and found it very entertaining but it no longer gives me nightmares.all i can say is its still a very good film,with a great cast.and Donald Pleasence played the best mad doctors.I'm giving mutations(aka;freak-maker)8 out of 10.

Not really enough money or effort put into this one. It appears that everyone thought simply that the presence of various 'freaks' Donald Pleasence, a bit of nudity and some man eating plants should see them through.Actually this almost works, unfortunately Mr Pleasence is in particularly one note form and although the speeded up photography for the plants is fine the later costumes for those that have turned into half human, half plant are not half as effective. There are some decent moments and good ideas but it is all so uphill. Undeniably quirky, though and probably worth it for the fairground scenes.

Donald Pleasance stars as Professor Nolter in this sci-fi/horror as a mad-scientist who, in between lecturing at a local university, is conducting bizarre experiments as he tries to bridge the gap between human beings and plant life. To aid him in his devilish research he uses Lynch (Tom Baker), a hideously deformed man who runs a carnival freak show, to obtain for him young men and women to perform his experiments on using the seemingly empty promise of altering the way Lynch looks for the better.I saw this one last night on Sky Cinema and have to say I was a little disappointed. The premise, although outlandish (though horror is geared towards the outlandish is it not?), seemed quite interesting. Unfortunately, this movie was poorly executed and rather slow-moving which made the movie difficult to watch. ‘The Mutations' has some interesting parts though and is worth watching if only for the ‘Freak Show' part way through featuring some quite disgusting acts.The acting seemed rather wooden from everybody, including Donald Pleasance, which hampered the film even more. The only performance really noteworthy was from Michael Dunn in the role of Burns, the loveable guardian to the other acts in the freak show. What really was interesting was how to begin with the `freaks' (I really do hate using that term to describe these people as in fact they are just in some way handicapped) seemed like they were menacing characters but over the course of the movie we were exposed to more humanity coming from then than any other character in the film – one of director Jack Cardiff's few achievements in this movie.In the end ‘The Mutations' becomes a barely average sci-fi/horror movie with little redeeming moments and many silly looking costumes. The direction was standard fare for films of this quality and it seems a shame that a great actor like Donald Pleasance was tied up in this, especially as his performance was undeniably lacklustre. The final ten minutes or so seemed hashed together very quickly and were thoroughly unsatisfying though did feature one good effect. I personally don't recommend this film but fans of sci-fi B-movies may enjoy it as it seemed to be made with heavy influence from the similar movies of the fifties and sixties. Though not exactly alike I would personally recommend ‘The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)' over this movie. My rating for ‘The Mutations' 5/10.