by Chris Wright, MoreHorror.com

An mid 80s movie touting that it has one of the stars of the original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” involving the future can't possibly be bad can it? Yes, it really can. The best part of this mid 1980s is the very artistically creative poster and VHS art. The cover art was created by H.R. Giger.

Giger is a nightmarish surrealistic painter. He created a very vivid poster art for this movie. He also created the poster for “Alien”, “Alien 3”, and “Poltergeist II.” This movie was first released by Vestron in 1985.

The movie is essentially about a killer and his gang going after a bunch of frat boys. Apparently this gang that calls themselves “mutants” has taken over the large city. They have been affected by toxic poisoning. The frat boys kidnap one of the mutants for prank purposes and that does not bode well with the gang. That sounds pretty cool doesn't it? I wish the movie was as cool as the premise sounds.

This movie tries very hard to be an intelligent movie in some sense. It is riddled with political overlays of anti nuclear warfare, classic 80s comedy, loads of bad 80s hair. The most annoying part is the un-likable characters. It is even difficult to pay attention to half the plot since the movie is incredibly boring.

It also has the curse of being dimly lit so at times it is very difficult to see what is actually taking place in a scene. The movie just does not sync very well together. It tries to do so much in a short frame of time. The movie is its own worst enemy. It is very difficult to even do a modestly affective futuristic Troma-eque sci-fi horror movie with only 250,000 budget.

There is some good in this movie. It has the classic 1980s music built all in it as well as some synth music in the opening titles. That and some obvious 80s jokes makes it for a few laughs. I could only watch this movie drunk after my first viewing since its nearly unbearable to watch out of its sheer boredom. The curse of the fantastic cover art strikes again! It pulls you to want to watch it but when you put it in, you get depressed fast.

The main killer is somebody known as Splatter (Edwin Burns). We best know Edwin Burns as the hitchhiker from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You wouldn't recognize him in this as he is wearing loads of makeup in his rock star disguise. I much prefer him as Lord Zedd in the Power Rangers series (oh yes he was Lord Zedd!) Even the great Edwin Burns can't save this movie. The only reason it has the classic movie written on the poster and the VHS is to get you to watch. I watched and was suckered in to horrendousness that was this.

You may wonder why I haven't given any character plots. The question I have even for myself is “what characters?” I didn't care or remember them as I was watching so they are of little importance. Aside from what I already mentioned, the synthesizer score and the cinematography (despite lighting) is not too bad. Overall, this movie tried but failed big time. Ronald W. Moore’s first and last directing could have been much better. Watch only if you're in to bad 80s movies that could have been so much better. I give it 2 out of 5 stars. It’s in the 3’s on IMDB.