Huievest
Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.
Clarissa Mora
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
Wyatt
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
Scarecrow-88
A university professor by day, mad scientist by night, Dr. Nolter(Donald Pleasence exuding a quiet mania, portraying his character as someone completely convinced that his work is for the betterment of mankind despite how diabolical his methods are), respected by his peers, creates hybrid plant-humans in a goal to form a new evolution of mankind, using his own students brought to him by a carnival owner, Lynch(Tom Baker, under effective hideous facial make-up)plagued with the glandular Elephant Man disease. Lynch believes reluctantly that Nolter will cure him of his problem, for which he continues delivering specimens, but as friends of bio-chemistry wunderkind Brian Redford(Brad Harris)and Hedi(Julie Ege)come up missing, it's only a matter of time before the professor's ghoulish experiments and Lynch's kidnapping will be discovered. Lynch has another problem of his own making..he treats his carnival employees(..freaks, to the "normal" audience who cheer, sneer & fear them during shows)cruelly, displaying an ugliness just as much inside as outside. Lynch's crew have tolerated his insults and nasty treatment for a long time, and this film shows how his behavior towards them will result in a violent revolt echoing Tod Browning's masterpiece "Freaks." And, as typical of "mad scientist" movies, the creation will get revenge on it's creator..Nolter creates a plant-man who ingests humans for consumption from a belligerent student of his who always replied in classes against his theories.Macabre premise delivers some shocking moments including Nolter's creations and how one of them eats a street bum. Nolter's fate is especially grotesque. Baker is far removed from his charismatic, charming Doctor Who in portraying quite a tormented monster of a man who will do anything to remove the diseased face that keeps him removed from the society he yearns for. I found the seedy elements startling..such as Lynch's finding a prostitute willing to yield to his desires for a certain fee, the numerous displays of female nudity, and how female specimens have their clothes removed while unconscious on Nolter's laboratory slab before being experimented on. But, despite all the rather unpleasant mutations we are witnesses to, the opening of the plant cycle, set to rather unnerving music, actually was as effective(..if not more)to me than what comes after. And, director Cardiff has a lengthly showcase for the "freaks" of the carnival, with the viewer as "grossed out" or transfixed by each representative allowed to display their abnormality, as the audience in attendance. The script can be quite literate, whose "science-speak" might bore many viewers. If you're wondering whether or not Pleasence is hammy, he's indeed quite low-key, playing the doctor with a calm confidence.
Coventry
This grotesquely mad and slightly sick-spirited early 70's horror film couldn't count on too much praise from either the critics or the audiences, and there are a couple of (justified) reasons for this. First and foremost, director Jack Cardiff never really makes clear what his intentions are. Does he want "The Mutations" to be a cheesy and obviously fictional Sci-Fi horror flick about a mad scientist performing absurd experiments to create a new race of human vegetables? Or perhaps it was meant to be a harrowing and truly devastating portrait about the position of gruesomely deformed people in contemporary society, somewhat like Tod Browning's legendary classic "Freaks"? Either way, these two extreme themes are practically impossible to fold together and the film ends up somewhere in no man's land. Nonetheless it contains several genuinely disturbing and jaw-dropping moments, most notably when the collection of traveling circus freaks exhibits themselves and – in true Browning style – wreaks havoc on those who mistreated them. The whole plot is actually secondary to these sequences! The always-reliable Donald Pleasance stars as a nutball professor destined to integrate human tissue in his experiments of plant-mutation. Therefore he commands the horribly deformed & vicious owner of a circus to abduct human guinea pigs (students attending his own university lectures, which isn't that smart) and bring them to his private lab. When the experiments go inevitably wrong, resulting in a lizard-skinned girl and a male kind of Venus flytrap, Professor Pleasance just 'donates' them again to the circus as new attractions. Fellow students begin to search for their missing friends and, meanwhile, the circus' "natural" freaks plot to punish their cruel employer. The best sequence in "The Mutations" is a more than obvious tribute to the aforementioned "Freaks" and involves an attempt by the deformed people to befriend Lynch; nicknamed "the ugliest man in the world" (and he really is). One of us! One of us!! Whenever the action takes place outside of the circus tent, the film is pretty much scare-free and mildly tedious. Giant and clearly fake vegetable-monsters simply aren't creepy and several little (and stupid) details in the script just can't be true. Like biology students driving Jaguars, for example! Tod Browning's milestone once got banned for over 40 years and it nearly cost him his career, supposedly all because his portrayal of deformed people was exploitative and unacceptable. Once you see "The Mutations", you'll acknowledge that Browning's film actually is the complete opposite of exploitative! He tried to put the emphasis on how independent, courageous and perfectly able to function they are, whereas Jack Cardiff's picture really exploits the spectacle and questionable "entertainment"-value of these people's condition.
dr_gonzo
Ignore the uptight weirdo who spends 10,000 words bashing this movie. It's very enjoyable as long as you're a fan of the genre. With many gratuitous LSD references and a real live carnival freak show, how can you go wrong? If you thought Swamp Thing was too intellectual and The Fly was just too gross, this movie might definitely be for you. One of many human-cross-animal or plant movies, what causes this one to stand out is the overall creepiness of Donald Pleasance and, basically, the entire plot (what you can make of it).Time-lapse photography inserted for no particular reason just adds to the fun. The people who made this movie must have had a blast and so will you as long as you're not some amateur wannabe film critic. Sheesh!
gridoon
Mostly dry and boring horror film, with shoddy special effects - yet quite creepy if you let your imagination do the film's work for you. It all seems quite disturbing on paper (mutated man-plants, sideshow "freaks", etc.), but the film's only real merit is another good performance by the ever-reliable Donald Pleasence. For a genuinely engrossing and dramatic "mutation picture", I recommend the original "Fly" (1958). (**)
