Mutant (1984)

 I just recently watched Bo Hopkins as a sheriff of a little desert town in the slasher flick, Sweet Sixteen (1983); sure enough, here he was again in a toxic water zombie flick a year later in 1984 with Mutant. His town is just up and vanishing, and no other law enforcement is available to provide extra assistance. Lee Montgomery, a regular as a child in a few of Dan Curtis 70s horror films, is Wings' younger brother, eventually disappearing after an under-the-bed "incident". Wings, in a rare heroic role, with a local played by pretty Jody Medford (her final film in a very brief film career), must figure out where everyone is at and why folks are gone missing. The toxic waste dump so weaponized in 80s horror; lots of filmmakers saw use in it as a plot device. Mutant was no different. That a chemical company would just willy-nilly hose lots of bright yellow waste "deep into mother nature" is astoundingly foolish, but thanks to Wings and Jody, their operations will be usurped, leaving them falling into the dump pits as hoses just blast out the yellow sludge. Toxic zombies with chemical burn touch that causes other victims to change into them is preposterous, but this is the 80s after all. 2/5

I still think the bathroom scene in the school where the toxic kids snatch away a child Medford couldn't protect, toxic zombies surrounding a car while Medford's trapped inside, and Hopkins retreating from toxic zombies in the morgue/clinic are the highlights.

I believe when I saw this in the rental store on the shelf the box art was of the lab assistant after the toxic water turns him into the pale white zombie. The bladder makeup effects were used to show faces, foreheads, and even hands to bulge in spots while a victim suffers the transformation.

Toxic chemicals in the water(dumped there by employees at a plant titled, New Era)turn locals in the little town of Goodland into zombies. "City boys" Josh(Wings Hauser)& Mike(Lee Montgomery)are traveling on vacation when they come across some rowdy locals of Goodland who drive them off into a massive ditch. When Mike is attacked by something that drags him underneath his bed at a boarding house ran by a mysterious old lady(Mary Nell Santacroce), Josh is left wondering where his brother has vanished to. The creepy lady tells him Mike wasn't in his room so Josh sets out to find him. The town has become derelict as Josh searches for his brother when he meets a school teacher, Holly(beautiful Jody Medford)tending to her sick uncle's tavern. They will soon become allies in a battle against zombies whose skin is a ghastly, ghostly white with yellow goo replacing red blood in their bodies..if the zombies touch you, a steam becomes present and the acidic grasp kills. Alcoholic Sheriff Will Stewart(Bo Hopkins), who is reeling from the accidental shooting of a child when he once a big city cop, is quite bewildered at what is happening to his town. He'll have to join forces, albeit reluctantly, with Josh to stop the carnage of the zombie outbreak. Can Will convince outstand law enforcement of the horror that has overwhelmed his little town? Can the outbreak itself be silenced or is the threat to the entire country a possibility?

Average zombie flick doesn't have much originality. The closing final twenty minutes ratchets up the suspense as poor Josh and Holly become besieged by the monsters they once knew as regular people. There's a harrowing school sequence where Holly loses a young student she is trying to protect to the toxic little monsters as they invade a restroom. The film expects us to believe Josh & Holly could escape an army of those things as the screenplay allows them too much leeway, illogically, apart from them. Take a scene in an abandoned gas station where they are absolutely surrounded, yet the toxic monsters, a crap-load of them, don't simply attack when there's absolutely nowhere to run. Time and time again, the screenplay allows Josh to escape certain doom. The plot is just too unrealistic. And, how the zombies mutate(from drinking toxic water)after a lengthly illness seems rather far-fetched and silly. Jennifer Warren portrays Dr. Myra Tate who is a former squeeze of Will's and the town's female doctor whose assistant changes into a mutant attacking her. - August 25th, 2007 (when I turned 30)