Night Shadows

Plot synopsis:
In the opening scene, a man wearing a uniform with EPA stamped on the right sleeve, investigates an old house in the dead of night. After finding footprints and a strange yellow substance on the ground, he enters the house through the basement door and after looking around, finds an arm belonging to a dead person. Suddenly an unseen person attacks him and picks him up by his neck and kills him.In the next scene, we see two men driving a white convertible car along a rural country road somewhere in rural Georgia. They are Josh Cameron (Wings Hauser) and his younger brother Mike (Lee Montgomery) who soon run into trouble when they're run off the road by a pickup truck full of rednecks and find themselves looking for a gas station. They hitch a ride in another pickup truck where the driver takes them to a fork in the road who tells them that the nearest town is Goodville which may have a phone and a garage.Josh and Mike arrive in Goodville in the middle of the night which resembles a ghost town. They see a man stagger out of a local bar called Jack's Tavern. Mike hears a noise where he investigates and finds the man dead in an alleyway. Josh and Mike go inside the bar where they ask the barman Jack for a telephone to call the police to report a dead body. But the same rednecks who ran them off the road are at the bar and their leader, a sadistic and psychotic hillbilly named Albert accosts them which leads to him pulling out a knife and trying to kill them leading to a barroom brawl which is broken up by the arrival of Sheriff Will Stewart (Bo Hopkins) which force Albert and his gang to leave, but they vow to kill the "Yankee city boys".Mike leads Josh and the sheriff back to the alleyway only to find the body gone and another derelict there. Mike tries to explain that the derelict is not the same man, but both Sheriff Stewart and Josh do not believe him. However, Sheriff Stewart finds some suspicious yellow fluid on the ground and takes a sample of it. He tells Josh and Mike to get their car repaired and leave town by the next day.With no motel in town, the sheriff drives the two brothers to a boarding house to spend the night (the same ominous house from the opening scene) where they are given rooms by the cheerful inn owner Mrs. Maley. As Josh and Mike settle in, Mike hears a notice under his bed and when he looks under it, he is grabbed by an unseen person with deformed hands.The next morning, Josh wakes up and asks Mrs. Maley where his brother is, but she claims not to know. Josh decides to venture into town to look for him. Mrs. Maley is clearly lying about knowing nothing because she is cleaning up his room after an apparent struggle and hides Mike's clothes.In town, Josh sees that most of the town is deserted and the only business that is open is Jack's Tavern. There Josh meets the pretty barmaid Holly Pierce (Jody Medford) whom she claims is filling in for her uncle Jack whom is out sick. Holly is a school teacher at a local school and she tells him that most of the students are out sick with some strange illness. Josh and Holly take a walk where they find most businesses closed including the local garage which Holly claims that it has been closed for a week. Holly finds it odd because many of the townsfolk are taking ill with some undiagnosed disease.Meanwhile, Sheriff Stewart delivers the sample of the strange yellow fluid to his "gal pal" Dr. Myra Tate (Jennifer Warren) for an analysis. She too claims that something is going on in town for the past few weeks for several of her patients have not come to see her and that most of the other businesses in town are closed.Josh and Holly venture to a local elementary school where they find Billy, a young pre-teen there who claims that his parents have gone after becoming sick. When Josh hears a noise in the school, he ventures down to the basement to investigate and finds a dead body of a young girl. Suddenly, Albert appears... who just happens to be the janitor at the school and tries to kill Josh once again. After a struggle, Josh wounds Albert with seam from a burst pipe and flees. Albert then calls Sheriff Steward and (being the redneck psychopath that he is) tells the police a fabricated story about witnessing Josh killing the young girl. Everyone, including Holly and Sheriff Steward, are skeptical to Albert's story because of his own criminal record. Dr. Tate arrives at the school and asks Sheriff Stewart to have the body brought to the doctor's office for an examination before turning it over to the local county morgue.When Holly decides to drive for her home, Josh is hiding in the back seat and claims to her that something strange is going on in the town. Alone with her in her house, Josh tries to be intimate with Holly until he collapses. Holly takes him to Dr. Tate who tells Josh that he was temporarily infected by a chemical reaction of some type which the result of the physical contact with the body of the dead girl. After receiving medical treatment, Josh leaves with Holly and suspects that it may have something to do with a chemical depot warehouse owned by New Era Chemicals that Josh and Mike found outside of town on the day of their arrival.Meanwhile, Sheriff Stewart drives over to the house of the dead girl's father, Mr. Mitchell, to inform him of his daughter's death only to find the house deserted, with the window shades pulled down and the light bulbs gone from all the lights in the house. Stewart enters a pantry and finds Mr. Mitchell lying on the floor with some strange injuries to his face and arms. When the sheriff asks him what happened, all Mr. Mitchell can says is "the hands. It was their hands". Steward calls his superior Captain Dawson of the county police to report another homicide. But a few hours later, when Captain Dawson arrives at the Mitchell house, the body is gone. The captain suspects that the event was something about Stewart's alcoholism and relives him from duty. Dawson also makes an implied comment about Stewart's latent homosexuality as well.At the doctor's office, Dr. Tate examines the body of the little girl found at the school and makes notes in her tape recorder about finding a chemical compound in the youngster's body which has somehow taken over her blood, and leaving her with open wounds on both of her hands. Just then, Dr. Tate's co-worker, Vic, whom has been sick and coughing, begins to turn into a grey-skinned, black-eyed, zombie-like creature who attacks Dr. Tate.The next morning, Josh and Holly travel to the New Era construction site which is fenced off and they discover the secret of the sickness in the town; it is revealed that toxic chemical waste from an illegal dump has turned most of the townspeople into grey-skinned, black-eyed zombies who come out at night and feast on the dwindling population of the town. Josh and Holly barely escape from the facility and dodge bullets from the security guards and workers.At this point, the movie evolves into a 'Night of the Living Dead'-esq thriller as Josh Holly, and Sheriff Stewart must find a way to not only escape from the town, but also find a way to kill all the mutant zombies before they become victims themselves. Josh first goes to the police station to report his find, only to find Stewart getting drunk after being relieved from duty. Holly goes to her house to check on her sick uncle only to get attacked by him as he rises up a blood-drinking zombie too with his hands as leech-like clamps to suck a victim's blood. Holly is saved by the arrival of Josh and Stewart, forcing the zombie Jack to flee.Finally aware what is going on and that the creatures are afraid of the light, Josh suggests getting the Georgia State Police into town to help while he tries to find his missing brother. The three of them split up hoping to get out of town before nightfall.Josh goes to the boarding house where he ventures to the basement and finds the dead bodies of his brother Mike as well as the EPA guy and a few others where it is revealed that the landlady is keeping the zombie mutant of her daughter locked up in the basement and feeding her unsuspecting victims. Josh manages to get out of the cellar and the landlady falls victim to her own zombie daughter.Meanwhile, Holly and Sheriff Stewart go to the medical clinic to look for Dr. Tate and to take the dead body of the girl as evidence for the state police only to find Dr. Tate dead and several mutant zombies attacking them. Holly is forced to run, while the sheriff is trapped between two groups and is forced to lock himself inside a medicine closet.As night comes, Holly finds Billy wondering the streets and chases him inside the school where Billy is frightened claiming that his parents have come back and are trying to kill him. A group of zombie school children attack, forcing Holly and Billy to flee inside the boy's room where Billy is killed by the horde of zombie children. Josh arrives and saves Holly, forcing them to flee.The two survivors drive in Holly's car to the medical clinic to try to rescue Sheriff Stewart. While Holly waits inside the car, Josh goes inside the medical building only to find the sheriff gone and several dead zombies lying around. Just then a large group of zombies emerge from the mist outside and attack Holly in her car, using their toxic powers of their hands to literally 'melt' the car windows to get at her. Unable to drive away since Josh had taken the car keys, Holly honks the horn, forcing Josh to run outside where he fights several zombies and manages to get back in the car to drive away. But on their way out of town, a zombie left on the roof of the car forces their car to crash along the town's main street.Forced to flee on foot, Josh and Holly hide inside the closed garage. Josh and Holly begin to make Molotov cocktails to use when Albert arrives with a shotgun. Deranged to the last, Albert instead tries to use Holly and Josh as 'bait' for the zombies resulting in a struggle where Albert's shotgun is discharged, and giving away their hiding place. The horde of zombies break into the garage where they grab Albert and drag him outside where they apparently kill him as well. Josh opens fire on the zombies with Albert's shotgun until he runs out of ammo. He then lights and throws the Molotov cocktails, setting a few zombies on fire. But more and more of them keep coming, leading to them breaking down the garage door and burst through the windows forcing Josh and Holly behind the counter. Just when it looks like they are both done for, several state police cars arrive and the policemen blast away at the zombies, killing all of them. Josh and Holly venture outside and see that Sheriff Stewart had indeed escaped and brought the state police with him.

Tags: murder

Review:
After being forced off the road by locals, the two brothers Cameron end up at the nearest town -Goodland- but there's nothing good awaiting them, besides the aggressive rednecks, they'll also come face-to-face with some "nasty" residents.With all the bad reviews i've read, I was expecting yet another boring 80's movie but that's not the case.
If like me you think zombies should be seen and not heard (spouting silly one-liners) and prefer them plodding about exhibiting only the most primal, instinctive deadly behavior (not blabbing about what they are going to do) then this movie is for you.Like the original Night of the Living Dead, this is a low budget indie which relies more on suspense and action than on grandiose special efx.
The citizens of a small town start to disappear, and the few remaining people discover a local toxic company has had a toxic spill that has turned the people into blood thristy mutants or zombies.
The cover box called this movie 'Mutant' so I knew it wasn't going to be about flower arrangement (good) and it starred Wings Hauser (could be good but then again he could overact mightily) and it was very cheap might be awful) but as it was a wet tuesday I bought it.
They all took part in your usual chemicals contaminates town turning folks into murderous zombie type things sort of plot but the photography was atmospheric, the music creepy or emotional as appropriate, the make up scary and it all built up slowly but surely to a suspenseful ending.
Wings Hauser, star of many a straight-to video movie in the 80s, stars in this decidedly silly, but enjoyably unpretentious slab of sci-fi/horror tosh.With a script constructed from a hotchpotch of well-worn genre clichés, Mutant's director, John 'Bud' Cardos opts to play things straight where others may have aimed for a more tongue in cheek approach; the result is a fun filled B-movie which, despite its hackneyed script and cheesy plot structure, works extremely well.After being run off the road by truck-driving rednecks, brothers Josh and Mike Cameron (Wings Hauser and Lee Montgomery) set off on foot for the nearest town.
Unfortunately for them, the nearest town is infected with toxic waste (being dumped by an unscrupulous chemicals company) that is turning the residents into acid-secreting mutants.Josh, along with pretty schoolteacher Holly (Jody Medford), battles for survival, while trying to convince boozy sheriff Will Stewart (Bo Hopkins) that the town is under threat from a horde of killer mutants.Director Cardos perfectly captures the B-movie vibe and his likable cast throw themselves into their roles with gusto, giving some decent performances.
Bo Hopkins is particularly good as the alcoholic cop and he shares some nice scenes with Jennifer Warren, who plays small town doctor, Myra Tate.Cardos, obviously no stranger to the genre (his mutants closely resemble the zombies from Romero's Dawn of the Dead) has the good sense to kill off characters that you would lay money on to survive in most horror films; this means that, with the gloves off, Cardos can have fun playing with the audiences expectations.In an exciting finale, in which Josh and Holly are surrounded by mutants, Cardos toys with the possibility of a downbeat ending, before the good sheriff and his men arrive to save the day.The make-up FX are simple yet effective; the mutants are blueish in hue, with some yucky 'splits' in their palms from which they secrete corrosive yellow gunk.
His brother is well annoyed, but Wings still manages to yuck it up as they head into a hick town, given a lift there by a crazy looking yokel who's not what he seems.Once they get into town they discover a dead body and head into a bar for help, only to run into the rednecks again and get into a bar fight, broken up by local alcoholic sheriff Bo Hopkins, a washed up city cop who's lost his bottle, and is an ex-lover with the local doctor.
Now properly stranded in the town, Wings looks for his brother with the help of a local teacher (and of course he finds time to woo her), finds a dead child, runs into the redneck again (and has a pipe fight with him) while Bo Hopkins finds more corpses and gets ignored by his boss, who thinks he's just a washed up drunk.
I won't give away any more of the plot as it is a suspenseful horror film.The most notable actors in the film are Bo Hopkins who plays Sheriff Will Stewart and Wings Hauser who plays Josh Cameron.P.S. If George Romero had been involved in this project along with some more professional special effects man like Tom Savini, this could have been the best horror film of that year.Overall I give it 8/10..
Montoro production in this case I had a feeling it was going to be a fraud he dose this with every film he makes and gets a law-suit filed againist him inculding GREAT WHITE (1980) BEYOND THE DOOR (1974) and THE DARK which was not pulled like his other movies.
It's sort of like "Night of the Living Dead" with a toxic side to it about some survivors running through a small Texas town to escape the hoards of zombies.
In "Night Shadows" AKA "MUTANT", plays Josh, he and his brother go out in a Southern town after being run off the road by some local ruffians.
Director John "Bud" Cardos - who apparently replaced HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW's Mark Rosman - creates a good crazy small town atmosphere and the last half hour is full-on craziness as Josh, love interest Holly (gorgeous Jody Medford) and Sheriff Stewart (Bo Hopkins) try to survive.
First things first: Ordinary Zombie movies (I'm a huge fan of these too), like Dawn of the Dead or Night of the living Dead for instance are highly recommendable, but need always a lot of gore and violence to become a good entertainment.
Take Dawn of the Dead, let the light hurt the eyes of the zombies so that all the action takes place in unsatisfying darkness, add stupid characters that keep putting themselves into unnecessary danger, and you have Night Shadows.
It took me another four years, not until 2006, to finally track down a DVD copy of this film, also known as "Night Shadows".I wasn't exactly expecting a good movie, but to my surprise this wasn't really all that bad.
I won't say what happens to the little kid...At the time, this was actually the first movie I saw starring Wings Hauser, and I must say, even though he looked like a cross between David Hasselhoff and John Lithgow, he came across as a decent actor who gave an enjoyable performance.
Wings Hauser is the man, and it took me several crappy movies & bad viewing experiences to realize that.So, okay, "Mutant" (aka "Night Shadows") remains, of course, a B-movie.
Those are nice 're-wind moments', but the decent acting and plot, together with the occasional creepy atmosphere (some shots of the foggy town at night) and nice musical score do lift this movie to a little higher level.
Okay, let me set a few things straight for those of you who expected any intellectual stimulation out of this movie.I'm going to go ahead and take the hint that a lot of people think this film is sub-par.
I was really surprised that such a low budget film would have such believable-looking monsters.Really the only things I had a problem with were that it took so long to set up and that there was not any gore, which is expected in a movie like this.
Wings Hauser does his best with the script which at times drags on, and he also seems to have done his own stunts, some of which looked quite dangerous.The best thing about it is the atmosphere, which has been well realised with the usual fog and darkness, and the people who are complaining so loudly about the quality of the picture should bear in mind that it was a low budget movie.
the mutant(aka;night shadows)is the last film made by film ventures(day of the animals,grizzly,manitou)after this they went bankrupt.its a very good horror movie about toxic mutants created by nuclear waste in a small town.on some VHS/DVD box covers it shows an alien like creature.
but these are human monsters.wings Hauser,lee Montgomery,Bo svenson star in this very eerie creepy horror movie.the music on the soundtrack was my favorite,it sounds similar to altered states soundtrack but was done by Charles band,it was featured again in the empire pictures production;ghosttown(88)mutant was low budget but well made and i thought it was very creepy.i call this a guilty pleasure movie i give it 8 out of 10.i know it sounds crazy but i liked mutant..
This totally ordinary film (technically not a zombie flick, though the monsters do look a lot like zombies), has good acting by Wings Hauser and Bo Hopkins and OK special effects, but.....you've seen it all before.
Instead, this Mutant is a low-budget zombie film set in small town America.
It's not overly imaginative and follows most of the zombie tropes we've all come to expect (with the exception of the leaky palms), but Mutant actually has nice atmosphere that can be rare in this type of low-budget 80s horror movie.
Mutant is one of those cases where the good (acting, atmosphere, snappy direction, and a nice final fight scene) and bad (lack of imagination, gaping plot holes, and cheap zombie make-up) pretty well cancel each other out and I end up with a wishy-washy 5/10..
It takes an hour to really get going, the script and dialogue are ridiculous (it feels like they took two different scripts and mashed them together), and one of the scariest things in the movie is a close up of Wings kissing poor Jody Medford, who seems to have quit acting after the experience.
He just almost killed them earlier, what's the big deal?The first hour or so involves Wings being a mouth breathing jerk to just about everyone he meets (he doesn't seem to be able to control it except around Jody Medford's character, and even then, just barely) while his mouth breathing brother cluelessly starts a bar fight and almost gets them arrested by Bo Hopkins, who would have made this a much better movie if he'd had bigger role.We find out that most of the town has some kind of flu.
A small southern town is overrun by blue faced zombies thirsty for human blood.The cause of zombification is a toxic substance that resembles yellow paint.It's up to Wings Hauser,Jody Medfor and the local sheriff Bo Hopkins to save the town.A tad sluggish but suspenseful zombie flick with plenty of yellow goo.The zombies look like demons from "The Evil Dead" and there is plenty of tension.The lighting is dim and there are some dull spots,but the scares are great.I remember seeing "Night Shadows" aka "Mutant" for the first time many years ago.The scene of zombified children in school stuck with me for many years."Night Shadows" is still effective and likable since then.8 zombies out of 10..
Now with the town seemingly becoming almost vacant overnight, the only help that Josh finds in his quest for his brother is Holly, a hot school teacher.This film may have had a solid premise (I say that for the mere reason that toxic waste in horror films usually make for the best monsters, such as the CHUD, toxic avenger,giant alligators, etcetera), but the pacing just about kills any forward momentum this movie might have had.
One of the biggests wastes of my time and money i've ever paid to rent, don't be fooled by the cover cause i thought it would be cool and interesting movie but it wasn't.It's about some city boys who's car breaks down and are in a southern town where suddenly everyone becomes Toxic-waste contaminated mutant zombie-like beings,There is no actual monster like on the video cover, i think this movie is almost as bad as " Manos: Hands of Fate" and this movie is boring to the max.
If anyone out there wondered what a gore-eschewing, spooky atmosphere emphasizing, modestly produced, yet still capably acted and directed backwater Hickville, USA-set cross between "Macon County Line" and "Night of the Living Dead" would be like, this surprisingly sound lethal toxic mutants running murderously amok downhome horror feature will answer your questions quite nicely.
All the staple Southern-fried drive-in movie ingredients are present and accounted for: two clean-cut young Northerner brothers are treated with utmost inhospitality by the belligerent local yokel residents of a tiny armpit stick burg they're just innocently passing through on a cross country road trip, some nefarious cost-cutting company surreptitiously dumps illegal radioactive gunk in the forest which in turn causes a few townies to transform into blue-faced nocturnal zombies with rapidly diminishing blood who kill hapless folks for their precious life fluids, a skeptical recovering alcoholic sheriff (an excellent Bo Hopkins in his umpteenth redneck lawman role) refuses to believe in any of it until it's too late, only a token sweet, sympathetic odd gal out barmaid/school teacher nice lady (the quite fetching and appealing Jody Medford) sides with the boys, and things eventually get distressfully out of hand, leading to a rousing last reel appearance by the National Guard to save the day in the nick of time.Yeah, nothing about this particular flick manages to be really surprising or original as far as the story is concerned.
Being an alkie, the sheriff's judgment is not the best and seems to think this is okay although later on his boss, who like all big time law enforcement types is very slow on the uptake, fires him for doing this.From here things go rapidly from bad to worse, as an army of zombies with caustic blood descend.
They are simply bad dudes who like to play with toxic waste and don't much care if the locals are being turned into zombies because of it.
Into this town come two big city brothers, Josh (Wings Hauser) and Mike (Lee Montgomery), who are just in time to become caught up in the strange events.Director John "Bud" Cardos, who'd graced us with the superior "nature strikes back" entry "Kingdom of the Spiders" seven years previous, stepped in here to replace original director Mark Rosman ("The House on Sorority Row"), and does his usual bang up job, successfully creating an ominous mood and palpable small town atmosphere.Wings is very likable in a role far removed from his flamboyant villainy in "Vice Squad", as a carefree sort of guy who's forced to get serious in a hurry.
That's why a movie like "Mutants" doesn't just feel like a relic, but one of the last relics from a time when you could pitch a movie, and studios would at least consider it.Josh (Wings Hauser) and Mike Cameron (Lee Montgomery) are two brothers on the lookout for a good time, until some rednecks run their car over.
Why is the movie called "Mutant" (also known as "Night Shadows") and has a poster that looks like that of an "Alien" knock off, but it's actually a zombie movie?"Mutant" is very much a meat and potatoes style drive-in-horror-flick from the 80's, originally intended to be directed by Mark Rosman ("The House on Sorority Row") but ended up going to Joe "Bud" Cardos ("The Dark" and "Kingdom of the Spiders.") By meat and potatoes, I mean there isn't any real gore (unless you count the green zombie blood) or nudity on display.
( thats always the way isn't it!!).Good little zombie movie if nothing else.It grabbed my attention and I watched it through to the end.
Our hero befriends the pretty local school teacher and the town doctor, survives several zombie attacks, and together they race to stop the toxic menace before night falls once again.
Wings Hauser is great here, he had the cocky pretty boy look, nailed down perfectly, he was very likable, had pretty good chemistry with Jody Medford, and was fun to watch!,only qualm is he had to spurt out lousy dialog at times, but he is a great low budget film actor!.
Bodies are appearing, then disappearing, people are taking ill, the streets are increasingly empty....So anyway, to cut an overly slow moving film short - it turns out that a nearby chemical waste dump is turning everyone into toxic vampire zombies, which isn't quite as exciting as it sounds.The best scene has a doctor examining a body and explaining the process of how people are mutating, completely oblivious to her assistant turning into a monster behind her, following the description to the letter and making an awful lot of noise while doing it.
If only there were more moments of comedy as good as this then the film may be worth watching.There is ONE good scene at the climax, as a gang of unruly vampire zombies surround our "heroes", but sadly it doesn't build to anything.Overall the film is cheap looking (though some of the make up effects are decent), badly made, badly written, VERY badly acted and did I mention that it stars Wings Hauser?There is a good punchline though.
Brothers Josh (Wings Hauser) and Mike (Lee Montgomery) get stranded in a small southern town after a run-in with some locals on the highway.
Imagine Day of the Dead and Deliverance had a lovechild, which grew up to disappoint both parents beyond their wildest fears, and that's Mutants.And the real tragedy is that Mutant was, by far, the closest thing to 'watchable' Montoro ever produced (besides maybe Getting Into Heaven; smut is smut and generally we aren't watching for character arcs or storyline, so I can't imagine he would have butchered it that bad).The film opens as Josh and Mike (Wings Hauser and Lee Montgomery), two brothers from the city, motor down the highway in their fancy convertible.