Searching for a hot story, a reporter joins a boxer and his girlfriend in searching for a missing friend of theirs and eventually stumbles upon a mysterious doctor harvesting victims for experiments in human/animal hybrids and must try to stop the doctor before they're the next victims.
Overall, this one was much better than expected. What works really well here is the interesting setup which works well enough on its own but has much more to like due to the period setting. That means the start of this one with the reporter looking for the big break and stumbling into the story by following the stranger from the nightclub becomes more intriguing once they find the strange mansion hideout. Offering enough twists through its inclusion of sleazier storytelling but keeping enough points from the classic story from how they stumble into the creatures, this becomes a decent starting point. This setup provides the kind of cheesy creature confrontations not just with the creations but with the doctor. The means of their capture at the mansion and subjection to the preparations that take place focus heavily on the sight and presence of the creatures keeping them in check while trying to figure out the doctors' plans. As this goes on, the finale where the escapes and double-crosses take place which leads to a lot of fun and bloody brawling involving the humans and the mutants left alive which has the advantage not only of the graphic outcomes but the effects work all giving this a cheesy vibe. These features are what manage to make this one enjoyable while there are some issues with this one. The main issue here is the films' penchant for speechifying over graphic creature carnage which causes several side factors to emerge. Not only does that approach keep the energy down and the kills barely noticeable for long stretches of time, but it also means that there are a lot of technical issues with the surgery glossed over so that it never really makes sense how they are preferred or how everything went down in that location undetected. As well, there's also the fact that this leaves us with long, uninterrupted looks at the animal masks being used which really aren't that convincing. These factors are what hold this one back.
Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Full Nudity, and Sex Scenes.
