Ogroff

Mad Mutilator (1983)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Bizzrre French film that tries to cash in and pay homage to the American slasher. A masked lumberjack stalks anyone who enters his woods. Throughout the film we get a variety of people who come in contact with the killer and they don't live to regret it.

This French film from writer-director N.G. Mount never really makes too much sense and I'd argue the plot is extremely thin to say the least. I'm not sure what the budget was for this film but it was obviously extremely low and while the film isn't a good one, it's at least somewhat interesting because you have to give the young filmmaker credit for attempting to do something like this and it does deliver what most people are going to be wanting from it.

What would that be? The gore and violence level is quite high because the lack of plot means that people just randomly show up in front of the killer. More times than not he just chops them up without any questions asked and this includes children. The special effects certainly aren't the work of Tom Savini and more times than not we just see the aftermath but this is just a part of low-budget filmmaking and especially during the era of the slasher.

Believe it or not, Jess Franco regular Howard Vernon shows up at the end and that alone makes this worth sitting through at least once. The film's biggest problem is that the pacing is rather bad and it's quite long considering there's no real plot. The film has a hard time keeping the viewer's attention and the lack of sound (it's dubbed) is another issue.

Still, if you enjoy the weird and bizarre then MAD MUTILATOR is worth watching once.

Meet Ogroff,the most bestial and savage backwoods killer in the history of French horror genre.This masked psycho randomly butchers random people doing random things in the forest including men,women and even kids.Extremely cheap and awful French slasher with tons of inept gore.The editing is extremely amateurish and there is often no sound.Even the voices have been added later.There are some random zombies thrown in for a good measure.The killings are nasty and inane including the scene in which the guy gets the hatchet in his face."Mad Mutilator" rips off "The Burning" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and it surely looks like Nathan Schniff's ultra low-budget gorefests.If you are into crude dismemberment,axe masturbation and leather masks watch this utter trash and be amazed how ridiculous it is.5 axes out of 10.

For a sick and twisted cult fanatic like myself, who has seen practically everything already, the movie possibly couldn't start any better. Within the first three minutes, there's a psychopath with an S&M mask butchering a 5-year-old by planting an ax in her little chest and then literally putting his pompous foot on her body to pull it back out. That is sick! That is loathsome! That is … awesome! Of course, right after (and even during already, to be honest) the initial euphoria, it becomes painfully apparent that "Mad Mutilator" is a Z-grade amateur movie without a script, without equipment, without involvement of anyone who ever worked in the film industry, without suspense building, without continuity or without sense of subtleness. We can easily explain this, by the way. N.G. Mount, the writer / director / producer / lead actor and editor of "Mad Mutilator" is actually just an ordinary Parisian video store clerk who enjoys making movies in his spare time and this is his masterpiece.

The titular freak, apparently called Ogroff, is a deeply deranged cannibalistic maniac who lives in the woods and slaughters happy families when they stop near his hideout place to have some rest or a picnic. He's a real bad-ass because he disembowels the body of the child in front of her chained but conscious mother. He also pops out people's car trunks and we learn that he masturbates with his ax. Yes, that looks as bizarre as it sounds. Obviously, "Mad Mutilator" is a terrible piece of trash in every meaning of the term. The introduction of new characters takes approximately seven minutes. That's SEVEN minutes of staring at people playing chess in the woods and listening to atrocious electro music. The special effects and stunts, however, are beyond stupendous. When Ogroff pushes one of the victims' cars off a cliff, it's clearly just a matchbox car thrown in a sink. Another nifty trick Mr. N.G. Mount repeatedly takes advantage of is playing the soundtrack of another film (my guess a Hong-Kong martial arts flick) over the action sequences. The sub plots, allegedly added to increase the tension, are magnificent and 100% plausible. There's a girl investigating the strange disappearances in the area and she goes off wandering in the woods all by herself. What a genius! She also must be some sort of bionic woman because she pulls a guy's head right off! Unfortunately, for her, he wasn't the mad mutilator. The battle between Ogroff with his ax and a random woodchopper with his chainsaw is quite cool and incredibly messy, but unnecessarily stretched. The last bit of logic completely vanishes when suddenly an army of zombies crawl out of Ogroff's basement (well … hole in the ground) and the whole thing turns into a lame "Night of the Living Dead" imitation.

"Mad Mutilator" is amateur film-making at its most primitive and shameless. This kind of movie plays in the same league as Andreas Schnaas' "Violent S**t" and Don Swan's "Goremet: Zombie Chef from Hell". In other words, the kind of movie that automatically makes you think stuff like: "How come my mates and I haven't made any movies yet? If this guy can do, certainly ours would be better". You're probably right, too, but suppose it fails as well … Do you really want to see your name irredeemably linked to something like this? "Mad Mutilator" is unendurable for sane persons, but if you already spent a lifetime watching obscure and controversial horror movies, this is a true gem! Besides, it's somewhat admirable that N.G. Mount managed to convince no less than Howard Vernon (regular French horror actor) to make a very brief appearance.

Everything about this is so incompetent it's hilarious. The editing is atrocious and looks like it was done by a mental patient with safety scissors. Everything is shot in wide coverage so there's a lot of 10-15 second long shots of people running towards the camera. The whole film resolves around chase scenes that have all the dramatic tension of an episode of Who's The Boss. The big bad villain just looks like a dumpy hobo and is less scary. Not to mention that it badly and blatantly rips off The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That said: it's hilariously bad. Like, Manos: The Hands of Fate level bad, and in fact the camera work and editing is very similar.

Ogroff (AKA: Mad Mutilator) - 1983 (This Film Rates a B- ) A low budget French schlocky slasher subtitled in English. A masked man (Ogroff), kills folks who trespass in his wooded area. He even kills children. There isn't much of a story line beyond that. It's all very random and kind of crazy. There is no character development and things get kind of lost. The dead start to rise as the masked killer stalks his one true love as she tries to flee. Let's not forget the vampire priest. Ogroff eventually succumbs to the dead and a crazy WTF ending ensues. It's all weird and over the top (like the self-eroticism with an axe at the 26 min mark) and nothing seems to make sense. The sound quality is some of the worst I have heard with below average acting and very little to no dialogue. The overall visual quality looks like it came straight off of VHS (recorded on Super 8). The gore is plentiful even if fake and topped with extremely poor looking effects. They are often times laughable. I don't think anything in this film was ever meant to be serious (16 min mark, 26 min mark). The murders are brutal and grotesque, but the killer never gets any blood on him. The soundtrack hits all the right electronic sounds (22 min mark, 35min 30 second mark, 59 min mark 1 hour 8 min mark). No T&A. None of the film's components work individually, but together, all seem to propel the film into a higher end of cheap schlock success. Its all-great fun if you know what you are getting into. The lesson is, never pull over in the back woods.