Mutant War

Director - Brett Piper (The Screaming Dead, Queen Crab)
Starring - Matt Mitler (The Mutilator, Deadtime Stories), Steve Bulyga (The Return of Captain Sinbad), and Kristine Waterman (Cemetery High)
Release Date - 1988
Genre - Sci-Fi/Comedy
Tagline - "Earth...A nice place to breed but you wouldn't want to live there"
Format - Bluray (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     After I took the time to watch Battle for the Lost Planet I couldn't wait to follow it up with a sequel.  The movie was far from perfect but it had that video store charm that I miss and a wave of nostalgia rushed over me.  That film apparently did fairly well for itself because the studio behind it approached director Brett Piper to direct a follow up.  The sequel was released in 1988 as Mutant War.  

     The film picks up sometime after the events of the first film.  We once again follow Harry Trent (Mitler) who is roaming the country fighting a new breed of creatures that spawned in the wake of the weapon he had used to kill the aliens.  Along the way he encounters a young girl and she tells him about a group of mutants that came in to her village and abducted all the women.  He agrees to help her find them and soon finds a secret lab where a man hungry with power is using the women to breed with his strong but dumb mutants to create soldiers he can control.  

     I was expecting Mutant War to be a weaker film than Battle for the Lost Planet but I actually found myself having more fun with it than the first film.  The movie reminded me of several other movies that I loved growing up while taking the story from the first film any further.  The acting in this one is more of the same.  We get an array of colorful and memorable characters with Mitler once again portraying the charismatic and often funny Harry Trent.  The supporting cast does a solid job but Mitler is the focal point.  The story for this one reminds me of another 1988 film.  The movie, Hell Comes to Frogtown, follows frog creatures that kidnap women for breeding in much of the same fashion as this film.  Regardless of how much it borrows from that film I still enjoyed the characters, scenery, and story.  Finally, this is another one that's not bloody but we do get plenty of laughable make-up effects and even more Harryhausen inspired creatures.  Overall, Mutant War is just as rough as the first film but fans of Harryhausen and direct to video sci-fi flicks will really enjoy themselves here.