adriangr "The Mutations" is a middling, mostly forgettable horror movie from the mid 70's. Set in trendy London, it tells the tale of a carnival freak show who run a sideline in kidnapping innocent victims to be the subject of evil experiments! That's all the plot there is, really, and the film doesn't really do a lot with it. It just goes through the motions of showing the freak show, showing some victims get nabbed, and then showing the expected climax. The film has several very silly elements to it. All the kidnapped youngsters are from the same college, and in fact they are all from a single group of four friends! The experiments themselves are very vaguely explained, but they lead to very dramatic mutated monsters.As a London resident I also found a lot to enjoy in the locations...is Battersea Park (the location of the carnival in the movie) really such a dangerous foggy wilderness as it is depicted here? (Maybe it was in the 1970's...). And the exterior location for the students college is actually The Royal Albert Hall! They should be so lucky! Some good points are: Donald Pleasance does his usual good job as a softly spoken but deadly scientist. And Tom Baker does a great job, unrecognisable in ugly face make-up as the scientist's deformed assistant. And the monsterized victims look quite fun, and there's one grisly scene in which a walking plant-thing drains the life out of someone. Although check out a big goof here, where a really big gap between the monster's head and chest suit shows off the actors pink neck in between - which spoils an otherwise effective moment! There are also a few scenes that showcase some real-life "freaks" used in the film, which can't help but seem exploitative. They do get a chance to act, though, in the additional sub-plot in which the freaks rebel against the one among them who is "the real monster" - there are heavy echoes of Todd Browning's famous "Freaks" here.To sum up, it's not really very memorable. The whole story is rushed through at great speed, there's no depth to any of the characters (no time!), and everything seems pretty small scale. The scientist's lab is also filmed at Oakley Court, which stood in for a spooky mansion in dozens of British horror movies filmed around this time, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, And Now The Screaming Starts, Girly, and loads more, so personally, I have seen this place on celluloid far too often!

christopher-underwood Not really enough money or effort put into this one. It appears that everyone thought simply that the presence of various 'freaks' Donald Pleasence, a bit of nudity and some man eating plants should see them through.Actually this almost works, unfortunately Mr Pleasence is in particularly one note form and although the speeded up photography for the plants is fine the later costumes for those that have turned into half human, half plant are not half as effective. There are some decent moments and good ideas but it is all so uphill. Undeniably quirky, though and probably worth it for the fairground scenes.

Snake-666 Donald Pleasance stars as Professor Nolter in this sci-fi/horror as a mad-scientist who, in between lecturing at a local university, is conducting bizarre experiments as he tries to bridge the gap between human beings and plant life. To aid him in his devilish research he uses Lynch (Tom Baker), a hideously deformed man who runs a carnival freak show, to obtain for him young men and women to perform his experiments on using the seemingly empty promise of altering the way Lynch looks for the better.I saw this one last night on Sky Cinema and have to say I was a little disappointed. The premise, although outlandish (though horror is geared towards the outlandish is it not?), seemed quite interesting. Unfortunately, this movie was poorly executed and rather slow-moving which made the movie difficult to watch. ‘The Mutations' has some interesting parts though and is worth watching if only for the ‘Freak Show' part way through featuring some quite disgusting acts.The acting seemed rather wooden from everybody, including Donald Pleasance, which hampered the film even more. The only performance really noteworthy was from Michael Dunn in the role of Burns, the loveable guardian to the other acts in the freak show. What really was interesting was how to begin with the `freaks' (I really do hate using that term to describe these people as in fact they are just in some way handicapped) seemed like they were menacing characters but over the course of the movie we were exposed to more humanity coming from then than any other character in the film – one of director Jack Cardiff's few achievements in this movie.In the end ‘The Mutations' becomes a barely average sci-fi/horror movie with little redeeming moments and many silly looking costumes. The direction was standard fare for films of this quality and it seems a shame that a great actor like Donald Pleasance was tied up in this, especially as his performance was undeniably lacklustre. The final ten minutes or so seemed hashed together very quickly and were thoroughly unsatisfying though did feature one good effect. I personally don't recommend this film but fans of sci-fi B-movies may enjoy it as it seemed to be made with heavy influence from the similar movies of the fifties and sixties. Though not exactly alike I would personally recommend ‘The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)' over this movie. My rating for ‘The Mutations' 5/10.

gridoon Mostly dry and boring horror film, with shoddy special effects - yet quite creepy if you let your imagination do the film's work for you. It all seems quite disturbing on paper (mutated man-plants, sideshow "freaks", etc.), but the film's only real merit is another good performance by the ever-reliable Donald Pleasence. For a genuinely engrossing and dramatic "mutation picture", I recommend the original "Fly" (1958). (**)