Toxic waste, corporate villains, muggers, aerobics classes, and the problems faced by working, single mothers whose offspring will only eat goldfish. This film truly wears its social concerns on its sleeve. Whatever else can be said about Plutonium Baby, it sure doesn’t short change you when it comes to mutants. There is a mutant rat, which bites a jock, which briefly transforms him into a mutant. A mutant mum who has given birth to a mutant kid, who during the course of the film becomes a mutant man, and who (slight spoiler) sires another mutant kid. Not forgetting a mad doctor who is responsible for turning the mutant mum into a mutant, and who himself becomes a mutant. Thats more mutants than you can shake a slime filled stick at.
Did the UK video industry of the 1980s have an aversion to the use of long, highfalutin words in movie titles. You’d certainly think that was the case when considering this film, which lost its original title, Plutonium Baby, in favour of becoming ‘The Mutant Kid’ on UK video. In fairness Plutonium Baby does lead you down the path of thinking that this film will be a monster baby movie akin to the ‘It’s Alive’ series, which it really isn’t. The Mutant Kid on the other hand feels like a grab bag of VHS buzzwords from the era. Films with the word ‘Mutant’ in the title were quite popular at the time, there was errr. .. Mutant, Mutant 2, Mutant Hunt…and ‘The Kid’ could imply the film was in the tradition of The Karate Kid, The Coca-Cola Kid, The Heavenly Kid, and The Invisible Kid. In short, there were allot of movies with the word ‘Kid’ in the title back then, so why shouldn’t we have The Mutant Kid.
Call it what you will The Mutant Kid…or Plutonium Baby…centers around Danny, a teenage boy who has been raised in the wilderness by his grandfather, and not without good reason. For Danny, isn’t like other boys, he has a birthmark on his neck that throbs when he is around toxic waste, can light fires with his hands, is able to eat fishes whole, and has allot to learn about women…but more about that later.
This is all down to the fact that while she was pregnant with him Danny’s mother had been exposed to toxic waste, and mysteriously disappeared while working for a yuppie doctor called Drake. In fact, Dr Drake had mum locked up in a toxic waste canister, where she has remained for 12 years until some bozos open the canister, and mutant mum emerges, looking pretty much like you’d expect for someone who’d been locked in a toxic waste canister for 12 years. Fearful that his wrongdoings are about to be exposed, Dr Drake and his thugs descend on Danny’s woodlands home, intent on wiping out mutant mum as well as Danny’s grandfather, who has been threatening Drake with legal action.
As this is a 1980s horror movie, also descending on the woods are a bunch of teenagers, whose quest for listening to loud music, pulling pranks on each other and having pre-marital sex is never going to work out well in a film like this. Sure enough, things quickly turn sour for the kids, one of them gets bitten by a mutant rat, and Drake and his thugs show up to kidnap the women. The kids also get to meet Danny and his grandfather. An encounter that goes awry when Danny, who has never seen a woman before, decides to grab one of the girl’s boobs out of curiosity, before being taken aside by his grandfather and given a quick prep talk on how women’s bodies are different to mens, and how women have places they don’t like to be touched, especially by under aged strangers. It’s here the filmmakers and the audience may have a bit of a parting of the ways. See, while the film insists on sympathetically portraying Danny as this poor little dude, who doesn’t have a mother or a father, and is all sad and lonely…all you tend to get from him is this ‘future sex pest in the making’ vibe. When he isn’t grabbing boobies, he is spying on couples having sex…and may well be the creepiest horror movie kid since Michael in Burial Ground, Zombi 3, Nights of Terror…call it what you will.
Despite the film’s title, it is the mutant mum who does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to dispatching the bad guys and finally getting revenge on Dr Drake, by locking him in the toxic waste canister. Unexpectedly, and rather confusingly for the audience, nearly all the characters are dead, and all the plotlines seemingly resolved around the 40 minute mark, forcing Plutonium Baby to pretty much restart itself and begin its narrative again. Now, was this unorthodox structure part of the filmmakers’ plan all along, or did the production run into some turbulence? I’m inclined towards the latter, because…well put it like this, have you ever read something on the IMDB and wondered if the information in question was added by a disgruntled individual who actually worked on the film? Such is the vibe you get from looking up Plutonium Baby on the IMDB, the IMDB trivia for which states “Originally scheduled for a ten-day shoot in August 1986 with director William Szarka and a crew who are now thankful they were never credited. Filming halted after five days when the director fired the assistant cameraman and the rest of the crew quit in protest.”
So, it doesn’t sound like Plutonium Baby was the happiest of film shoots especially that bit about the crew being “thankful they were never credited”. An editor by trade, William Szarka has a few other directing credits, including South Bronx Heroes from 1985, and Phantom Brother, a shot on video slasher/haunted house movie from 1988. I don’t think I’ve ever had the pleasure of South Bronx Heroes, although goodness knows you used to see that movie everywhere during the VHS era, but even the briefest exposure to Phantom Brother, with its crap jokes and juvenile, sex obsessed tone, leaves you in no doubt it was cut from the same cloth as Plutonium Baby. Szarka’s name is nowhere to be seen on Plutonium Baby though, which attributes direction to the mysterious Ray Hirschman, a man who has no other credits and no connection to other movies. So was Hirschman a pseudonym for Szarka? Or was he a separate entity brought onboard to salvage the production and direct the second half of the film? Answers on a postcard please.
Whatever went on there, Plutonium Baby act 2 resumes Danny’s story ten years later, with Danny now a surprisingly well adjusted adult working as a construction worker in New York. Wendy, one of the teenage survivors from the first half of the film, has not only never aged a day in ten years but has also bettered herself in life and is now a semi-famous aerobics instructor…because what late 1980s horror film would be complete without a gratuitous aerobics class sequence.
I suppose you could classify Plutonium Baby as a superhero film, although it’s a low budget late 1980s idea of a superhero film, which is considerably different to how we think of superhero films today. Danny certainly has superpowers but they are never really that impressive. While Danny has the ability to start fires with his hands, he only ever uses this talent to start a small wood fire going, something your average person could just do by rubbing two sticks together, or bringing a lighter along with them. Taking into account Danny’s lonely, isolated childhood versus the ability to start small fires and eating fish whole, and you’re left with the impression that the negatives to being a mutant kid far outweigh the positives.
As with any good superhero film, you also have to have a supervillian who is the mirror opposite of the hero, blessed with the same powers but who has taken a very different path in life. So, welcome back Dr Drake, who has been stuck in that toxic waste canister for ten years. That is until two guys come along and decide that a rusty canister with ‘danger radioactive’ written on the side would be an ideal place to put their beer cans. Behavior that even by Plutonium Baby standards is pretty dumb, but does push the narrative along and gets Dr Drake out of toxic waste jail. As with any facially disfigured villain in a late 1980s horror film, Dr Drake clearly has aspirations on being the next Freddy, what with his non-stop onslaught of one-liners. Dr Drake also seems to fancy himself as something of a Jack Nicholson in The Shining tribute act, and begins lumbering around hollering “Danny”. In fact, you can’t help wondering if the sole reason the main character in this film is called Danny, was so that they could set up that l’ttle Shining reference.
As is often the case in the superhero genre, the hero here is something of a dull, non-entity, leaving the far more charismatic Dr Drake to steal the film away from Danny, and ham it up. At one point, Dr Drake stumbles around central park singing “O Danny Boy” as a way of taunting Danny, since one of the side effects of toxic waste in this film is that you develop a psychic connection with other people who’ve been affected by toxic waste. Chalk that up as another one of the utterly useless superpowers that characters in this movie have.
Dr Drake’s reign of terror soon encompasses turning the tables on muggers, killing several of Danny’s friends and terrorizing Danny’s girlfriend. A quite literal display of toxic masculinity, that forces Danny into one final rooftop confrontation with Dr Drake, because, well….nobody puts Plutonium Baby in a corner.
In contrast to the rural, wilderness setting of the opening, the second half of Plutonium Baby is a distinctly New York piece. The film has the same type of atmosphere you get from the contemporary horror films of Tim Kincaid and Roberta Findlay, and equally seems to revel in portraying NYC in the most dangerous, threatening light possible. Much as exploitation film fans, especially those born after the fact, are fond of romanticizing the grindhouse era of 1970s and 1980s New York, films like this do bring you back down to earth and make you realize that realistically you’d have probably lasted five minutes in that place before you’d have been stomped, robbed and left in the gutter. 42nd Street and Central Park have rarely been as unflatteringly captured on film as they are here. While any footage of 42nd Street is now of historic value, there is something quite sad about the shots of the semi-deserted Deuce and the decaying grindhouses in this film, you’re left in little doubt that you’re witnessing the end of an era here.
The films of the aforementioned Tim Kincaid and Roberta Findlay might actually be the litmus paper test over how much you’re going to get out of Plutonium Baby. If those two names cause you to prick up your ears rather than run for the door, then this film speaks your language, and is on your wavelength. Plutonium Baby does typify the era of entrepreneurial filmmakers chasing the horror film dollar and slipping up on toxic waste along the way. It’s definitely part of the slimy, crude family of films like Breeders, The Suckling, Slime City, Street Trash and The Toxic Avenger.
Plutonium Baby does also have a rather odd history with Troma films, it was for years written up as a bit of a Toxic Avenger rip-off and even sometimes accidently credited as being a Troma production. Then after years of people being corrected over this being a Troma film, Troma went ahead and acquired the film at some point in the late 1990s, releasing it on DVD in 2010. Giving Plutonium Baby the status of being the Troma wannabe that eventually became an official part of their library, the Rupert Pupkin of schlock. Presumably out of the goodness of their hearts and for the benefit of all mankind, Troma have of late made Plutonium Baby available for nothing on Amazon Prime and their own Youtube Channel. Yes, in 2019, you can legally… and freely, watch Plutonium Baby online….WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE !!!!!!!
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