by Tim May

Mind Killer is an enigma. It’s a film with no particularly positive or negative elements. You’d think with its mind control concept, it would be able to at least eke out a few over-the-top telekinesis sequences, but nope. Nothing to see here. That said, I found it oddly well-paced and watchable. Am I in too deep with this kind of shit?

Our protagonist is Warren, an archivist at the local library who’s never had any success with women, and relies on motivational books and videos like “The Manly Art of Seduction.” On a seemingly nightly basis, he goes to some slimy singles bar called “Swingles” with his even dorkier co-worker Larry and his “cool guy” roommate Brad.

Warren has a thing for Sandy, the meek new librarian. After being rejected once, Warren finds a manuscript in the library’s archives which details how to practice mind control. After completing a few simple tasks like helping Larry complete a rubix cube, Warren is ready to test out his new powers on a random slut from Swingles before he tries it on his dream girl. It works.

The next day, he tries to use his new moves on Sandy, who proves resistant at first, but like many real life douchebags, he eventually wears her down until she’s forced to say yes. When he invites Sandy over to have dinner, Brad’s natural, non-creepy-mind-control charm comes across as threatening to Warren. When Warren’s out of the room, Sandy tells Brad her concerns about her new relationship. “I don’t even like Warren!” Don’t worry about that, Sandy. No one in the audience does, either.

Meanwhile, Larry has been testing out the powers a little bit, and he’s kept the final chapter of the manuscript from Warren, who’s been getting creepier and rape-ier by the day. When Warren realizes Larry’s been holding out on him, he telekinetically pulls down the arm of a paper cutter on Larry’s fingers, nearly chopping them off.

When Brad notices Larry’s wounds, he takes charge and leads Sandy and Larry in hatching a plan to help Warren. They decide the best course of action is to look into the origins of the manuscript. The writer of the book died in some mysterious accident many years earlier, but his mother lives on in a mental asylum. Larry goes to see her and discovers that the writer created a “device” which could magnify the effects of the mind control to the power of ten.  Unfortunately, Warren’s powers have already advanced to the point where he can constantly keep track of his friends’ thoughts, so he’s able to figure out where the device is and receive its benefits before anyone can stop him.

But, of course, Warren gets what’s coming to him, as the “benefits” of the device are mostly just his brain literally growing in size. This amount of brain power proves to be too much for one man, so, after chasing Sandy around for a while, Warren collapses, but not before his brain becomes its own entity which attaches itself to Sandy’s chest. Then they do the body snatcher thing where she sneak-attacks Brad, who just chops the brain off of her. Finally, Larry comes in with the device and fries the shit out of Warren’s twisted anthropomorphic brain.

The film ends with Larry continuing to use mind control to bed chicks from Swingles. This film has no idea whether it wants us to like Larry or not. He seems to want to use the powers for good, but then he still uses them to take advantage of lonely women at sleazy night clubs.

I’m not sure what to say about this movie. It’s fucking terrible, but if your favorite X-Men characters are Professor Xavier and Jean Grey, then you’ll probably be able to tolerate it. The “joke” quote on the back cover—“Somebody’s finally done it—A horror film that’s intellectual!”—is a good indicator of the quality within.

The film was released in a slipcase by Prism in 1987. It also had a few cool foreign covers you can see here and here. It has never been released on DVD. You can watch the entire film on YouTube above.

(Source: vhshitfest.com)