Starring Titus Himmelberger, Natalie Himmelberger, Ken Van Sant, Samantha Coolidge and Steve Diasparra. Written and directed by Brett Piper. Produced by Brett Piper, Mark Polonia, Anthony Polonia and Ken Van Sant.
Polonia Brothers Entertainment.
An extraterrestrial craft executes a crash landing in a misty swamp zone in the US. The alien pilot exits the downed space vehicle and attempts to rectify the damage by using a floating, glowing metal & glass power-orb, but a local yokel (Diasparra) intervenes and shoots the alien, which vaporises as it expires. When the yokel grabs the hovering orb he is zapped to nothingness, leaving only his boots!
We’re now introduced to a bickering couple, Claire and Lee (played by married actors Titus and Natalie Himmelberger), as they drive through the boondocks. After they end up crashing their car avoiding something that runs across the road, Claire and Lee soon find themselves prisoners of two redneck brothers, Bart & Mart (both played by Brett Piper movie regular Ken Van Sant), who take the couple to their tall, wooden shack home (a cool miniature model building). One of these brothers, Bart, who has somehow been mutated, possesses a deformed head with a big, round, blinking eye! The redneck bros don’t seem to know what to do with the couple, but when their mother, Maw (Coolidge), gets home, the decision is finally made to lock them in the barn. Claire and Lee continue to bitch about each other, but writer/director Brett Piper shows there’s affection running beneath their thorny outer relationship when he has Claire put a coat over her husband as he sleeps in the barn. With Bart glowing in the dark, and Maw looking younger than her sons due to some random time-space fluctuation event, it’s obvious that the area is being affected in various ways by the presence of the spacecraft wreckage.
Claire and Lee find an opportunity to escape from the rednecks, and they head through the ‘dead place’ zone within the woods. Here they encounter a giant, goofy mutant frog – and then a large reptile-bug-beast pursues the couple back to the redneck family’s house. There’s some great footage of the stop-motion pointy-limbed monster as it rampages near the scale-model shack-building! The reptile-bug-thing clambers up the lean-to roof, chasing after Claire and Lee, but the creature runs away after Bart starts playing loud music.
Later, the ghostly life-force of the alien pilot (the extraterrestrial seen in the pre-credit sequence) enters Lee’s mind, and Lee sees how the alien’s ship had hit an asteroid, forcing it to land on Earth. When Bart & Mart decide they’re going to smother the couple to death and dump them back in their car, Lee and Claire manage to thwart the attack thanks to the new electro-powers Lee can wield due to the fact the alien life-force is residing within him.
Lee now feels compelled to find the floating alien orb-gizmo, and he realises that the redneck family knows where it is hidden. Lee and Claire follow the rednecks into the dead place area, they see Bart uncover the orb, but then a huge part-animal part-tree/plant monster enters the scene! This amazing-looking stop-motion beast has root-like appendages, a long neck, Demogorgon-esque mouthparts, and a ring of teeth within its maw! And it has an extendable projectile-tongue too! This creature, which has two forelegs that it uses to drag the legless rear portion of its body along the ground, also has roots & branches clustered on its back. I love the design of this stop-motion puppet! This plant-animal monster proceeds to have a fight with the spike-limbed reptile-bug-beast! Woot! This is a wonderful nighttime battle of the beasts, highlighting Brett Piper’s filmmaking superpower… basically, it doesn’t matter what his film’s budget is, or how gifted the thespians he hired are: once Brett adds his animated creatures to the film it immediately becomes bigger-scale and so much fun!
The gizmo-globe mutates Bart’s face even more, and he eventually transforms into a humongous, gnarly, stop-motion man-thing! This Bart-monster has gigantic, bulging eyeballs, whisker-like barbels on its face, a very swollen right leg, and a skinny left leg!
And now the reptile-bug-beast (which beat the plant-animal hybrid-thing in the earlier fight) rocks up yet again, ready to take part in another clash of creatures! Woot! An entertaining stop-motion monster skirmish ensues!
Mart gets hurled to his doom by the victorious Bart-monster, then it takes hold of the orb-gizmo, which vaporises the man-beast. As the third act nears its end, Lee and Claire reach the vicinity of the crashed alien craft, which has mutated all the nearby plants à la COLOR OUT OF SPACE (2019) and DIE, MONSTER, DIE! (1965). Here Lee uses the glowing gizmo (which is actually the ship’s brain) and a hand-held controller device to reactivate the spaceship so that they can fly off to help complete the alien pilot’s mission.
REDNECK MUTANTS is a load of fun! The budget is small, the acting on show is certainly variable in quality, and the story exists as an excuse to include all the wild moments, but this doesn’t detract from the enjoyment to be had viewing this flick. The backgrounds are often artificial-looking digital/miniature creations (such as the mutated swamp), but this all adds to the film’s sci-fi/pulp/cult entertainment value. And Brett’s decision to include a lot of stop-motion puppets in the movie is what ensures REDNECK MUTANTS is definitely worth watching, especially if you’re a stop-motion/live action movie addict like me! The extraterrestrial pilot seen in the pre-credit sequence is a good example of stop-motion animation being used well in this flick, to create a very novel-looking character: this alien has an extra eye positioned at the back of its bulbous head, it has a thin waist, and it has four arms – two that are equipped with pincers and two that are equipped with slim fingers – plus the alien has feet that are toeless pads, and it seems to have no mouth, just some bristly protuberances located at the front of its visage. Let’s face it: this movie boasts TWO giant battling beasts sequences, so OF COURSE I adore this film!
Here are some behind the scenes shots of the stop-motion puppets and the building miniature…
REDNECK MUTANTS is available as a Brett Piper Double Feature DVD release from Alpha Video. The other movie is the id-monster flick BUSTER (2024).
A 30-page extravaganza that dives into the entertaining world of writer/director/animator Brett Piper’s stop-motion movies is included in Imaginator Magazine’s Stop-Motion special Edition. Check out the details HERE!
Monster Zone 