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| Images courtesy of Videonomicon |
Just a couple of years before French director Bernard
Launois unleashed the utterly insane indescribable uncategorizable Devil
Story on an unsuspecting horror film viewership, a video store owner in
France and fanzine publisher named Norbert Georges Moutier rather sneakily beat
Launois’ bonkers freakout to the finish line with his 1983 Super 8mm VHS film Ogroff
aka Mad Mutilator. Intended
by the director to be a rental horror offering for his customers on his store
shelves, the Orléans, France based bloodbath is a genuinely peculiar
dialogue-free slasher using familiar ingredients in ways never thought of
before for good or for ill. Inspired by
the likes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th
and other backwoods-based hack-and-slashers, the mostly silent gorefest is one
of the strangest homegrown straight-to-video flicks in the history of the
videotape format.
Ogroff (played by the director himself) is a madcap
murderous WWII veteran lumberjack donning an axe, metallic mask and ski cap still
fighting the war in his mind. Roaming
the forests armed to kill anyone who trespasses upon his territory, most of the
movie consisting of a few different random characters who meet their ends after
being struck by Ogroff’s axe or in later scenes a chainsaw. Somewhere along the way, a woman enters his
life which feels like a surreal romantic riff on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
replete with a moment of simulated masturbation with Ogroff’s axe backlit by
porn pictures on his wall. But just as
we’re starting to get a grasp on this film’s absolute unfettered weirdness, Ogroff
aka Mad Mutilator drastically shifts gears into a supernatural
infused zombie outbreak film sporting an unlikely cameo by Jess Franco stalwart
Howard Vernon as a vampire because any and all rational thinking within this
movie has left the building.
Aided by a completely manic and loopy electronic keyboard
score by Jean Richard which almost goes off on warped tangents and mostly
passable Super 8mm cinematography rather poorly transferred to and edited on
video leaving in analogous bass bumps on the soundtrack in between cuts, Ogroff
is an accidental trashterpiece of the highest order. For every seeming narrative misstep, jump in
logic, slipshod if not nonsensical editing and a questionably nutty central
antagonist, the film is oddly perfect in its way. Props should be given to the film’s mostly
one-man-band Norbert Georges Moutier who also served as the film’s producer, production
designer, visual effects artist and camera operator. While not quite achieving Shinya Tsukamoto
wunderkind status in terms of doing nearly everything himself, its a noble
effort you can’t help but respect on some level.
The most fun you’ll ever have watching a film this
positively batshit, Ogroff aka Mad Mutilator after languishing in
hard-to-obtain VHS Hell for years, the film resurfaced per the director’s very
own Beta SP tape master on a French DVD label.
A few years later, boutique label Videonomicon produced a now out-of-print
DVD featuring the original video master and a new 2016 digital remaster brightening
the image and fixing the color grading to a somewhat more watchable level. While not a piece of good storytelling, not a
good piece of horror and not really all that well made at all, Ogroff’s
lo-fi bizarro surrealist charm is kind of infectious if not delightful. A film waiting to be re-released by the likes
of Severin Films or Vinegar Syndrome, this and the aforementioned Devil
Story would more than make for a most mind melting psychotic cinema
extravaganza. You’ve been warned.
--Andrew Kotwicki
