User Reviews

Here's another no-budget exploitation quickie in which the senseless plot is merely an excuse to string together scenes of overage teenagers running through the woods in their underwear while a badly made-up monster goes around to commit a string of gore murders. This amateur production is lacking in every respect and has little to recommend it unless you're a die-hard bad movie buff. I guess I should have known what to expect from the silly title, although it has to be better than the original PLUTONIUM BABY, because there isn't actually a baby in the film (well, briefly, but there you go)!

Auteur Ray Hirshman (I'm disturbed to see that he made another movie along with this) knows how to captivate his audience from the start - we kick off with a young boy, Danny, dancing his way through the woods without a care in the world. This boy looks perfectly normal, apart from two things. Firstly, he has a birthmark on his neck which pulsates when he gets upset. Secondly, he likes to eat raw fish whole. So far, so good, you may think. It turns out that Danny lives with his grandfather (the best actor in the film, and he gets shot early on) in the woods. The grandfather is prepared to pass a lawsuit on the firm that contaminated and murdered his daughter twelve years previously. Understandably annoyed, the bad guys (led by the sinister Doctor Drake) make their way into the woods in preparation for some killing.

Unsurprisingly a quartet of grating teenagers also happen to be out camping in the woods at the same time. After lots of unattractive love-making, one of the boys is attacked by a mutant rabbit in one of the film's funniest scenes - funny because the special effect is so poor it has to be seen to be believed. Meanwhile, the hit gang discover loads of mutilated corpses in the woods (all laying about, fresh as can be) and they themselves get picked off by Danny's mother, who is alive as a radioactive mutant. One of them gets hanged from a tree, with his intestines hanging out and tied in a bow! Lovely.

Meanwhile the boy who had a close encounter with the hand-puppet, sorry, mutant rabbit, finds himself turning into a radioactive mutant and goes on a killing spree. Events culminate in a bloody shoot-out at Danny's shack where the hit gang are decimated, Doctor Drake is stuffed inside a radioactive canister and half the teens die. Rather incredibly, all of the above takes forty minutes to happen, which gives you some idea of how slowly this moves. At around this point, the film cuts forward ten years and a whole new movie begins which makes the first half look like a tense and realistic thriller.

A pair of brain-dead rednecks, out walking in the woods one day, open the aforementioned radioactive canister and release Drake, who proceeds to kill them in slow motion. Drake has had an attack of bad makeup but seems to be in pretty good shape, considering that he's been jammed inside a small drum for ten years unable to move, with nothing to eat. Drake makes for New York to find Danny, who is now grown up (as introduced in an incredibly long sex scene with his unattractive girlfriend). After murdering a few inconsequential people, Drake and Danny, now both radioactive, have a bust-up on a rooftop.

I find it difficult to convey how poor movies like these are. Everything is bad; the camera-work, the direction, the absurd dialogue, the unattractive and unbelievable actors and actresses, the cheapie special effects which have been done better in camcorder home movies I've seen, the plot or lack thereof. Unwatchable drivel which is only saved from terminal boredom by having the plot switch halfway through, so at least the second half has a different setting to recommend it. Probably the best part of the film has somebody taking a camera down a New York street, where we see all sorts of weird and wonderful cinema displayed on the cinema billboards. For a halfway good "radioactive trash movie", why not check out REVENGE OF THE RADIOACTIVE REPORTER, which I enjoyed for some inconceivable reason when I watched it years ago.

Why? Do I cry? Usually because of my pain-filled rectum. But tonight it was because I watched Plutonium Baby. This was two films in one. I think most of the crew left during shooting to go get a sandwich. They must of been hungry. Because they probably went and got a lot of sandwiches.

*spoilers* At the beginning, the director makes it known that we, the audience, are about to embark on a journey with a plutonium baby by our side. His special power? He glows in the dark. But he never does. In fact, he is only in the dark once. During his sex scene with the most wretched looking female ever created by God. This scene lasts for hours. With one discreetly placed boobie.

A favorite scene of mine was when the 4 teenagers leave the forest and are kindly approached by a A-Team van-full of "toughs" who just stepped out of the Double Dragon video game. They kindly stop for the obviously perturbed campers but proceed to kick their ass. While the men are on the ground bleeding, they take their women. In an old fashioned beat 'em up and snatch your pussy showdown. But their Karma came back to get them. And lil' Miss Chili Bowl Face, Danny's mom, kills the first and only black guy. But also the white guy with jet black sunglasses and a flock of the seagulls haircuts. See. She can do good.

Another great scene is when Grandpa leaves his very important letter in the jacket which reveals everything anybody has ever needed to know about "the secret plutonium nuclear testing facility". Danny starts to walk four feet away. And Grandpa gives up on him calling him back. Apparently a life spent around plutonium should be kept a quiet one. No use to shout out after him.

After all the forested terror is complete Danny grows up into a plutonium man. But he doesn't become a super hero. He wants to stay low key in his studio apartment with the aforementioned women. We know Danny stays in New York because the director kindly gives us 200 shots of the life in New York City with an original score from one man playing a ten inch keyboard Casio.

The two men who find Dr. Drake in a radioactive barrel (because they wanted to put there beer in there for some odd reason) are apparently in some relation to Marc Rich. Marc Rich is the man who helped finance the Troma production company and was pardoned by Bill Clinton before he left office. Wow I just went on a rant. Finding this out from watching one of the worst films in history.

Please watch (if you have the nerve) so we can have more bad votes.

My review was written in January 1988 after watching the feature on TWE video cassette.

Made in New York in fall 1986, "Plutonium Baby" is a direct-to-video horror film release that is amateurish in all departments.

Patchwork tale concerns a boy, Danny, born in 1965, whom we are informed (no special effects) glowed, his mom having worked in a secret nuclear research installation. Twelve years later mom (now a monster via poor makeup effects) attacks a CIA man searching in the woods for the boy as part of a government coverup.

Another 10 years later and Danny is an adult plagued by nightmares. He's a monster and so is the CIA guy, on the rampage after being released from a nuclear waste barrel. The two guys kill each other and Danny's girlfriend gives birth to a baby (never shown) that eats live fish just like his old man.

"Baby" is shot like a home movie, with very poor technical credits and acting. Besides the subpar makeup effects there is an unconvincing rodent-like puppet that attacks people.