MY CALL: Whimsically stupid, low budget, and pretty self-aware, this movie is for the horror-comedy bad movie connoisseur who enjoys even the dumbest fare. MORE MOVIES LIKE Severed Ties: For more kooky, effects-driven, mad scientist horror comedies that are much better, try Beyond Re-Animator (2003), Bride of Re-Animator (1990), Frankenhooker (1990) and The Rejuvenator (1988). But most of all, this movie reminds me of the cheap, campy, silliness of Basket Case 2 (1990).
Something of a mad scientist momma’s boy, Harrison (Billy Morrissette; Ghoulies Go to College) spends his days researching regeneration with ferociously monstrous rubber iguanas and criminal cadavers while under surveillance by his intrusive mother Helena (Elke Sommer). With her lover and greedy consort Dr. Vaughan (Oliver Reed; Venom, The Brood, The Pit and the Pendulum), they press Harrison to produce profitable discoveries from his deceased father’s research.
After a freak accident sloppily severs his arm, Harrison uses his untested regenerative serum on himself. Only now his arm is quite different. It’s oddly strong, and it breaks off like a lizard’s tale and crawls around like the Addams Family’s Thing, tearing out a hobo religious fanatic’s eyes and whipping around its “tail.” It’s a lot like the combined body parts gag from Frankenhooker (1990). Eventually, we have several of these arm-tail creatures. They growl (somehow), communicate with hand gestures, and really like strangling people.
Recruited by a crippled homeless veteran (Garrett Morris; The Stuff), Harrison finds a sense of belonging and a new source of genetic material to hone his experiments and “breed” arm-tail monsters when he joins a conclave of underground hobos. Not sure what kind of financial trouble landed Oliver Reed in this movie. But I figure it was significant.
Needless to say, this movie is incredibly stupid. And director Damon Santostefano (Scream Greats, Fright Show) knows this. We reach the cheap, campy, silliness of Basket Case 2 (1990), but with perhaps yet less budget and a bit lower quality. But if you wanted to watch something whimsically stupid with some stop-motion and rubber monster glove gags, then this should be right up your alley.