Mutant Aliens: Limited Deluxe Edition (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Aug 06, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Bill PlymptonRelease Date(s)
2001 (April 30, 2025)Studio(s)
Plymptoons (Deaf Crocodile Films)- Film/Program Grade: B-
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: B+
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
Bill Plympton is an animator who has always followed his own muse. He shifted track after his sweet but silly debut feature The Tune in order to explore science fiction and body horror with I Married a Strange Person!, but he decided to stay in the same vein (so to speak) for his next film Mutant Aliens. While I Married a Strange Person! had borrowed its title from Gene Fowler Jr.’s 1958 classic(?) I Married a Monster from Outer Space, there was nothing alien about this particular strange person. Instead, he was an otherwise normal human being who was suffering from some transformative side effects that were the inadvertent result of a horny bird that couldn’t wait until it got back to the ground (don’t ask). Yet Plympton went full alien with Mutant Aliens, although as the title portends, there’s more going on with these extraterrestrials than meets the eye.
As for the body horror that’s been part and parcel of all of Plympton’s work, even at its most hilarious, never fear: it’s still present in Mutant Aliens. In spades. The human body is pushed, pulled, prodded, stretched, smashed, and yes, mutated, over and over again. If Plympton can imagine it, he’s only too happy to animate it. (A few of the aliens come out the worse for wear as well, but more on that in a moment.) The story, such as it is, is little more than an excuse to string together all of the distortions to reality, the laws of physics, and basic physiognomy that Plympton can muster. Yet here’s a brief summary anyway:
Mutant Aliens opens with some gleefully gratuitous alien carnage, then flashes back to show how we got there. Astronaut Earl Jensen (Dan McComas) says goodbye to his young daughter Josie before blasting off into space, where’s he ends up stranded and lost to the world. Twenty years later, Josie (Francine Lobis) is now an astrophysicist who hasn’t given up hopes on her father—and those hopes end up being fulfilled when he unexpectedly returns from space, twenty years older and significantly shaggier. Earl tells an equally shaggy dog story of having been saved by alien noses, but he’s actually hiding the truth in order to unleash revenge on the person responsible for his stranding, Dr. Frubar (George Casden). That involves some literal unleashing, with Earl sending a pack of mutant aliens (or so they seem) to attack Dr. Frubar—and any innocent earthlings who get in the way are just collateral damage. Will Josie and her boyfriend Darby (Matthew Brown) be able to sort through this mess, or is mankind doomed? Enquiring minds want to know.
There’s a touch of John Carter to Mutant Aliens, at least in terms of Earl’s version of the events that occurred prior to his return, and there’s also plenty of Plympton’s trademarked brand of Tex Avery style surrealism. Mostly, there’s plenty of that gratuitous alien carnage, accompanied by an I Married a Strange Person! emphasis on sex. Human sex. Alien sex. Mutant sex. Mutant alien sex. Mutant alien/human sex. (If you’ve ever wanted to watch an astronaut hump a giant nose, then Mutant Aliens is the film for you.) It’s all far from subtle, and yet Plympton still throws in some clever inversions, like the way that a series of seemingly graphic images turn out to be nothing of the sort when glimpsed from a broader perspective. Come for the alien carnage and mutant sex, but stay for the witty visual teases.
Ultimately, Mutant Aliens is something of a perverse redemption story, not for Earl, not for Dr. Frubar, but rather for the mutant aliens themselves. Plympton’s primary inspiration for the film was Laika, the unfortunate dog that the Soviet Union launched into space on Sputnik 2 with no intentions of returning her to earth. What if all of the test animals that were sacrificed for the various international space programs had actually survived and were able to come back, understandably pissed off about what had been done to them? Like King Kong before it, these mutants are victims as well as monsters, remaining sympathetic even as they tear people limb from limb. In fact, their continued mistreatment at the hands of the human race makes them even more sympathetic. If man proposes, God disposes, then in Mutant Aliens, what man disposes (of), Earl transposes into mankind’s just desserts. That’s the closest thing to a moral for this particular story. Come for the alien carnage and mutant sex, stay for the witty visual teases, but leave satisfied that everyone gets what they deserve. (Well, more or less, anyway—we’re still talking Bill Plympton here.)
Mutant Aliens was hand-animated by Bill Plympton and photographed on 35mm film by John Donnelly. The previous DVD was reframed at 1.78:1, but this Blu-ray version is properly framed at Plympton’s intended 1.66:1. It utilizes the 2019 remaster, which was based on a 2K scan of the original camera negative, with the final results approved by Plympton. As with The Tune and I Married a Strange Person!, everything has been carefully cleaned up so that any actual damage is eliminated, but all of the artifacts from the original animation process have been preserved—it never looks too clean, and all of the tactile qualities have been preserved. While Plympton got his start hand-drawing all of his frames on paper, sometimes cutting the foreground elements out and pasting them on acetate in order to avoid redrawing the backgrounds, Mutant Aliens was produced using traditional cel animation. As a result, all of the backgrounds are much more stable, and yet there was occasional dirt, debris, and even small scratches on the cels. They’ve been left alone here, retaining the textures of the paper, acetate, and even the film itself. Plympton’s trademarked pastel pencil color scheme has also been reproduced accurately. As with Deaf Crocodile’s Blu-ray releases of The Tune and I Married a Strange Person!, this is a beautiful upgrade over the outdated DVD version.
Audio is offered in English 2.0 mono DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English SDH subtitles. It sounds clean, with no appreciable noise, distortion, or other artifacts, and dialogue is clear. The music and songs by Hank Bones and Maureen McElheron suffer a bit from being in mono, but they’re well-recorded and they sound as good as they can here.
The Deaf Crocodile Limited Deluxe Edition Blu-ray release of Mutant Aliens includes a 60-page booklet featuring an introduction by “Weird Al” Yankovic; essays by Walter Chaw and Steven Peros; and a host of illustrations by Plympton himself (they’re not as NSFW as the ones in the booklet for I Married A Strange Person!, but some of them are suitably disturbing). There’s also a card tucked inside with a QR code that can be scanned in order to access transcribed versions of the bonus content. Note that Deaf Crocodile is also offering a Standard Edition that omits the booklet and the slipcase, although it still offers the QR code. The following extras are included:
- Audio Commentary with Adam Rackoff, James Hancock, and John Holderried
- Audio Commentary with Bill Plympton
- The Plympton Diaries (Upscaled SD – 90:09)
- Interview with Bill Plympton (HD – 32:16)
- Hot Dog (HD – 5:44)
- The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger (HD – 6:05)
The new commentary features James Hancock of the Wrong Reel podcast with producer Adam Rackoff, both of whom have worked with Plympton on various short films, joined by John Holderried of Plymptoons Studio. This is their third time around the Plympton world after having already done commentaries for The Tune and I Married a Strange Person, so they’re working well within their comfort zones here. They admire some of the edgier elements, noting that some of them are still a bit shocking even after multiple viewings. (Plympton apparently intended it to be more family friendly, but... no.) They explain where Plympton got his idea for the story, and note some of the homages that he made in the film, intentional or otherwise. They even describe how Plympton got into the world of making-of extras for DVD, recommending that everyone check out The Plympton Diaries (stay tuned for more on that). Rackoff, Hancock, and Holderried always display open affection for all things Plympton, so this is another great commentary.
The vintage commentary with Plympton was originally recorded for the 2003 DVD from IndieDVD. He opens by explaining how the prologue was added after test screenings, which he feels are an invaluable part of the production process. He offers a wealth of information like that about the story, the animation, and the editorial process. Plympton provides a deeper dive into technical details and how his creative process works, on a scene-by-scene basis, so it’s a nice complement to the new commentary—listen to that one for an appreciation of the film as a whole, but listen to Plympton if you really want to dig into the weeds.
The aforementioned The Plympton Diaries has also ported over from the 2003 DVD, and it’s a suitably weird but thoroughly delightful look at the making of the film. If you’re hoping for something like Peter Jackson’s production diaries for The Lord of the Rings films, look elsewhere, because this is low-fi and completely off-the-cuff—they just set up a video camera and let Plympton do what Plympton does best (including the moment mentioned in the new commentary track where he lies in bed with—well, you’ll just have to find out for yourself). No stone is left unturned, from design to execution, including the music and editorial process. It even offers footage from the Sundance screening of the film (as well as some of the partying that went on before and after) and a promotional stop at Kim’s Video.
There’s also a new online interview with Plympton and Dennis Bartok of Deaf Crocodile Films, which is part two from the same sessions as the interview on I Married a Strange Person!. They discuss some of his inspirations for Mutant Aliens, the making of the film, and the music. They also talk about his new film Slide and the shorts that are included on this disc (he thinks that Hot Dog is the best of his Dog films). Note that they have some technical difficulties on Plympton’s end, but they soldier through.
Speaking of shorts, Deaf Crocodile has indeed included two more Plympton shorts on this release: Hot Dog (2008) and The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger (2010). Hot Dog is the third film in the series after Guard Dog and Guide Dog, continuing the misadventures of a dog who just wants to help and can’t help but hurt. This time, he tries to be a fire dog, with incendiary results. The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger also shows the difference between desires and harsh reality, with a young calf seeing a billboard for a hamburger chain and wanting to have his own name up in lights—much to his mother’s horror, since she knows full well how hamburgers are made. The calf learns the hard way that sometimes you really should listen to your mother.
The only extra that’s missing from the DVD is the interactive Mutations Game where you could create your own Plympton monstrosity from a body parts menu, but like pretty much all interactive games, it’s no great loss. Deaf Crododile has retained all of the extras that matter and offered a slew of their own, making this the definitive release of Mutant Aliens. Like all of Plympton’s work, it won’t be for all tastes, but it’s worth pointing out that Walter Chaw wrote a very different essay for Film Freak Central back in 2001 after seeing the film for the first time. He wasn’t impressed, noting that “the rampant sexuality of Mutant Aliens mostly falls embarrassingly flat” and that “too much of the movie is either a little dull or, worse, guilty of the kind of sober stage death that afflicts stand-ups on an off night.” Fast forward a quarter century, and Chaw wrote a new essay for this booklet where he says that “Mutant Aliens is an explosion of invention, of dad jokes, of peepshow pleasures and other naughty bits employed in a 1950s poli-sci-fi-camp epic.” The passage of time can work wonders. If you’ve seen Mutant Aliens but weren’t particularly impressed, it’s well worth a second look, and Deaf Crocodile’s Blu-ray is the best possible way to do so. Watch the film, absorb the extras, and be transformed alongside the charmingly awful mutant creations that Plympton has gifted the world.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).