Outside the Blue Box: The Mutations (1974)

Though every actor who has ever been lucky enough to portray the Doctor on-screen has put their own iconic spin on the character, it’s arguable that Tom Baker – at least for a certain generation – was a name inseparable from the role, and even perhaps the show as a whole; even if you ask people in this modern day and age, where Who is an international success thanks to its hit ongoing post-2005 revival, what Doctor Who brings to mind for them, they’ll think of a grinning, bushy-haired, lovable bohemian madman with that oh-so-iconic long scarf.

For many, Tom Baker “is” Doctor Who, though that’s not remotely to say that the beloved actor hasn’t had other recognisable or notable success throughout the 58 (at the time of writing) years since he first appeared on screen as a bit-player in Frank Dunlop’s film of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale (1967); nonetheless, there’s very much a sense that Baker’s filmography (and, by that extent, life as a performer and public figure) is split into “pre” and “post-Who” eras, which is the case for several actors, but feels major when discussing Baker compared to others because of the monumental impact that his turn as the fourth incarnation of the Doctor had on the show and its reputation as a whole.

Given that Baker would go on to play a good-hearted, pacifistic, charmingly eccentric television hero beloved by children and adults alike, it seems only fitting that Baker’s last screen performance before taking on the role of the Doctor would be as a hateful, selfish, craven brute who uses violence and fear to get what he wants. Though by no means Baker’s first villainous role, nor his first appearance in a horror picture (there are plenty of those for future Outside the Blue Box articles), Jack Cardiff’s The Mutations (1974, also released under the brilliantly salacious title of The Freakmaker) features the actor at his grimiest and most perverse as Lynch, the sadistic and cruel ringmaster of a Victorian-style sideshow who procures victims for the sinister Professor Nolter in the hopes that he will be given a “cure” for his facial disfigurement.

Nolter, played by iconic English character-actor Donald Pleasence (Doctor Loomis in 1978’s Halloween, among others), is the star of the show here, a mad scientist with pseudo-scientific dreams of creating plant-animal hybrids using an experimental ray he has created; it must be said, however, that the not-so-good doctor isn’t one for subtlety, with the university lectures he presents frequently running off-topic into enthusiastic discussions of his bizarre obsession. If there’s one thing that Nolter does care for, though, it’s the scientific method – which, in this case, is tested through kidnapping students, experimenting upon them in his lab, and then disposing of the “failures” by giving them to Lynch as new shocking attractions for his carnival.

It’s a strange little picture, for sure, and one which frequently seems to be at odds with itself. Directed by the cinematographer for Powell and Pressburger classics such as The Red Shoes (1948) and Black Narcissus (1947), The Mutations is half an oddly time-displaced remake / rip-off of Tod Browning’s misunderstood masterpiece Freaks (1932) to the point that it copies certain sequences beat-for-beat from said film, and half a sleazy but slightly confused mad scientist horror flick about Donald Pleasence attempting to make a race of plant-men. In the case of the latter, there are some rather nice practical creature effects which wouldn’t look out of place in a Philip Hinchcliffe-era Who serial, and funnily enough Baker would star two years later in ‘The Seeds of Doom’, a Who story featuring a crazed botanist who assists in the growth of a parasitic plant monster which fuses with human tissue.

That all being said, The Mutations is overall a bit of a disjointed mess that features weird sluggish pacing, too little monster action, unsympathetic teen leads, an unexpectedly rushed finale, and – most egregiously – a treatment and portrayal of disability which comes off as extremely exploitative. Where Browning’s Freaks would treat its disabled stars with respect and empathy almost half a century prior, The Mutations depicts difference and disabled bodies with a leering lens, at one point even turning into a genuine screen version of a sideshow as the audience-surrogate leads are seen flinching and grimacing in disgust at the sight of a woman with ichthyosis; it’s a vile moment, though unfortunately not the worst of its kind that I’ve seen, the dishonour of which goes to a scene in Ron Ormond’s Christ-sploitationer The Believer’s Heaven (1977). There’s a degree to which the film half-heartedly attempts to make up for this and criticise ableist attitudes, largely through Baker’s character, a self-hating man with a facial difference who torments his “freak” employees because of his obsession with becoming “normal” (there’s nothing to say either way if filmmaker Aaron Schimberg watched this film prior to directing A Different Man, but it’s mildly amusing to consider that possibility), but by the end – regardless of Baker’s passionate delivery – his character largely ends up being just another example of a villainous character whose face is made “ugly” to “match his personality”, not helped by the number of shots in which he can be seen drooling. In spite of my deep love for Baker as an actor (and Doctor), his Lynch is no Elephant Man.

Given that The Mutations was an English film shot in and around London in the mid-70s, it’s no surprise that Baker isn’t the film’s only Who connection. The late Welsh actor Richard Davies, who would run a Butlins-esque resort as Burton in the 1987 Sylvester McCoy serial ‘Delta and the Bannermen’, appears in a brief role as – funnily enough – a doctor. Though Donald Pleasence, an actor who I would probably watch anything for, surprisingly never made an appearance in an episode of Who, his daughter Angela Pleasence would guest star in the “NuWho” story ‘The Shakespeare Code’ as Queen Elizabeth I, as well as playing a major supporting role in ‘The Curse of Clyde Langer’, one of the final episodes of the tragically cut-short spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Another fun fact of note is that The Mutations was released as part of a short run of VHS tapes hosted by Tom Baker himself through the notorious Reeltime Pictures (responsible for such beloved unlicensed Who titles as Downtime and, uh, Zygon: When Being You Just Isn’t Enough – look that one up in your own time), titled Beyond Belief!. Though I haven’t yet had the chance to see what these are like, they sound like an intriguing (and likely rather charming) oddity – other titles released in the range included the Joan Crawford-starring (and likely Outside the Blue Box-qualifying) shocker Berserk! (1967), and another obscure mad scientist picture, Joel Bender’s The Immortalizer (1989). Unfortunately, due to licensing issues, the range didn’t continue beyond these initial three titles – I, personally, would have been up for an entire host of weird little horror films introduced by Tom Baker, and if you’re reading this article, then undoubtedly you would be too.

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Robyn’s Archive – Outside the Box: The Mutations