A good jolt like that is good for your circulation.
The magic word in 1984's Mutant, a.k.a. Night Shadows, is "chemicals." That is the only explanation given for all of the strange happenings in Goodland, Somewhere in the South, U.S.A. That's the less than hospitable hamlet stumbled into by city slickers Josh and Mike (Wings Hauser and Lee Montgomery), who are run off the road by the unwelcoming committee, which is chaired by local asshole Albert (Marc Clement). Forced to abandon their car, Josh and Mike hoof it the rest of the way into what is for all intents and purposes a ghost town. This is because ever since New Era Corp. put in a processing plant (read: toxic waste dump) on the outskirts of town, its residents have begun succumbing to a mysterious "bug" that turns their skin blue, their blood yellow, and gives them an aversion to light and a thirst for human blood. You know, because of chemicals.
Of course, it takes time for all this to come to light. In the meantime, Josh and Mike have another run-in with Albert and his goons which is broken up by Sheriff Stewart (second-billed Bo Hopkins), who's succinctly described as a "washed-up big-city cop hiding in a bottle" by his superior. The sheriff then runs Mike over to general practitioner Dr. Tate (Jennifer Warren) so he can get patched up and drops the boys off at a boardinghouse where Mike gets dragged under the floorboards in the middle of the night, giving Josh cause to stick around and find out what the heck's going on. In this, he aided by schoolteacher Holly (Jody Medford), who has oodles of free time since her entire class is out sick with the exception of a boy named Billy, played by Cary Guffey of Close Encounters fame. (For a kid who gave such a winning performance under the tutelage of Steven Spielberg, he's rather listless here.)
One thing director John "Bud" Cardos and his three credited screenwriters never lick is the underpopulation problem. Sure, the scenes of Josh and Holly poking about her deserted school are spooky, but are we really to believe every other teacher and student has taken sick? And if so, just how long has this been going on and why has nobody cottoned on to it before? Whether or not it was intended to, Mutant is a film that raises all kinds of questions and then sort of shrugs its shoulders as if to say, "I don't know. I guess because." After a while, it boils down to a succession of disconnected set-pieces as various individuals are menaced by the recently turned, leading to the mass creature attacks that allow Cardos to steal wholesale from George A. Romero. All the while, Josh keeps leaving Holly alone while he investigates various things, which made me think he was setting himself up for an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-type shock at some point, but no. The reprehensible Albert gets his comeuppance, though, when he tries to use Holly as bait so he can get away during the final melee. If only he had seen Return of the Blind Dead, he would have known self-serving jerks never prosper.