10 Horror Movies That Brutally Punish Hobbies

3. The Mutilator - Hunting

Breeder Movie 2020
Ocean King Releasing

Having been largely forgotten over the years, Buddy Cooper's The Mutilator has actually been featured on a couple of our horror lists in recent months. And here, it's tough to talk about hobbies that backfired without referencing the table-setting opening moments of this 1984 picture.

As The Mutilator begins, it's soon apparent that Big Ed (Jack Chatham) is quite the hunter.

With it Big Ed's birthday, we're shown a scene of young Ed. Jr polishing his old man's guns as part of his birthday celebrations. It's here that The Mutilator takes a turn, though, as Ed Jr. ends up firing one of these guns, launching a bullet through a nearby wall and straight into the back of his mother.

Big Ed returns home at just the right time to find his wife - who had been making his birthday cake - dead on the floor, with Ed then spiralling into a rage of insanity that sees him try to get his beloved's corpse to take a shot of bourbon. Jumping ahead a few years, The Mutilator then has Big Ed stalking his now-adult son and his college friends in order to seek revenge.

The moral of the story? Gun control, people. And even more bafflingly, why would you ever keep loaded guns, let alone have them within reach of your young son?

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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main day job, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg. Where his beloved Wrexham AFC is concerned, Andrew is co-host of the Fearless in Devotion podcast, which won the Club Podcast of the Year gong at the 2024 FSA Awards.