Mutilator may not have the fanbase of other slashers — you won’t find much merchandise or an aisle devoted to it in your Spirit Halloween store — but it does have a great tagline in “By sword, by pick, by axe, bye bye” and the legend that the original was almost unreleased because the gore earned it an X rating.

Now, four decades after this late in the game slasher came out, original director Buddy Cooper returns with much of the cast of the first movie, all to make a meta sequel as a sequel is being made at the original filming location, as well as a wrap party and fan convention to celebrate the end of a rough shoot. Ruth Martinez, Pam from the 1985 film, plays herself, as does Bill Hitchcock (Ralph).

After Jon (Mark Francis), the director of the new Mutilator is killed, a detective named Columbo (Damian Maffei) starts to investigate and the bodies pile up. I mean it, the last part of this movie wipes out nearly every new character one after the other. Somehow, Jon’s producer brother Julian (Dan Grogan) is able to convince the police to not investigate until the wrap party.

Terry Kiser — who played the dead Bernie twice — is actor Jack Chatham, the man who played Big Ed in the first movie (who has a cameo) and he’s obsessed with getting his hands on his old weapons.

Speaking of those weapons, all of them and more will be used to decimate this movie’s cast, including fishing tackle taking out an eyeball in a method that Fulci would savor and a speargun up the rear and out the mouth kill that blew my mind, as well as a lynching that was so disgusting that I forgot I was on mute during a work conference call and yelled out loud in excitement. A fish even gets pulled off the wall and used.

Despite having eleven writers — Cooper, John Douglass, Edmund Ferrell, Keith Ferrell, Semone Fournillier, Ann Hale, Marshall New, David Edward Roop, the Soska sisters and Keith Patrick Stoddard — once it comes time to end this movie, it does so Porky Pig-style as the credits start to run.

It’s a shame that this ends in such a ramshackle fashion, just as things are picking up. Then again, this would be a fun movie to see with an audience and it revels in its gore, which is both amusing and shocking. If you love Mutilator, you’ll be overjoyed that other people love it just as much as you. But if you adore it that much, you’ll be upset that the “Fall Break” song doesn’t play in this.

This was one of the movies I was most looking forward to in several fests this year, so I’m excited that I finally got to see it. Here’s hoping it gets another pass before it plays wide, as with some tweaking, I think this could get in front of even more viewers than its inspiration.