Shot on Super 8, this film tells the story of PR exec Jim Matthews (David Rommel) as he tries to leave his wife, genetic designer Meredith Weaver (Anna Zizzo), for his secretary, Jenny Dole (Joan Dinco). His wife doses him with her latest experiment, which causes his extremities to start thinking on their own and destroy his mind. Yes, his hands, his arms, his legs, even his cock, all can move away from his body to kill and feed, kind of like a demented version of the Myron Fass Captain Marvel that split into different parts.

The core of the film’s horror isn’t just the gore. It’s the loss of agency. Jim is a man defined by his lack of impulse control; he can’t keep his hands off his secretary, so his wife ensures he literally cannot keep his hands on his body.

Directed and written by Tom Berna (his only film; however, he has acted and provided special effects for several others), Colony Mutation features great acting from Rommel, and the relationship between Meredith and her sister Suzanne (Susan L. Cane) feels authentic. How strange that a body horror film is mainly about the human emotions of a marriage being destroyed and a woman falling in love with a man who is already taken.

Shot on Super 8 in Milwaukee, the film carries that specific Midwestern gloom. The grain of the film stock acts as a veil, making the beyond microbudget effects feel like something you weren’t supposed to see, almost like snuff-adjacent glimpses of a body coming undone.

Where else would you get a movie with a killer penis and a man who no longer can control his body because he couldn’t control his body? Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was far from Hollywood, and films made like this were the last bastion of what regional filmmaking was: grimy, rough blasts of unreality that infect our brains.

Colony Mutation: This has a new, director supervised 2K transfer and restoration from original Super 8 film elements; commentary from producer/director Tom Berna and a second commentary from Tony Strauss of Weng’s Chop Magazine; interviews with Berna, star David Rommel and music composer Patrick Nettesheim; an archival public access interview with Tom Berna; alternate VHS and DVD cuts; the original script; an image gallery; a teaser trailer; stick your own VHS stickers; a booklet with liner notes by Tony Strauss; a poster and a limited edition O-Card with art by Justin Coons. You can get this from MVD.