Crew
Director – Billy Parolini, Screenplay/Producers – Jocelyn Beard & Billy Parolini, Story – Jocelyn Beard, Photography – John Raugalis, Music – Sonia Rutstein, Special Effects/Makeup Effects – Simon Deitch, Art Direction – Paul McGehee. Production Company – Gravity Films Ltd.
Cast
Mary Ann Schacht (Mary Ann Pierson), Joseph Eero (Tom Turner), Joe Niola (Ygor), T.J, Michaels (Paul Byron), Joanellen Delaney (Sharon), Peter Dain (Hawk), Edward Mears (Captain Hood), Kathleen Dennehy (Colette), Constance Rodgers (Sara), Buddy Durrant (The Boy), Bobby Hargrave (Bernard), Patti Cohen-Hecht (Carol Quackenbush)
Plot
In the 1960s, Paul Byron leads a cult. One of the group’s members Tom Turner becomes fed up and seeks to leave with his girlfriend Sara. Paul and his followers pursue and kill Sara. Not long after, police hunt down and arrest the cult. Over a decade later, Paul is released from jail and sets about finding the son he fathered. In Bridgewater, Connecticut, Mary Ann Pierson helps a man on the side of the road and brings him home. She then finds herself in the midst of attacks by Ygor, the craziest of Paul’s acolytes, as he begins a killing spree in the area.
Igor and the Lunatics was the first of only two films made by Billy Parolini. Parolini went on to make Finding Candy (20013), which does not appear to have been released, and has produced a couple of documentaries. The film was picked up and given a release by Troma.
The film starts off with a certain go-for-broke lunacy. We have the activities of the cult, which are fairly run of the mill as crazy cults go. (See Films About Cults). There is a nasty scene where Constance Rodgers attempts to leave and the cultists pursue her, rip her top off and then place her on a buzzsaw. (There are a number of scenes throughout where women are attacked and their tops ripped off). There are also some alarmingly unfaked looking scenes, all shot with handheld camera, where the police pursue and beat up the cult members.
If nothing else, these opening scenes give the film a determined energy that most of the other crappy titles that were picked up by Troma during this period lack. On the other hand, when the film skips forward a decade following its leader’s release from jail, the film loses a certain direction. Indeed, rather than the leader (T.J. Michaels), the story follows the titular acolyte Ygor (Joe Niola) and several other followers as they go around the countryside killing people. There is not really a huge amount to the film other than these scenes, least of all in terms of plot.
Trailer here