Luther the Geek (1989) May 16th, 2023

Reminiscent of the pointless animal themed farmhouse gorefest Slaughterhouse, Luther the Geek is one of those stories that never needed to be told. Luther the Geek begins in the past when a young country boy named Luther followed a rabid mob to a farmhouse where they pressure a carnival geek into biting off a chicken’s head. Following the geek’s ‘performance’, in what can only be described as ‘post-cluck-clarity’, the crowd groans in disgust and leaves the barn unsatisfied. Locking eyes with the blood-soaked carnie the young man sees his own future, before somehow falling and knocking out his teeth.

We jump to the future (which is supposed to be the 80s but the set design of the flashback with the original geek sure looked like it was set in the 30s or 40s which would make the ‘present’ more like the 50s… but one of Luther’s victims wears a Troma t-shirt so… who knows what’s going on) immediately following Luther’s ill-advised release from prison he is faced with the impossible task of assimilating to normal society as a nonverbal violent criminal with sharp solid metal prosthetic teeth. Luther doesn’t remotely try to achieve that goal. He causes a commotion at a grocery store, hides in a stranger’s car, and rides in the backseat all the way to her farmhouse. He proceeds to systematically murder any character unfortunate enough to be written into the script, until the final girl clucks in just the right tone to lower Luther’s defenses and saves herself.

Luther the Geek is dumb (except for the clucking ending) and not in a good way. The film’s novel campiness can’t overcome the predictably boring script leaving Luther the Geek unable to rise to the low bar of good-bad-movie. The sole bright spot being Edward Terry’s wordless performance as the titular Luther. I’m not sure if he has mime training or is maybe part chicken himself, but something about the way he moves as this character is as unsettling as any other good horror villain.