If lobsters could talk, what would they say? Would they ask us how we can callously boil them alive and serve them up, with instruments of torture, to crack and pierce their shells for their tender, delicious meet? Would they ask why they are targeted, while manufacturers are quick to point out their cans of tuna are dolphin-free? Would they then rail against dolphins which are kind of dicks, when you think about it, and wonder why we have such an affinity to them? Is it because they are traditionally cute cute while lobsters are kind of alien-looking? These are the types of questions I found myself asking after watching Mutant Blast.

OK. Not really. But it sounded good.

Mutant Blast takes place in a dystopian future that’s one step away from apocalyptic. A secret cell in the government has been tinkering with human test subjects, trying to create a super soldier. It hasn’t been very successful in creating some He-Man, but it has created a ton of z***ies. In Mutant Blast, we don’t say the Z word. We bleep it. After all these failed attempts, the government did manage to craft a couple super soldiers; hulking dudes who are in a constant state of flex so they walk with their arms kind of arched at their sides. It looks pretty painful, to be honest.

See? Totally not zombies. — See? Totally *not* zombies.

A resistance cell has sent Maria (Maria Leite) to release super soldier TS-347 (Joaquim Guerreiro) and bring him back to their base. Unfortunately, a glitch in the government system has released all of the failed test subjects—who, say it with me, are totally not z***ies—causing wide-spread outbreaks in all the sectors of the city.

Meanwhile, Pedro (Pedro Barão Dias) wakes up after a night of raucous partying and as he pees for an Austin Powers-length time, reminisces about the fantastic night prior. Fantastic, that is, until he starts to remember how the night ended…with a z***ie attack that resulted in his entire party being slaughtered. He manages to escape his apartment and through a series of misadventures ends up with Maria.

Complications quickly arise and then the corrupt and useless secret government cell accidentally unleashes nuclear bombs instead of normal bombs, decimating the city and causing widespread mutations. Along their journey to the rebel resistance group, Maria and Pedro meet Carlos (Mário Oliveira) who has various arms and legs growing out of his body and Carlos’s friend Jean-Pierre (João Vilas), a giant French lobster in a tuxedo, who eloquently espouses his pro-lobster, anti-motherfucking dolphins dogma to anyone who will listen.

In true, old-school-Troma fashion Mutant Blast goes off the rails almost immediately. After a brief setup involving the badass Maria and her punching-obsessed companion TS-347 escaping the secret facility, blowing and punching heads off z***ies and escaping by the skin of their teeth, the narrative nosedives.

This is not a complaint.

Jean-Pierre for president. I don’t care that he’s not human…or an American citizen.

It becomes a silly, practical-effects-fueled journey across a decimated city and embodies the DIY, low budget approach Troma has employed from the beginning. Written and directed by Fernando Alle, Mutant Blast is an incredibly fun debut that proves that you don’t need a ridiculous budget to create effective practical effects. Heads explode in that glorious Troma fashion and anything that can spew blood or other bodily fluids does.

But it also has something on its mind. Beneath its lobster vs. dolphin battles, men with rats for hands and jokes about z***ies, Alle riffs on capitalism, government incompetence and our nihilistic tendency to destroy the world we live in. His script is caustically sharp and pointed at times, but never loses sight of the insanity it revels in. For example, after a particularly arduous fight, the mutated Carlos sits on the shore and sucks on a cigarette. Maria, who not 30 minutes ago had an ear growing out of her neck from radiation poisoning, eyes him and says, “you know this causes cancer, right?” There’s a brief pause before they start laughing at their shared fuckedness.

Sometimes you want dissertations on how humans have a propensity towards mutually assured self-destruction. And sometimes, you want to watch people fight an uncontrollably lactating giant rat, set to “Messa da Requiem: Dies Irae - Verdi”.

Why not get you a movie that can do both?