Search - Shriek of Mutilated on DVD

Laughing Crow ain't the only one Laughing

04/10/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The sister film of cinema's greatest achievement; "Invasion of the Blood Farmers", "Shriek.." is a near masterpiece of schlock cinema. Not to mention a delight for all Jack Nuebeck fans, see Jack sing! See jack do a W.C Fields impression! See Jack DIE! Anyway, this hilarious (unintenionlly so) film is produced by Ed Adlum the writer/director behind "Blood Farmers", and even shares some cast, like...Jack Nuebeck baby!!
Moving along...seems its time to resurrect the accursed custom of field trips to Boot Island (you know, the one that's shaped rather like a potato) to search for the dreaded Yeti. Thats right, a field trip to upstate New York to search for the Yeti, that elusive creature who waits for Earnst yet! (See the movie). Well as is often the case in Yeti field trips, all is not as it seems, and students beginng dropping like flies.
You have got to see this beautiful mess. It's hilarious (though not as great as "Blood Farmers", starring...Jack Nuebeck!). Camera work, sound , acting (particularly Jack Nuebeck!), make-up (check out the Yeti's sneakers!) are all first rate....bad. Personal favorites: the nervous, line flubbing nonactor Gas Station Attendant, the very queeny "woodsman" host (the expedition consists of walking around his backyard alot), the "indian" Laughing Crow, and of course...every second of ridiculous dialogue.
So, grab a bear trap, or a least a fair sized wolf trap, get a nice warm bowl of Jin-Sung, and watch "Shriek of the Mutilated" with someone you love ( or anyone from Corsica) tonight! Bye now."

Get ready to laugh your head off.

Robert P. Beveridge | Cleveland, OH | 07/11/2003

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Shriek of the Mutilated (Michael Findlay, 1974)There is one thing certain about this film. After watching it, you will never view Thanksgiving dinner the same way again.Michael Findlay, most famous for the 1976 shocker Snuff (his last film, soon after the shooting of which he was killed in a helicopter accident), spent the beginning of his career making grade-Z "erotic thrillers" (read: softcore porn with a small modicum of plot) with almost no budget. Shriek of the Mutilated was (as far as I can tell) his sole foray into the world of the straight thriller. The only bare legs one is likely to find in this film are those of a mythical snow beast. But I'm getting ahead of myself.Shot with the same grade-Z budget as the rest of Findlay's films, Shriek of the Mutilated is about a college anthropology professor, Ernst Prell (the late Alan Brock), who takes a group of students into the mountains over winter break in order to hunt for the famous Yeti. Prell has been hunting the Yeti for decades without success, he tells his entourage, who are going with him mainly in order to get some extra partying in when they don't have annoying classes getting in the way. Or so they think. Even before they get out into the wilderness, bad things start to happen, and the crew are picked off one by one in various inventive ways (including death by toaster, in one of the film's most memorable scenes, and one that has been imitated a number of times in horror films since-the 1995 shocker Jacko, in fact, pays almost shot-for-shot homage to it).It will surprise no one who had actually seen the film that this was the first and last screen appearance for most of the so-called actors herein. Jack Neubeck, who plays the "main" student, was in Findlay's similarly horrid Invasion of the blood Farmers, and lead nymphet Jennifer Stock surfaced, albeit briefly, in the splatter film classic Bloodsucking Freaks. The rest of `em? Forget it. Which is not a bad thing, as most of them deliver their lines as if reading from a teleprompter after taking too many Quaaludes. Obviously, Findlay's "erotic thriller" expertise came in handy there. The sets are obviously fake, the monster is even more obviously a guy in a rubber suit than was the guy in some of the Godzilla movies, etc. I'd be surprised if the total budget for this movie (in 1974 dollars, mind you) was five grand.Now all of that should point you to the fact that this film would have made great Mystery Science Theater 3000 fodder, had it been available at any time during the show's run. And that is certainly the case; Joel and the bots trashed far finer films than this dog. That being the case, why do I adore this movie so very much? It's hard to explain. I first saw it on late-night television in seventh grade and became so obsessed with it I earned the nickname "Shriek" for the rest of the school year. That was over twenty years ago, and before the film's release (finally!) on DVD in June of 2003, I hadn't seen it again. Yet there were still scenes from the movie that were stuck in my mind as plain as day. And upon viewing the movie for the first time in twenty years, I found I still had every detail correct. And the film was just as gloriously bad, and as memorable, as it was two decades previously. I can't tell you why it is. It's not extreme horror in the Men Behind the Sun sense of the word, the kind of thing that traumatizes its way into your nightmares. Nor is it uncomfortable horror that just plain scares the daylights out of you. For that matter, it's more comedy than horror most of the time. But there's still something lurking under the surface there, and whatever it is, it will cause this movie to stick with you. In fact, it may stick with you for twenty years or more. *** ½"

One of the Best Bad Movies Ever

J. Wingenfeld | NYC | 01/15/2003

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Amateurish, but unrelentingly bizarre horror movie about a group of graduate students who travel to the Pacific Northwest in search of the Abominable Snowman, who ends up looking suspiciously like the Shaggy D.A. Terrible in pretty much every respect, but so offbeat and unpredictable you can't take your eyes off it. After the surprising (and totally incoherent) butcher knife/toaster-in-the-bathtub bloodbath in the first fifteen minutes, you're hooked. A must-see for bad movie buffs."

One of my favorite schlock classics

Lucius | Ithaca NY USA | 06/02/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"One of my personal favorite trash horror movies, a true classic from the early toaster-killing scene to the climactic twist (that too many rotten film guides casually give away!). Also of note is the piece of a guy's leg that's obviously a t-bone steak! The premise is all too familiar: Four teenagers - a straight-arrow, his girlfriend, the wild & crazy guy, and the nerdy girl in big glasses take off in a big van with wavy flowers on it to find the abominable snowman ... I mean, how many episodes of 'Scooby-Doo' did they watch before making this?! And the closing line just clinches it. An awesome, awesome trash/gore classic!"