First of all, if you know anything at all about Shriek of the Mutilated, but you haven't seen it, you probably know that it involves the search for a yeti, aka the Abominable Snowman. As such, you might find yourself asking why I'm reviewing a movie about a yeti in the dead of summer. Well, you might ask the filmmakers the same thing, as the film features nary a drop of snow in the entire movie, lol. You had ONE job, Shriek of the Mutilated. 😑
There is one amusingly blown out sequence, where the film was manipulated for it to look like it was taking place during a blizzard, but all it results in is the viewer not being able to see WTF is going on, because, you know, a yeti tends to be white itself and if you make everything white, you can't really tell the yeti from its victim from its surroundings, really. So, yeah, this is that kind of movie, which is to say, inept on pretty much every conceivable level.
Welcome to the wild, wonderfully terrible world of the Findlays, bad movie makers extraordinaires. Michael and Roberta Findlay were a husband-and-wife team that wrote, produced, directed, edited, filmed and occasionally acted in a host of exquisitely bad films throughout the mid-60's-til-the-late-70's, at which time Michael was killed in a horrible helicopter accident and Roberta took over everything herself, recruiting help where she needed it, and continuing to make films until the late 80's.
Some of the Findlays' best-known work includes Satan's Bed (starring a young, pre-Lennon Yoko Ono), the so-called "Flesh Trilogy"- The Touch of Her Flesh, The Curse of Her Flesh and The Kiss of Her Flesh- the infamous Snuff (which duped many at the time into thinking it was an actual snuff film), Invasion of the Blood Farmers, Blood Sisters (a Joe Bob Briggs favorite- he does the commentary on the DVD), Lurkers and Prime Evil.
Given that they were churning this stuff out at the rate of up to three or four movies a year at their height as filmmakers, quality often went out the window in deference to quantity. As a direct result, their films are often hilariously inept, often shunning even the basics of filmmaking, like framing the characters properly, decent special effects, keeping the boom mike out of the shot, and you better believe there's plenty of day-for-night shooting going on here.
Shriek of the Mutilated (aka Scream of the Snowbeast) is a perfect example of their general aesthetic, which is to say, shoot first, ask questions later. To be fair, there is a germ of a solid idea here, story-wise, but the end results are so amateurish, you would be forgiven for thinking this was one of their first films ever. It wasn't. The Findlays were a good 15 movies+ in by the time they made this one, so just plain not knowing what they were doing wasn't the issue: they knew, more or less- they just didn't care enough to get it right.
But, of course, that's precisely what makes their movies so much fun- though the definition of "fun" may vary for some people here. If you can't stand films that can't even get the basics right, a la the work of Ed Wood or H.G. Lewis, then the Findlays are not for you. They are the perfect example of the whole "so bad it's good" aesthetic.
And yet, at their best, there is a certain primitive brilliance to their work, that could even be said to be ahead of their time, notably the series of so-called "roughies" they produced together, which were kind of proto-slasher movies before that was an actual thing. But yeah, quality filmmaking in the strictest sense wasn't really their jam. Forget B-Movies, these were what some critics called "Z-movies."
The fun begins in this case with a group of students who are talked into joining their professor on a hunt for the elusive yeti, which he is convinced exists, but which no one has been able to provide concrete evidence of, ever. (Shades of Night of the Demon.) Mind you, this isn't the crazy professor's first rodeo, either, as he tried this years before... and only one student made it back!
And he's crazier than a bedbug, as we see in a groovy party sequence early on, in which someone makes the dubious decision to invite said surviving student, now a grown-up, semi-functioning alcoholic adult, whose wife is clearly wary about bringing him out in public, and understandably so.
When someone mentions that there's about to be a second yeti hunt, it triggers the poor fellow and in no time, he's ranting and raving about what happened to him, which is where the aforementioned flashback comes in, with the faux blizzard.
Just when you think things can't get crazier- and mind you, the film begins with a context-less scene of someone being forcibly decapitated, with their head landing in a nearby pool, sans any explanation whatsoever- the former student is dragged home by his wife, proceeds to get into his hidden stash of booze, which his wife knocks out of his hands, shattering into the sink.
So, naturally, he pulls out an electric carving knife and slits her throat and goes and passes out in the tub, beer in hand, blood on clothes. And did I mention he fills the tub with water beforehand?
So yeah, he's just chilling fully clothed, when his, as it turns out, not-so-dead wife comes to, somehow figures out he's in the tub- no, the water isn't still running- and concocts a revenge plot, grabbing a toaster from the kitchen and dragging it and herself to the bathroom. She then plugs it in, and with her last dying breath, tosses it into the tub, killing her husband via electrocution!
And that, mind you, is just the first fifteen minutes or so. Fortunately for us, there's plenty of insanity to come. Despite all the warnings, the students still go on their trip, piling into the part Mystery Machine, part rape van the professor provides- that should have been a tip off not to go right there- and off they go, to what is apparently upstate New York, rather than, I don't know, somewhere with actual SNOW.
Right before they cross the bridge that leads to the area where the beast was spotted by a local friend of the professor's, they stop at a gas station, where a "Crazy Ralph" type approaches the vehicle, and starts to warn them... then opts to give up, because what good will it do anyway? "Crazy Ralph," meet "Resigned Rodney."
Just how many times has the professor pulled this sort of thing? Apparently, quite a bit or the gas station attendant wouldn't be so glum. On the other hand, he doesn't seem too inclined to do much of anything about it, either, so there's that. I guess apathy had already set in for the 70's generation, lol.
I dig the character conceit though: "Oh, I'd warn you about all the kids that go up the mountain and never return, but why bother? Funny how that professor seems to always emerge intact, though, isn't it? Oh well. Meh. Carry on."
The Scooby Gang arrives at the professor's friend's house, who looks like director John Carpenter if he'd had a few more good meals and laid off the cigarettes. Actually, he looks like a young Larry Fessenden, the actor in this movie I watched a while back called Like Me (see review here).
That's actually a apt comparison, as Fessenden wrote and directed a movie called Wendigo, which actually would have been a better creature for this movie to have gone with, given the underlying plot. (A Wendigo is a freaky creature from Native-American folklore that is the result of a human engaging in cannibalism.)
Anyway, the gang get a good night's sleep and go out hunting for the yeti the next morning. One of them finds it, as he is killed after going off on his own to hunt deer. The serious goofy creature is clearly a guy in a suit- you can even see his tennis shoes! As we will discover, though, that little detail may not have been unintentional- could it be that the plotting isn't as inept as one might think? We shall see.
So it goes, with the group getting picked off, one by one. At various points, the crazy professor even uses one student's leg as bait for the elusive creature, and, when he goes full-on Ahab, another student's entire body, which he rigs to some elaborate wiring to alert them when the yeti comes to feed so that they can tranquilize it and capture it to prove he wasn't crazy to all the folks up at the college. Needless to say, things go completely sideways.
It's at this point that I have to offer up a spoiler alert for the next few paragraphs, if you don't want the film's one, admittedly clever conceit ruined for you. I will let you know when the spoiling is done. But trust me, it's worth not knowing if you haven't seen the film, if you want to be legitimately surprised by it, like I was.
So, after a certain point, there are only two students left. One of them, the guy, escapes and goes for help, leaving his girlfriend behind- nice move, dude! Someone's gunning for boyfriend of the year.
He finds it, via a local police officer, and the two travel back to the professor's friend's place, where they see that a lot of others have arrived and dinner is about to be served. The new group is obviously meant to be people from all over the globe, as evidenced by their "native" garb, one of which includes an African warrior-type.
Another, which seems to be the leader, they talk to via a ham radio, and appears to be a Nazi type, because of course it is. At the very least, it's a sinister German. It seems that all of these people gather once a year, with a different person hosting each time, and providing a body for the group to feast on.
Yep, we're firmly in cannibal territory here, as the cult, who call themselves the "Finger People," only in French, because it sounds cooler, is preparing to dine on the guy's girlfriend, who the professor and his pals have literally scared to death using what turns out to be a yeti costume- hence the tennis shoes- because, according to these loons, "meat" that is killed without actually bruising it is the best tasting.
The film ends with the boyfriend being invited to dinner (naturally, the cop was in on it). He has unwittingly tasted human flesh before, when it was dubbed "gin sung"- which is, amusingly, the word for the Asian version of Bigfoot- at a "specialty" restaurant the professor took him to earlier in the film, and which, hilariously in retrospect, he declared he'd love to take his girlfriend to at some point. Well, minus the restaurant, he got his wish, being as she's the one being served.
The guy decides if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and lets loose with a big old string of drool in anticipation of chowing down on his late girlfriend, as Laughing Crow, a heretofore thought-to-be a mute Native American manservant (!), implores him whether he wants "white meat or dark meat?" Lol. I'd say you can't make this stuff up, but I guess the Findlays did just that. Points for at least coming up with a clever story, I suppose.
END OF SPOILERS!!!!
So, yeah, Shriek of the Mutilated isn't a perfect film, to say the least, but it has its moments, notably that bonkers twist at the end, which all but saves the movie, and miraculously, even rewards future re-watchings. Go figure. I mean, David Lynch this is not, to be sure, but given that I was just expected the standard dopey man-in-clearly-fake-monster-suit thing, this one admittedly surpassed my expectations.
From the out-of-nowhere opening, to the left-field use of the notoriously cheesy instrumental "Popcorn" at a swinging party- (note: certain copies of the film substitute something else for "Popcorn" here- accept no substitutes, as the song use is almost worth the price of admission) to the whole Scooby Gang aesthetic- down to the van and the Velma-esque chick with huge stop-sign shaped glasses- to the completely nuts ending, this film is a hoot from top to bottom.
Normally, I would do a cast round-up right about now, but this film was strictly one-and-done for almost everyone in it. I guess the Findlays aren't ones to use the same actors over and over again, like some low budget filmmakers. But there are a few actors worth a quick mention, I suppose, if only because of their credits.
Semi-notable exceptions include: Ivan Agar, the decidedly non-Native American Italian actor who played Laughing Crow (to be fair, he is later shown in the movie to not be mute, so the Indian thing might have been intended to be an act all along), was also in the swinger-era horror flick Behind Locked Doors; Jack Neubeck, who played the ill-fated Tom, the first to go, was in the fun, aforementioned Invasion of the Blood Farmers; and Jennifer Stock, who played leading lady Karen, who mostly just yells and screams a lot, did the same thing in God's Bloody Acre and the notorious Bloodsucking Freaks, aka The Incredible Torture Show.
That's about all I've got for Shriek of the Mutilated, I'm afraid. There was no background material to be found, save that it was shot in upstate New York, and looks it. The reviews are all pretty brutal- sample review, from TV Guide: "one of the all-time worst, but the unintentional laughs may make it worth a look for those who can stomach inept filmmaking." You get the idea.
It's terrible, to be sure, but it's fun in its terribleness. I suppose those easily offended won't take too kindly to the whole African warrior and pseudo-Native American manservant thing, but trust me, it's entirely too silly to take with any degree of seriousness, not the least in that it's clearly not a Native American actor playing the character in question. But if you can get past all that ridiculousness, then if you like this sort of thing- i.e. movies by Ed Wood, Ted V. Mikels, H.G. Lewis, etc.- you'll probably adore this.
It's readily available on DVD and the ever-popular VHS, which I actually recommend for the "Popcorn" song scene alone. (The company behind the DVD couldn't afford the rights to the song.) Besides, there's something about watching certain movies on VHS that just seems right.
If you can't be bothered with such things, as of this writing, it is available on YouTube, albeit in pieces, hilariously under the title "The Greatest Movie Ever made" - starting here. Someone also put together a faux soundtrack- the film mostly uses so-called "library music," a la the original Night of the Living Dead, some of which featured in Kubrick's The Shining. And, yes, "Popcorn" is present and accounted for, as it should be. Listen to that here.
Check it out... if you dare! 😜
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