B MOVIE BLOCKBUSTERS: Shriek of the Mutilated
BACK OF THE VHS BLURB:
Some college students take a trip with their professor to investigate a supposedly credible sighting of a yeti. As the trip continues it turns out to not really be helping the students further their education, just getting them all killed by the yeti, who may or may not be a man in costume. And then there is a cannibal party.
So...WTF did I just watch?
MOVIE: Shriek of the Mutilated
YEAR: 1974
DIRECTOR: Michael Findlay
CAST: Alan Brock, Karen Hunter, Tawm Ellis, Michael Harris, Darcy Brown, Jack Neubeck, and Ivan Agar.
B-MOVIE HIGHLIGHTS:
Now, I went into watching this one thinking it was a low budget yeti movie from the 70’s. What I got was so damn ridiculous that I had to keep making sure I was watching Shriek of the Mutilated several times during the viewing. What would cause such things? Let me take you on a little bit of field trip.
Some college students are taking what I assume is a cryptozoology course that is just wrapping up for the semester. Must need some credits to cover a science prerequisite or something, I don't know. Our teacher, Dr. Ernst Prell, played by Alan Brock, is taking four graduate students on a field trip to investigate yeti sightings. High educational standards here everyone. Unsanctioned field trips to hunt mythical beasts, truly old school (I think). Before our intrepid knowledge seekers set off, there is a party to attend. Dr. Prell invites his star student, Keith, played by Michael Harris, to an exotic dinner of some shit called "gin sung". Remember this, it will be important later.
At the college party, former student and now alcoholic groundskeeper, Spencer St. Clair, is invited for some fucking reason. Whoever thought the drunk gardener with a habit of anxiety-ridden tales was fit for the invite list made a huge mistake. Anyway, Spencer gets drunk, and then gets loud. He finds out Dr. Prell is having a field trip, and goes off about how he was once Dr. Prell's star student, on a similar trip seven years prior. Apparently, everyone on the trip died, save Dr. Prell and Spencer, and it drove him mad. So, wait though...
This teacher has had field trips where students die and is still allowed on campus?! The fuck kind of shit bag institution is this? Is it a community college?
The movie makes a hard turn into, "why the fuck is this even happening" when later that night, Spencer, in a drunken rage, tries to use a ELECTRIC CARVING KNIFE to slit his wife’s throat. Holy shit Spencer, you went full Thanksgiving at the in-laws there. But, like leftovers, his wife wasn't really finished. She manages to crawl to Spencer, who is now taking his post-murder bubble bath, and drop a toaster in the tub. How the toaster was still plugged in is beyond me, and it just adds to, "why the fuck is this even happening" even more. Back to the trip.
Now the four grad students and Dr. Prell are off to Boot Island to meet up with his friend and eyewitness to the yeti, Dr. Karl Werner, played by Tawm Ellis (is that a hippie way to spell Tom?). They run into your run of the mill mute Indian Handyman Laughing Crow, who shows them inside. Karl gives them a yeti tale by the fireplace, and then things begin to take off.
The students investigate with Dr. Prell, where the asshole of the group, Tom (Jack Neubeck) goes off and is killed by the yeti, off screen sadly. The group becomes concerned but decides to sleep it off. Eventually, Lynn (Darcy Brown), one of the grad students, finds something in the greenhouse that freaks her out. She runs into the woods and dies by slight face scratch from the yeti. Here we go, right? But something seems off about it all.
After finding the phone isn't working, the last two students, Keith and his girlfriend Karen (Jennifer Stock) are still just kind of concerned. Karen is a little more sensible and realizes shit is fucked up, but Keith is all about the A.
For some fucking reason the idea is floated around to use Lynn's body to lure the yeti in, and Karen is appalled. She tries to hide Lynn's body in the greenhouse, but there is our boy Tom, bloody and dead just chilling. Karen passes out. Prell says she was having a nightmare or some shit, and when they investigate the greenhouse, they only find Lynn. They finally agree (why?) to use Lynn's body as bait, and we find out Laughing Crow has some old vinyls of yeti heartbeats, which are playing on speakers out in the woods. Keith discovers this and also finds himself knocked out by a blow from an unknown assailant.
Then, we get the big reveal oddly at like 2/3 through the movie, that Dr. Prell, Dr. Werner, and Laughing Crow are cannibals. Yeah. Let that sink in. Cannibals. And get this, they dress up like a yeti and that's how they get their victims. Fucking dick move. But, why? It gets better.
They are part of some cannibal dinner party society that host yearly gatherings and feasts. No shit. And this year was Dr. Prell's turn to supply the food, as it was seven years prior. Oh shit, sorry Spencer, maybe some fucked up shit did make you go cray cray.
As they need a pure, untainted dish as well, they decide they have to scare Karen to death. Scare her to death. Scare her so bad, she fucking dies. And how to do that? The best “man running in a hairy suit” you will see aside from the bear punch in the Wicker Man remake. Seriously, its like a way too long sequence of a guy in a yeti suit running awkwardly through a field. It felt like a sudden Wes Anderson scene or something and I could not stop laughing. And it worked too, Karen was scared to death.
Keith tried but he found out all of Boot Island was just cannibals invited to the cookout, and it ends with Keith being offered a slice of his dead girlfriend, from the now apparently not mute Laughing Crow. Yeah, that's how it ends. My mind was blown more times than I could count in this film. Its just so awful you have to see it, because it’s just too out there not to. It is a crazy, weird, and unhinged B-MOVIE BLOCKBUSTER.
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