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Saturday, October 15, 2011

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 15: SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED (1974)

Hoo, boy, the weed in the '70's must have really been somethin' to get people to voluntarily pay money to see this turd on the big screen...

When I first heard of this film when I was nine years old and in the article I read about in THE MONSTER TIMES, it was alleged to be a followup to the ultra-low-budget and wholly ludicrous INVASION OF THE BLOOD FARMERS, so I'd been quite curious to see it for a very long time. One of my aims in doing this 31 days of horror project is to both refresh my memories of some favorites and share them with you, but I also wanted to see some films I'd never sat through before, this being one of those. Now that I've seen this howler of a train wreck for myself, I fail to see any sort of connection.

SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED involves a needlessly convoluted plot in which a bunch of groovy Brady-era college students are lured by their professor on a field trip in search of a Yeti — a Yeti in America? Ooooookaaaay... — that turns out to be a ruse in order to kill them as fodder for a cannibal cult's annual feast, with their murders being committed by a cultist in a pitiful (yet kinda charming) Yeti Halloween costume (see above). It would be simple enough to drag a group of college kids off to some remote area to murder them — this was the Seventies after all and everyone was stoned, so all kind of fucked-up shit happened and went unnoticed — especially if the locals and the cops are in on it, so why go to the trouble of having some goofball run around in a tatty Yeti costume?

(LONG PAUSE)

Why the fuck am I even bothering to question what is plainly and simply a cheapjack horror time-waster that's best (barely) enjoyed with a gut-full of cheap beer? When all is said and done, all that remains is one very stupid time-waster that offers zilch in terms of scares. Great title, though.

Poster for the original theatrical release.

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