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Sunday, March 3, 2019

SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED 1974 (SINISTER CINEMA)

This is the third time I have talked about this movie on my blog, but it is the first time I have seen an UNCUT print.

Mike Findlay directed this epic written by Ed Adlum and Ed Kelleher and it is perhaps one of the greatest 70's horror films ever made, depending on what you like.

The very opening scene has the director playing a role of a man who decapitates another man standing by a lake and this really has nothing to do with the film except catch our attention quickly.

Dr. Prell (Alan Brock) is a teacher who is getting a group of students together to hunt for the elusive Yeti which has been spotted living on some small island off the New York coast. He has 4 students join him.

At a party the night before the trip 3 of the students hear the ravings of someone named Spencer (Tom Grail) about how he is the only living survivor from the last expedition that Prell took looking for the yeti. Nobody believes him of course.

Back at home Spencer and his wife argue and Spencer hits the bottle, his wife April knocks it out of his hands so Spencer slices her throat with an electric carving knife. He then jumps into a bath fully clothed and covered in blood. Slowly but surely April crawls across the floor with a toaster. She plugs it in and tosses it into the bathtub and Spender is toast (maybe this was an intended pun by me).

I don't know what this scene has to do with the movie either, but damn it's cool as hell. Anyway all four of the students and Prell arrive at the isolated cabin of DR. Karl Werner (Tawn Ellis) and set up for their investigation.

Things don't start off well as one student is killed and has his leg ripped off and soon another is killed. Prell even goes as far as suggesting they use the body parts to lure the monster out into a trap. This doesn't sit well with Karen (Jennifer Stock) but her boyfriend and Prells best student Keith (Michael Harris) goes along with it.

After this little stunt fails to work the movie takes everything you have just seen for the past 70 minutes or so and just throws it out the window and veers off into another genre entirely.

It seems that the yeti story is nothing but a ruse to get fresh meat for a group of cannibals!! Oh yes I kid you not. The double twist ending for this film is something you don't see very often anymore, if at all.

I absolutely love this film. I have been through so many prints that are cut to ribbons, but I finally got ahold of the copy offered from Sinister Cinema and everything is intact. It even has the tune "Popcorn" by Hot Butter during the party scene. The print has some scratches and splices, but hell that makes it more like a drive-in experience.

This is a prefect companion piece for "Invasion Of The Blood Farmers" which was directed by Ed Adlum. When I viewed this film I too made a double feature out of it. This is a standout feature in my opinion and you simply can't go wrong watching a film like this.

There are a lot of day for night shots that don't work and the weather changes in the middle of scenes, but this is simply a typical problem of low budget films. I had weather changes for a couple of my movies too that drove me crazy, but what can one do? Oh and speaking of standouts the character of Laughing Crow played by Ivan Agar reminds me of a drooling Ted Danson after a rough night with Barbara Streisand.

Whatever you do....SEE THIS MOVIE!!!! You gotta love the score which reminds me of Dmitri Shostakovich and a few other classical musicians.

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