Shriek of the Mutilated (1974)

Movie Info

If your professor uses your corpse for Yeti-Bait do you get an automatic A?

Dr. Ernst Prell (Alan Brock) has an obsession…he seeks to prove the existence of the legendary yeti.  With a team of students, Prell investigates recent reports of the yeti on a confined island owned by his friend Dr. Karl Werner (Tawm Ellis).  Boot Island could hold the secret to the yeti, but the yeti’s hunger for blood might spell doom for the students…but everything is not as it seems on the island.

Directed by Michael Findlay, Shriek of the Mutilated is a low-budget B-Movie horror film.  The movie sometimes goes by the title Scream of the Snowbeast or Mutilated and is often considered one of the worst films ever made.

I’m a sucker for bad movies…especially ’70s movies.  The cheap sets, the incoherent plots, the shoddy acting all make for extremely laughable stories.  Shriek of the Mutilated definitely falls into this category and could be one of the better conceived low-budget plots of all time (despite being very, very stupid).

You just can’t find good Native American help nowadays…

The story for the film is essentially a twist ending, but a stupid twist ending at that.  I would say there is a spoiler alert, but the set-up of the film and the plotting of this twist is so weak, that it is hard to spoil it.  The characters are all being punked by a group of people who practice cannibalism and have this elaborate belief that the “victim” must be scared to death instead of murdered…which is why they have a person in a bad yeti costume running around with heartbeats blaring on a recorder (it makes about as much sense as it sounds).

If the cast wasn’t making this movie, they could have been making a porn.  They all seem pretty skeevy, and it appears that they look at the script right before each scene instead of actually knowing the lines.  There is this long opening party sequence where a character (Spencer Ste. Claire) gives this soliloquy about his group’s death and then he kills his wife who electrocutes him before he dies…it doesn’t fit in much.  You also have Ivan Agar playing a very Manos:  The Hands of Fate Torgo-esque character called Laughing Crow…it is all so bizarre that it becomes funny.

CANDYGRAM!!!

The movie looks cheap.  The sets are awful, the woods are non-threatening, the yeti costume is a joke (if it is supposed to scare someone to death), and the “day for night” shots are pretty poor.  It does go to show you that you can make a memorable movie with very little budget, skill, or ability.

Shriek of the Mutilated is an awful, schlocky film that seems to borrow from a lot of films like Rosemary’s Baby.  The saving grace for it is that it is so bad it is good…and it is short.  It also included the fun “Popcorn” song by Hot Butter…which I guess is plus.  Watch Shriek of the Mutilated at your own risk.  You might die of fright (or laughter).