Mardi Gras Massacre

This inept gore movie is often compared to Herschell Gordon Lewis' "Blood Feast", but it is not quite as bad nor nearly as unintentionally funny as that anti-classic. However, it is very hard to take seriously and didn't really deserve its famous inclusion on Britain's "video nasty" list.

The very repetitive plot involves an Aztec high priest picking up surprisingly attractive New Orleans prostitutes, tying them naked to a makeshift altar, and cutting their hearts out with a stone dagger. This is intercut with a few expository scenes of the local police stumbling ineffectually around, and some canned footage of the Mardi Gras celebration to (barely) justify the title. I might point out that the influence of the Aztecs never quite reached New Orleans (it should have been a Haitian voodoo priest but I suppose THAT would have been culturally insensitive). Also, the real-life Aztecs generally preferred to sacrifice MALE warriors from other Indian tribes, and besides anybody that knows anything about making sacrifices to the dark gods knows that they prefer virgins, not prostitutes. Obviously, this movie is pretty damn ridiculous and hardly compares to bargain-basement realism of other "nasties" like "Maniac" or "I Spit on Your Grave". It does mix full-frontal nudity and a lot of gore, but even in that respect it's not as disturbing as such films as "Bloodsucking Freaks" and "The Gore Gore Girls" (although it does lack the black humor of those films).

The film has been accused of misogyny (probably based on throw-away dialogue and ad-lines about "cutting out the part with which the women do evil"). But as I've often said, just because you enjoy seeing naked women tied to fake sacrificial altars doesn't necessarily make you a misogynist, and NOBODY is going to mistake the unconvincing plastic dummy that they use for heart-ectomies with a real woman (real women have rib cages). Far from encouraging "sexual sadism" as censors have claimed, it might turn normal people on with the nudity but will have them laughing their asses off at the inept special effects. This is a movie very undeserving of its reputation--either good or bad.

Man, this is one dumb, idiotic movie with excessive sex and violence and no redeeming values whatsoever... Great! This blast is a treasure for schlock-lovers, as a mad priest who worships the evil entity of Quetzacoatl (which I have INDEFINITELY misspelled and can't pronounce for the life of me... then again, did they pronounce it right in this movie?). He gets down on the town, looking for prostitutes with reputations for being... "evil". (Ha ha, couldn't resist.) As the crappy spaced-out disco music soars, he torments and guts the fully nude ladies. Such ugly trash, and funnier than hell. The acting, the dialogue, the gore, the music, the dumbass characters (especially the cops)... A laugh riot, all in all! Recommended, fer shore!

OK there are many movies that remain on my fave list

The Thing with two heads, The twisted brain, The Werewolf of washington, Invasion of the star creatures, Montague AND............Mardi Gras Massacre!

You have all stated the obvious and i concur but 2 moments are just classic : I LOVE his costume! Why does he need to expose his rear end? I have to laugh at how it is cut out in the back to show off his bum! LOL and the second big laugh...when he takes the hooker home and he gives her wine and she does that little dance....it like cuts to her sitting down all of a sudden and the camera is on her for like a full minute with no talking. then all of a sudden she pipes up " hey! you paid your money. What are you waiting fer?" She had this baaaad okie accent to boot!

A great movie in its own right. 2 snaps

Yet another video nasty. Yet another laugh-riot. Before I actually saw many of the films on the DPP list, I, somewhat misguidedly, thought that they would be shameless atrocities full of shocking violence and depravity. I know better now. A significant number of them are unintentional comedies. And Mardi Gras Massacre is a perfect example.

The story concerns a madman who picks up prostitutes and ritually slaughters them in his bachelor pad. He's pursued by a couple of hopeless cops. The Mardi Gras goes on in the background.

This film is spectacularly badly made. The acting and especially the exposition scenes are of a pornographic standard. Although, the killer, played by an English bloke, is very very amusing. He is fond of overly dramatic pauses, such as 'are you......................evil?'. The dialogue in the movie in general is atrocious in a gloriously stupid way. In fact, so is the editing. Scenes cut into each other suddenly and jarringly but, again, this only adds to the fun. As does the music. It varies from the type of music you would expect to hear in a porno, funky disco, avant-garde noise and the bass-heavy proto-house that accompanies the murders. In other words technically and artistically, this film is a mess, albeit enjoyably so.

The murder scenes are all identical. They're not particularly convincing but nevertheless crude and sleazy; pretty obvious video nasty material. And the aforementioned music that accompanies them is, in fairness, pretty much effective. Less effective but brilliantly rubbish is the love-montage scene where our detective and prozzie stroll around New Orleans - it's an utter cheese-fest of the first order. The cops in these kind of movies are usually pretty ineffective - let's face it, if they did their jobs properly we wouldn't have much of a movie - however, the police in Mardi Gras Massacre are biscuit-taking in their ineptitude. They are absolutely hopeless.

A similar thing could be said of this movie but I'm not going to because I found it way too enjoyable. This is proper Z-Grade film-making. They really don't make them like this any more. There was a peculiar type of slightly out-of-order sleazy-violent horror film that was made in the 70's and early 80's. And this is a good example. It's terrible but good. If you like unintentionally funny bad movies with a dash of sleazy violence then really I have to recommend this to you; to do otherwise would be.................evil.

My review was written in May 1984 after a screening at Selwyn theater on Manhattan's 42nd St.

"Mardi Gras Massacre" had the makings of an atmospheric B-movie set in New Orleans, but emerges as a mee Grand Guignol exercise reminiscent of Herschel Gordon Lre7744ewis ("Blood Feast") pictures of the 1960s. Extremely obscure feature is not listed in any fantasy reference books or film production charts but appers to been lensed circa 1978.l Story concerns an unnamed nutcase who seeks out "evil" prostitutes and ritualistically sacrifices them on Tuesdays to an Aztec goddess whose name translates as "The Lady of the Serpent Skirt". This leads up to Fat Tuesday (i.e., Mardi Gras), when he plans a three-girl sacrifice. Frank, the cop on the case, falls in love with a heat-of-gold blond prostie named Shelley while he incompetently tries to track down the killer. Not surprisingly, Shelley (who proves to be amazingly forgetful, having met the killer at film's opening) is one of the three potential Mardi Gras victims until Frank and cohorts come to the rescue.

Location lensing at bars and strip-joints plus some flavorful quirky performances (particularly an ofay pimp who has his rhyming slang down pat) are "Massacre"'s high pints. Unfortunately, the pic's raison d'etre consists of repetitive gore stagings in which the killer ties each nude prostitute to a table, ceremonially cuts her hand and foot and then (switch to closeup of a well-matched rubber model torso) cuts open her chest to remove the heart as a sacrifice. Target audience for this old-hat attempt at shock is very limited.

Filmmaker Jack Weis directed a black-oriented period picture "Quadroon" in 1971 and announced an ambitious (bu apparently unrealized) project entitled "Storyville" in 1973, the milieu later captured in Louis Malle's "Pretty Baby". With "Massacre", he has taken the low road, which leads directly to obscurity.