Emisario del Terror

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.

From the perspective of yet another guy who's trying to see all the 'official' video nasties - namely me - Mardi Gras Massacre passed the litmus test. It offers another dose of the very particular atmosphere unique to a lot of no-to-low budget shock horror films from the seventies and early eighties, in this case involving one crazy devotee of a Mexican death goddess who ritually sacrifices (disembowels) a series of prostitutes in New Orleans pre- Mardi Gras. While I was satisfied in a broad sense, I can't stress enough that Mardi Gras Massacre is an extremely incompetent film, both hilariously and tediously so. It's riddled with the kind of woeful technical blunders I thought had ceased to be with the underground exploitation flicks of the sixties and early seventies. I'm talking about tons of non-featured actors clearly reading their lines from cue cards held just off camera. I'm talking about actors not being given another take even after they've fluffed multiple lines of dialogue. I'm talking about the kind of continuity screw-ups in which a person can be standing, then sitting, then standing again in consecutive shots. During an arguably important chase scene of the villain by the cops, the actor playing the villain is curiously absent. A series of long shots of scenery and of anonymously driven cars appear to be intended to cover up this omission. (Maybe the guy wasn't paid to stay on the set that long?)

Technically, it is all that bad, but of course there's content to entertain. There's real New Orleans scenery, lots of crass discoey glitz, badly amusing dialogue ("I hear you're the most evil woman in this room,") a cheesefest love montage between a cop and his newly beloved prostitute, and several cheap but plenty splattery disembowelment murders. The killings are all executed identically in editing and FX, which is a curiosity for this genre, as well as just something which kind of sucks. But I did find effective the grizzly synth score associated with the bad guy and used during the lead up to each of the sacrifice scenes.

All in all, Mardi Gras Massacre is another dire triumph for lurid, bad-bad horror.

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