Morak - Il potere dell'occulto

Meatcleaver Massacre (1977)

1/2 (out of 4)

Four students break into the home of their professor with the plan on scaring him but one of them decides to take it a bit further. The professor ends up paralyzed and unable to speak but even worse is that his family were brutally murdered. Soon the four students begin to suffer strange deaths and it turns out the professor is communication with an occult through brain waves.

Also known as Hollywood MEATCLEAVER MASSACRE, this film is best remembered for "starring" Christopher Lee. Apparently Lee provided on screen narration for another film that never materialized so the producer sold the footage to these filmmaker who added it to the beginning and end of this picture. I guess you can understand Lee being upset over this but at the same time you have to wonder why he didn't ask to re-write the dialogue but what he has to speak is quite laughable and it really reminded me of the speech Bela Lugosi had to give in GLEN OR GLENDA? If you're going into this movie for Lee then be warned that he only has two brief scenes.

The rest of the movie is pretty bad as it's clear no one had any movie experience and were just trying to make a cheap horror movie that could hopefully get into theaters and make money. I'm not sure if they succeeded in making money but there's no question that they made a very bad movie on many levels. For starters, the film was shot without much light so the majority of the scenes are extremely dark and to the point where you can't see what's happening. The screenplay really doesn't contain any logic as it's never quite clear why the students would kill the professor and what they do in the aftermath is quite dumb as well.

The film contains some pretty bad performances throughout and if you're just hoping for cheap exploitation due to the title then you'll be disappointed as well. The murder sequences are rather bland and there's certainly not enough gore here to make it worth sitting through. There's really not too many good things that can be said about this picture but I am thankful that it only ran 79-minutes.

What kind of college curriculum involves lectures on the occult, the professor muttering Satanic incantations in the dark while projecting details from a gory 15th-century painting of the avenging demon Morak, destroyer of destroyers?

Amazingly, Professor Cantrell's rather irregular course on demonology seems to be popular with his students, apart from Mason Harrue (Larry Justin), who isn't happy about being pressured to turn in a term paper on the subject. To teach Cantrell a lesson, Mason and his gang break into the professor's home and slaughter his family, leaving the teacher in a semi-vegetative state, unable to speak.

Mason and his thrill-kill pals think they have gotten away with murder, but they shouldn't have messed with an expert in the occult: even in his debilitated condition, Cantrell is able to summon Morak and send the demon to seek retribution.

Behind this film's sensational title lies a tedious piece of amateurish trash that doesn't even have the good grace to feature a meat cleaver. The opening mean-spirited murders promise something wonderfully gritty and grimy, but the remainder of the film is simply boring, the deaths of the gang members unimaginative and frustratingly lacking in gore. The direction by Keith Burns (going by the pseudonym of Evan Lee) is lifeless, and his actors are, without exception, wooden and unconvincing. According to Wikipedia. Burns was replaced by legendary craptastic director Ed D. Wood Jr, which speaks volumes about Burns' film-making skills.

For movie masochists who decide to give this one a whirl, there are two versions available: the original cut, which goes by the title Hollywood Meatcleaver Massacre, and a shorter, re-released version with the title Meatcleaver Massacre, which features a prologue and epilogue by Christopher Lee, shot for an entirely different movie! Either way, the film sucks.

1.5/10, rounded up to 2 for the hilarious ending in which Morak, depicted as a three-eyed monster with massive fangs in the painting, turns out to be a hairy man covered in green slime.

The one and only reason why "Meatcleaver Massacre" hasn't vanished into complete obscurity and oblivion just yet is solely the fault of Christopher Lee. This living horror legend appears as the narrator at the beginning and ending of this film and afterwards attempted to initiate a lawsuit against the producers because he wasn't aware for what movie he was hired to narrate. Well, when comparing Lee's monologues to the actual content of the film, I definitely do believe he didn't have a clue about what for the footage would eventually be used for. The narrations at the beginning & end are completely irrelevant to the film's actual substance. Christopher Lee, reliable and stern-voiced as ever, compellingly proclaims wonderful stories about the strength of the soul and how it can be a foreteller of great things to come. I particularly enjoyed the parable about the soul of great knight leaving its host while he was asleep and then afterwards leading him to great undiscovered treasures. Or the cute little saga at the end, about two sorcerers engaging in a magic showdown and gradually involving the entire world. In other words, I actually enjoyed listening to Christopher Lee a lot more than I did watching the mediocre middle-section of the film. If this man would have lectured at my university, perhaps I would have attended some more of the classes. But in all honesty, the rest of the film isn't as bad as reputed to be. "Meatcleaver Massacre" – which doesn't contain any sequences with meat cleavers whatsoever – is a standard and derivative story about spiritual retribution, occult summoning and teenage hoodlums. Professor at college and expert in demonology Dr. Cantrell embarrasses one of his students, tough kid Mason Harrue, in front of his friends. The kid is obviously quite offended because he promptly recruits three of his docile friends to pay a nightly visit to the professor's house. The gang sadistically murders the professor's wife, son, daughter and dog. The dog's name was Poopers, so I guess the poor thing is better off dead. Prof. Cantrell himself survives the attack – though just barely – but has enough strength left to summon an avenging demon from his hospital bed. The demon, which remains invisible throughout in order to save budget and because probably nobody knew what it should look like, imaginatively ticks off the assailants one by one but keeps something extra special in store for Mason. "Meatcleaver Massacre" is a largely unoriginal film with several tedious moments and amateurish production values, but I've seen movies that are a lot worse. The dialogs are quite hilarious ("The professor is lying in his coma like a carrot") and the murder sequences are pretty decent (especially the head-crushed under car hood moment). All in all, this is still a much better film than "Funny Man" in which – to my recollection – Christopher Lee appeared voluntarily!

Actually, Christopher Lee IS here, in a way. He is sitting at a desk and spouting some mystical hocus-pocus at the beginning and the end of the film. I was about to say "I hope he enjoyed a nice paycheck for this", but then I read the trivia section for this movie on IMDb and it seems that the exploitation of his name to fool the paying audience was not his idea and was done without his permission. Anyway, "Meat Cleaver Massacre" doesn't have enough story to support a feature-length film, and the killings are not interesting, memorable or explicit enough. As for the actors, I doubt most of them ever worked again in another film. Avoid this schlock, even if you are an avid horror fan. (*1/2)

I watched this under the title of Hollywood Meatcleaver Massacre but either way you'll struggle to see an actual meat cleaver. I think that possibly one killing involved one but the picture was so dark that it was hard to tell. Vipco released this garbage as The Evil Force on VHS in the UK, I'm sure glad that I didn't waste my cash on it. A bunch of vile college kids break into the home of a professor, attack his family and leave them for dead. The Prof survives, but in a coma, from which he summons a demon called Morak to avenge the despicable deeds. Interesting idea but sadly the execution is simply awful. The script, direction, picture quality, continuity and acting are all bottom of the barrel. One miscreant is out in the desert and is killed by a plant. There are a few gory sights here but the make up is very cheap and anybody hoping for a bloody massacre will be diappointed. The film is infamous for using unauthorised clips of horror legend Christopher Lee waffling on about the occult at the beginning and end. But even that is boring, and this must be the worst movie to bear his name. I like a bad movie and actively seek them out, some are so bad that they are good. This one is just simply bad. Very, very, very bad!