Mardi Gras Massacre

Not exactly a straight slasher as many believe but it's surely as cheesy, and unintentionally funny as any slasher from the 80's.

"Mardi Gras Massacre" could be considered as a toned down exploitation low budget. The plot asks for brutality, violence, sleaze but the truth is that the execution of the idea isn't as half as good as it should. Poor New Orleans, really. Not because of the recent tragedies, but, because this movie has generated a bad fame for the Mardi Gras celebration. Of course, only among in the Horror movies world.

The ritual method is repeated in all the death scenes. So we don't get originality or probably there wasn't enough budget to at least create three different gore scenes. It's okay but even ultra low budget slashers have at least two different killing methods! Anyways, "Mardi Gras Massacre" has generated some kind of cult over the years but sincerely, this isn't a must see. The movie should only be watched by b-movie lovers or morbid fans of low budget cheese and sleaze!

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!

As much as I think this film is a pile of crap, there's 'something' about it that I like. I think it's the grainy, dirty feel to it, which isn't something many horror films have. This cannot save it though, because whichever way you look at it, it gets rather tedious after the first few deaths. Don't get me wrong - they are quite bloody in a Herschell Gordon Lewis kind of way. I even thought the weird sounds that are played when the killings occur added to the grainy atmosphere. It's just that you get sick of seeing the same thing over and over. Also there's too much tedious bumbling from the police and a dull sub-plot. I thought the ending was rather cool though, when he drives the car into the water and all they find is his mask. Mind you most people would have fallen asleep by this point.

Overall I would say Mardi Gras Massacre is worth the once over if you're a horror completist - just don't expect too much!

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.

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.