Shriek of the Mutilated

Plot synopsis:
A very brief pre-credits sequence shows an execution beside a pool, where a young blindfolded woman is decapitated by a man while two other complicit individuals watch.At a university, Dr. Ernst Prell (Alan Brock) lectures a small group of four students, Keith (Michael Harris), Karen (Jennifer Stock), Lynn (Darcy Brown), and Tom (Jack Neubeck). Prell gives them a presenation on the Yeti, displaying slides with representations of what the unknown beast might look like based on descriptions of supposed eyewitnesses. Prell is planning an expedition with the four graduate students to Boot Island, where his associate Dr. Karl Werner (Tawm Ellis) lives. Werner has told Prell that he suspects a yeti lurks in the woods around his estate, and Prell intends to capture evidence proving the creature's existence. Prell seems particularly interested in Keith, and takes him to dinner at an exclusive restaurant, where he orders a meal for them that isn't on the menu, a special dish called "gin sung".The other students go to a party where they meet a former student of Prell's, Spencer Ste. Clair (Tom Grail). Spencer starts drinking, much to the objection of his wife (Luci Brandt), and when he overhears the students talking about the expedition with Prell, Spencer causes a scene at the party. He becomes hysterical, recounting his own experience on one of Prell's expeditions 8 years prior. Spencer and Prell were the only ones to survive, the others presumably killed by the yeti, which Spencer says attacked him and left him for dead. The people at the party don't take Spencer's story seriously, and he and his wife leave. When they return to their apartment, Spencer's wife breaks his bottle of liquor, causing Spencer to attack her with an electric carving knife. He cuts her throat and then gets into the bathtub, fully clothed, drinking beer. Before she dies, Spencer's wife drags herself into the bathroom with a toaster, which she plugs in and tosses into the bathtub, electrocuting Spencer.Prell and the four students travel by van to Werner's estate, a six hour journey. When they arrive, they meet Werner and his servant, Laughing Crow (Ivan Agar). Werner claims to have had a near encounter with the beast, which he says he hears howling in the woods around the house. He says he smelled a foul odor and heard a very loud heartbeat when the yeti was near. Laughing Crow frightens Karen when she discovers him chopping wood for a fire, and Karen seems particularly sensitive to the potential danger they may encounter. After Prell shows them a map of the island, they plan a route and retire for the evening. That night, Karen hears a strange snarling sound off in the distance.The next day they set out for their destination, some caves where Prell hypothesizes that the yeti may be using for a lair. Before they reach it, they stop to rest and Tom goes off on his own with a rifle, claiming to have seen deer nearby. Prell tells the others he will go ahead to the caves to see if he can see any sign of the yeti. Tom finds a dilapidated barn, where the yeti suddenly appears, leaping onto him and slashing him to death with its claws. When Tom does not return, the others search for him but return to the house at dark.The next morning, the search party resumes but Lynn oversleeps and the others leave without her. During the search, Karen finds Tom's bloody severed leg. Just as they are returning to the house, Lynn decides to explore the greenhouse, but when she goes inside she screams and goes running back out, dashing off into the woods where the yeti follows and kills her. The others find her body and bring it back, storing it in the greenhouse.Prell devises a plan to use Tom's severed leg as bait for the Yeti. Karen is horrified, but Keith still trusts Prell and they go ahead as planned. Prell claims to have been attacked by the Yeti before he could obtain any photos or evidence of it, and they decide to use Lynn's body as bait this time. Karen refuses and keeps telling Keith she wants to leave, but Keith is furious that she does not want to follow Prell's plan. Later she goes into the greenhouse and attempts to move Lynn's body so they can't use her as bait, but instead she finds Tom's body in there. She passes out.When she comes to, she's in bed and the others tell her she simply dreamed finding Tom's body. Eventually she relents and agrees to help get photos of the Yeti using Lynn as bait, but she insists if it doesn't work they all must leave. Prell agrees. The plan almost works, but the Yeti rushes them and nearly grabs Karen. While she is taken back to the house, Keith and Prell rush into the woods after the Yeti. Keith is mystified when he discovers audio speakers wired into the trees, broadcasting the ominous heartbeat of the Yeti. Back at the house, Laughing Crow is playing the heartbeat into the loudspeaker system. Someone knocks Keith unconscious. When he comes to, he goes into the house with a shotgun and confronts Prell and Werner, but Laughing Crow knocks him unconscious again using a large bone. While Werner is distracted making a phone call, Keith comes to again and steals the van, knocking Prell unconscious in the driveway. He drives to the bridge, detouring to hide the van when he notices an oncoming procession of vehicles, apparently headed to Werner's estate.Karen is recovering from the shock of the Yeti attack in her room when she hears the sound it makes outside. When she looks out the window, she sees it running across the grounds toward her window, and it starts to climb right into the room. Panicked, Karen runs through the house with the Yeti after her, growing more and more terrified. Finally she hides in a bathroom and locks the door, but she can't escape. She discovers Laughing Crow inside one of the cabinets, wearing strange face paint and clothing. He emerges with a knife and approaches her threateningly, until Karen lies down on the floor and suffers a heart attack. The Yeti carries her body downstairs and removes its own costume, revealing Werner inside. Prell and Werner congratulate each other on the job they did obtaining their latest "sacrifice".Keith returns to the house with a policeman he managed to flag down, but the cop turns on him and reveals himself to be an ally of Prell and Werner. A diverse group of people have gathered at the estate for this event, which Prell encourages Keith to be a part of. They are a cult of cannibals who come from all walks of life, each of them hosting this festival year after year. The last time Prell hosted was the incident with Spencer Ste. Clair; Prell hoped to induct him into the group, but he "didn't work out", and they left him alive to carry the legend of the Yeti back with him, which allows the cannibals the means to collect victims unnoticed. Prell has the same hopes for Keith, who has already tasted and enjoyed the special "gin sung" dish made of human flesh. At first Keith is resistant, but he is faced with the difficult choice of either being killed by the group or eating Karen's body, and the last shot of the film is Keith drooling over the idea.

Tags: violence, cult

Review:
SHRIEK truly is the one.Four college students are invited by a professor to go to a secluded island to investigate reports of a killer Yeti/Abominable Snowman.
He jumps into the bathtub fully clothed and cracks open a beer, when his still-alive wife crawls in the room, throws in a toaster that isn't even plugged in and electrocutes him!The four students decide to go anyway and are attacked and killed by an awful white creature that looks more like THE SHAGGY DOG than a Yeti.
If you can get past the premise of a killer yeti dwelling in some guy's back yard, this isn't THAT bad of a movie.
Indeed it has all the markings of a good bad movie, including incredible dialogue, cheesy makeup (the yeti looks like a fluffy half man ape wearing fuzzy cowboy chaps and I believe if you stop frame the scenes, he is wearing white tennis shoes!).
I'm sorry to say I saw this one back in the 70's at a Drive In.We all laughed at it for months.We tried to determine if it was filmed in someones back yard and what the total budget was.The canniblism aspect was a good spin though.This movie was very good for laughs and comments like " Hey who's idea was it to watch this one?"I think it ranks right up there with Plan 9 ,Microwave Massacre and even Ishtar.Make sure you drink heavily when you watch it.It makes it easier.I do recommend it.Do not spend more than 2 bucks if possible.I would also recommend that you do not watch this one on a first date.Wait till at least the third,and it may even just be your last..
Well, take four studious grad students desiring to impress their professor on a weekend jaunt to "Boot" Island(Heaven knows where that is...but by the looks of the area I would say Upstate New York), a professor intent on finding the Yetti(in New York no less), and a mixture of cheap special effects, implausible situations, horrendous acting, and a lively tune called Popcorn and you have the makings of a great film ...right?
In between porno projects, the Findlays found time to dabble in horror like the infamous 1976 release Snuff and their Yeti movie Shriek Of The Mutilated, with Michaeldirecting and editing and Roberta on camera duties.
Which thrills Dr Prell no end, as it proves the Yeti exists, and he uses the classmates' bodies as bait, much to the horror of young Karen who screams her disapproval to anyone within earshot: "You're a madman!" and a thousand variations on that theme.Of course, something more sinister is at work, and the revelation upon revelation in the final ten minutes add up to one of the nuttiest endings I can remember from ANY horror movie, Seventies or otherwise.
Be glad it's NOT one of the Findlays' porn efforts, or you'd see them raise more than an eyebrow.To cap an extraordinary career, Michael Findlay's death was like a bad B movie ending: on his way to demonstrate his new 3 D camera, he was decapitated by a helicopter's blades (and don't you wish his 3-D camera was rolling at the time).
A film so awful that even the biggest bad movie lovers would run for their lives as soon as they see the opening credits.
who together with Dr. Prell likes to run around in the woods dressed up in white gorilla suites scaring and killing the students in their care; and many many more..
Featuring one of the all time great movie lines in "Mr. Henshaw, white meat or dark?"  Worth it alone to see the oddball Spencer Sinclair being electrocuted in his bath tub after slashing his girlfriend's throat with a bread-cutting knife.
The gay subtext of the relationship between the professor, the owner of the island which the Yeti inhabits, and is mute Indian "man servant" is enough to keep you scratching your head.What other movie contains an impromptu musical interlude with lyrics like "he'll turn your threesome into a twosome...
I often watch movies I loved back then when I was a kid, and am usually disappointed at how bad they are.....certainly not the wondrous films I remembered.
So I figure, if my friends and I thought this movie was horrid back then, I can only imagine how bad it would be these days to watch, LoL.Anyway, was just fooling around on the internet tonight and thought of it........so I had to look it up.
Thought I'd post this if any of you are interested....or thinking about watching this piece of garbage, LoL.For those of you that have seen this atrocity, I'll leave you with these words, which I still remember (and laugh about) all these years later.....WHITE MEAT OR DARK?!?!?!
If you can get past the "Popcorn" scene without gagging, the rest of the film is filled with stolen pieces of classical music (including that horror movie favorite tension-setter "Dies Irae") that don't fit the action or situations at all.Too bad, because the first murder scene was kind of promising, if unintentionally funny; double homicide with electric knife and toaster in the bath tub!
Just a note of warning: The Retromedia DVD of "Shriek of the Mutilated" is missing one of the highlights of the movie...the use of the '70s syntho-pop instrumental hit "Popcorn" during the party scene early in the movie.
Amateurish, but unrelentingly bizarre horror movie about a group of graduate students who travel to the Pacific Northwest in search of the Abominable Snowman, who ends up looking suspiciously like the Shaggy D.A.
Shriek of the Mutilated lacks the stark cinematography and morbid poetic sensibility of the earlier Findlay films, the Flesh trilogy and The Ultimate Degenerate, but fans of the couple will recognize other familiar ingredients: the melodramatic violence, stock classical music, and, most charmingly, bitter monologues as a cheap way of furthering the plot.A movie like this, it goes without saying, isn't suited to all tastes; but admirers of the Findlays, plus anybody who likes or can stomach the work of Don Dohler or Andy Milligan, are probably going to want to see this sometime.
Dull spots and porn film production values notwithstanding, Shriek of the Mutilated does contain some wild ideas.As other reviewers have noted, the rotten music playing during the party scene isn't original to the movie and was added for the Retromedia release.
Still, the movie made for good fun as my friends and I took great pleasure in predicting which of the students would fall next or how bad the next cannibal joke would be.
4)  The Yeti runs down a long warehouse aisle to a loading dock to attack one of the students in the middle of the woods, then cuts to the actual attack, where he falls like he'd been pushed over.This movie cried out for the MST3K treatment, but alas, it was not to be..
This movie, bad acting and all, is a wonderful gem that I searched for for 17 years, after having seen it at age 11.
There are some memorable moments...Dr Prell using some of the bigfoot victims' body parts as "bait" ("Keith, I want you to listen to me closely...this can never be of any use to Tom anymore.") to the unforgettable ending, when Laughing Crow raises an electric knife and says,"Mr Henshaw...white meat or dark?" Not to mention the toaster in the bathtub scene.
This is not a top-quality film - it is campy and b-rated but a heck-of-a-lot better than the description and poster shows it to be.Students are lead to an island by their professor in search of the yeti but the student uncover more.
This movie is almost unwatchable, and sorely needs an MST3K or Rifftrax treatment to help you through it.For anyone looking for a good-bad Yeti movie, I heartily recommend the made-for-TV "Snowbeast", which I picked up on DVD at a dollar store.
After following the supposedly REAL case of the Yeti corpse found in the U.S.A. I decided to watch some Bigfoot related movies like "Night of the Demon" and this one, "Shriek of the Mutilated".
After watching both, I could only ask myself: Why all the killer Yeti movies are CRAP?!.Even "Night of the Demon" is a fun exploitation trash but "Shriek..." is plain bad, terrible and a demonstration of incompetent film making.I regularly recommend bad movies in the style of this one, but in this case, my advice will only be: stay away from it!
Unperturbed by the gruesome failure of a previous such mission some years earlier,the peculiarly motivated Sasquatch hunter Professor Prell is planning a new field trip with an assorted group of students.The bickering group of students find themselves on a field trip in darkest Boot Island,staying at the residence of another mysteriously motivated character Dr Waring...with the laugh inducing monster outside!"Shriek of the Mutilated" is amazing in its badness.It offers woeful acting,amateurish gore and most laughably unconvincing Sasquatch ever put to film.Add also a gruesome cannibal cult and you have memorable Z-gade horror trash,which remains a highly entertaining if comparatively rare film that should be sought by fans of cheap exploitation cinema..
I've seen the flick probably a half dozen times, but it's one of those horror movies you just want to watch over and over.
The biggest disappointment on the DVD release of this movie is that the original film featured the song Popcorn by Hot Butter.
The first half is loooong, tedious, badly acted and boring (with the exception of the electric knife/toaster double murder, a scene most likely never to be repeated again in the history of horror/trash cinema).
But, once these crazy college kids get up into the mountains with their obviously looney professor to search for the legendary Yeti (who, surprisingly, looks a helluva lot like a guy in a big, white snowman costume), this thing kicks into full throttle and takes you on the ride of your life (well, it takes you on some kinda ride, maybe a ride down to the corner 7-11, at least.
In the climax, they try to stab a guy to death with dinner forks (in a freaky scene that is, for this kind of drivel, surprisingly well-shot from an overhead camera.) I remember watching the first half hour or so of this as a child on Creature Feature Theatre, hosted by Crematia Mortem, (or was it Friday Fright Night, hosted by the wise-cracking, unseen narrator who also owned the Chrysler dealership downtown?)--you know, back before Time Warner cable obliterated the cool local TV stations that aired scary/cheesy movies every Friday and Saturday night (thanks to channel 5 and KCMO 62, I got to witness such schlock cinema classics as "Tourist Trap," "Squirm," and "The Giant Spider Invasion" at an early age, and I've never been quite right since.) The mute Indian rocks, the long-haired eccentric guy who ends up being the Yeti rocks, that nerdy-cute chic with the glasses whose corpse ends up getting used as bait rocks (the front of the DVD has one of the best and most oblique tag lines ever: "A corpse is used as bait in the trap of terror!") -- hell, what can I say?
A professor leads a group of stupid college students in search of the Yeti, but they don't find what they expect, and people start dying.
When I asked every one of my "horror movie addict" friends if they had ever seen a film about a bigfoot that is actually a professor dressed in a costume that eats his students one by one...they all looked at me as if I were slightly crazy and said, "No, but it sounds good!" (Actually, I had the title wrong, as I'd thought it was called "Screech of the Mutilated")...anyway, a fantastic bit of schlock!
With unintentionally wacky dialog, ham-handed performances, and its superb "shock" ending, Shriek of the Mutilated should have a rightful place in bad movie history.
Shriek of the Mutilated (1974) * (out of 4) Director Michael Findlay tries to go mainstream with this film about a group of students who go out looking for the Yeti.
For those who have not read the plot summary, the film is about a cult of cannibals who have a guy dressed in a fake bigfoot costume to scare people away from the island where they hold their feasts.
**Contains Spoilers**Granted, the song "Popcorn" has been replaced on the soundtrack--a loss to lovers of fine music everywhere--and the acting, production values and cheat storyline aren't any better; but the DVD represents the most complete version of this film to be seen in decades.
Restored gore highlights include the electric-knife murder (to the extent that the bargain-basement filmmakers could shoot such a scene to begin with); a pre-credits decapitation that seems to have been tacked on just for cheap laffs; a longer shot of one character's torn-off leg; the mass stabbing of another character by hungry cannibals; and the most over-the-top villain, Laughing Crow, making stew with veggies and a human head.Having suffered for years with the censored TV print released on VHS in the mid-1980s, I found the recent DVD release to be a cause for celebration.
Fred, Shaggy, Velma, and Daphne head off to Boot Island with their professor, Doctor Prell, to attempt to photograph or, dare to dream, capture a yeti.
What he's doing in America, in an area where there is no snow, well, that's not really important unless you try to take this film at face value, and hopefully you won't.I smiled throughout most of this movie because it's just one of those flicks that is so bad you think it's good, or good enough to watch for laughs.
Elderly college anthropology professor Ernest Prell (stiffly played by former 30's bit actor Alan Brock) and four obnoxiously hip students journey to the remote Pacific coast sandbar of Boot Island to confirm whether stories about an Abominable Snowman inhabiting the woods have any basis in fact.
In an absolutely awful would-be shocking twist ending the yeti proves to be a hoax, a ruse concocted by closet cannibals Prell, Werner and Laughing Crow to lure unsuspecting suckers to the island so they can kill and devour them.Any movie which features Hot Butter's insufferably interminable fluke hit instrumental "Popcorn" playing in its irritating entirety at a college frat party early in the action can't possibly be any good.
An unbalanced professor leads a gaggle of not-so-bright college students off on a field trip to find the yeti.Stumbled upon this odious mess as a teenager back in the days when late night weekend TV aired horror films that you had never heard of (and in this case, wish you had never heard of).
From there, it is just a matter of time before the "yeti" makes its appearance and figuring out which of the students will be the first to go.The film has uneventful stretches and the writing is ludicrous.
All except for Keith, who, being teacher's pet, goes with Dr. Prell to an exclusive restaurant and samples an even more exclusive dish which Prell claims is called gin sung.At the party, the other three receive some good old-fashioned doomsaying from college janitor Spencer Ste. Claire, who, it turns out, is a former student of Prell's and went with Prell on his last excursion to Boot Island several years before.
Keith, coming to, confronts them and discovers they're members of a Satan-worshiping cannibal cult that uses the Yeti costumes as a theatrical excuse to lure potential victims (i.e. Prell's students) to Boot Island to eat them.
It's so bad it's good, and the final scene is a laugh riot.Note: The film is also noteworthy for using an early version of the song Popcorn by Hot Butter, during the party scene at the beginning.
In fact, the producers of the movie commissioned a poster that reveals the film's big secret right in the tag line, "A frenzied hunt for a hideous beast uncovers an evil cannibal cult, and death is the devil's blessing!"The movie is a total 70s time capsule, littered with severed bloody limbs, as four groovy college kids accompany their professor to an isolated estate where Yeti sightings have occurred.
In a Scooby Doo plot development, the Yeti turns out to be a ruse: it's the professor and his evil cohorts posing as the Yeti, and they are part of an international cult of cannibals who lure kids into becoming victims, especially one in particular who they want to frighten to death as part of their ritual.You will enjoy the movie a lot more knowing this twist is coming, as the Yeti looks really fake and the fact that it's SUPPOSED to be fake in the story somewhat excuses this.
The acting is straight out of an early John Waters film, which the entire movie greatly resembles.I know a lot of people will tell you "Shriek Of The Mutilated" is a bad film, but they're missing the point here.
Sexploitation director Michael Findlay turns his dubious talents to the horror genre, telling the tale of four college kids who accompany their professor, Dr. Ernst Prell (Alan Brock), on a field trip to Boot Island where they attempt to prove the existence of a yeti.The film opens with Prell conducting a lecture on yetis, showing his students some sketches of the legendary beast, presumably rendered by a shortsighted, artistically challenged, right-handed eight-year-old holding his pencil with his left hand (OK, that's a bit harsh, perhaps, but I wouldn't use them).
Keith returns to the house with a local sheriff (who also turns out to be part of the cult) just as dinner is about to be servedWith a ridiculous plot, terrible acting and minimal hokey gore, the wonderfully titled Shriek of the Mutilated is utterly inept and not in the least bit horrifying, yet the whole affair possesses a unique bats**t-crazy quality that makes it a fair amount of fun if really bad B-movies are your thing.