Human Sacrifice. Not uncommon today. (Mardi Gras Massacre (DVD))

Name: hogsflesh

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Product:	Mardi Gras Massacre (DVD)
Date:	09/02/07 (263 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The incidental music is fantastic

Disadvantages: The rest of the film is pretty bad

(A review of just the film – I think there’s a DVD available in America.)

This is a very cheap horror movie from 1978. One of the most obscure of the video nasties, it’s still technically banned in this country, although that’s more because no one wants to release it than because of anything that appears in the film; I doubt it would have trouble getting a certificate nowadays.

It’s set in New Orleans in the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras. An anonymous psychopath is sacrificing prostitutes to an Aztec goddess. The tough guy cops are baffled (as always in these films, but then the films would be short and lacking in incident if the police knew where to look immediately). As Mardi Gras approaches, the killer decides to splash out on a particularly spectacular triple murder, convinced this will bring his evil goddess back to life.

With a premise like that, how far wrong can a film really go? The answer is very far wrong. Very far indeed. But Mardi Gras Massacre is at least funny, which is more than can be said for most of the cheap and dreadful video nasties I’ve seen lately. Cheap, unimaginative film-making can be a source of considerable pleasure if all the pieces fall into place properly, and while this isn’t as good as, say, The Beast in Heat or Night of the Bloody Apes, it’s still worth a look if it ever stumbles messily across your path.

The acting is poor. I doubt there was a professional actor anywhere in there – some of the performances remind me of student films that I participated in. There’s hardly any emphasis in any of the line delivery (with one or two brave exceptions) – not only are these non-actors, but they’re not even trying. The main characters are the killer (wears a three-piece suit, seems to be doing a Karloff impression, tries to make his lines seem really sinister by saying them incredibly slowly in a deep voice); the chief cop Mike (a truly unlikeable man with a moustache); and Sherry, the rather frumpy whore with a heart of gold, who romances Mike and ends up in peril. Lines are repeatedly fluffed by performers, suggesting that the filmmakers didn’t have enough money for more than one take of any scene.

The performers are all disco-era ugly. For a film that’s set in the shadowy New Orleans demi-monde of vice and drugs, there’s an astonishing lack of sex appeal, or any visible displays of lust. The killer apathetically runs his hands over the naked bodies of his victims, but that really is about as lusty as anyone gets – and the rather detached, uninterested way Mike glances at Sherry’s naked breasts actually made my skin crawl.

There is a certain idiotic weirdness to things, though; enough to keep me interested, at any rate. There’s a hilarious white pimp with long hair who looks like the ugliest hippie chick in the world (and talks in rhyme! ‘I am Catfish. What is your wish?’). One of the killer’s victims does a bit of topless ballet for him (is that the kind of thing prostitutes do in real life? She’s a half-competent dancer, although her claim to be 19 seems unlikely). And the killer is always walking into bars and asking to meet evil women, setting up some great exchanges like ‘Hello, I understand you’re the most evil woman here.’ ‘Honey, I could win first prize in any evil contest.’ (I’d love to see an evil contest, wouldn’t you?)

The best thing in the film, by a long way, is the incidental music. The killings themselves are accompanied by a mixture of electronic wind howl effects and sub-John Carpenter bass lines, but otherwise there’s a fantastic collection of disco tunes and lounge-y wah-wah guitar. There are even songs. The film contains some incredibly long montage sequences, each accompanied by its own song. We get the cop and prostitute girlfriend in a hilarious love sequence; two cops prowling around the city at night roughing up pimps and looking for clues; and a great montage of the Mardi Gras itself, which includes many, many people noticing the camera and staring at it. I know it’s unlikely, but if anyone out there is considering releasing a soundtrack album, I’m totally there! There are also some tremendously unerotic strippers (who often dance out of frame – the camera doesn’t try to follow them, leaving us staring at an empty stage) and the stupidest disco dancing ever captured on film. Seriously.

The film also contains the least engaging car chase ever (at no point does it cut to the interiors of any of the cars – all we have is a succession of cars in long shot driving around interminably). It’s a little more impressive in the gore sequences – what any video nasty is ultimately judged on. There are some quite well-done images of ladies’ naked torsos being sliced open – these are probably where most of the film’s money went, and certainly what would have got it banned in the UK. Unfortunately, although it tries desperately to be sleazy, it just isn’t up to it. The body count is far too low, and the killings are all exactly the same (although oddly the prosthetic bodies are clearly different).

This is really an inane film – there’s no sense of suspense because you can’t care about any of the characters. The plot is inept (the cop and his girlfriend have an argument that’s never explained at all, and only exists to set her up for the lady-in-peril element of the dénouement.) The acting and script are lousy and the direction has no flair at all. It’s a weird rip-off of the hilarious Blood Feast, which also features a man carving up women to feed an evil goddess, but it has none of the wacky intensity of that film. It steals ideas liberally from other sources (Jaws, especially) but doesn’t do anything with them.

But, that said, it’s enjoyable in a way that only a bad film can be. It contains a lot of full frontal nudity (the surgically ‘improved’ breasts of one of the victims mildly alarmed me) and a few minutes of vaguely unpleasant explicit gore. But if you don’t mind that, and like laughing at people who can’t act, then give this a try sometime.

Summary: A funny-bad relic from the video nasty era