United States - 1978
Director – Jack Weis
VCII Incorporated, 1983, VHS
This video starts of with a reel of trailers of other films offered by the video distribution company, VCII. Maybe I should say excerpts, because they’re just a minute or two grabbed from each film, and they’re terrible looking films. That does not bode well for Mardi Gras Massacre.
Wasting no time though, MGM gets right down to business, a painful disco soundtrack accompanying every wooden actor from the very first person to step on screen. One of the first is a slightly insane looking type in a lawyer suit who asks two whores sitting at the bar to set him up with “the most,…evil” girl in the bar. No sooner said than done, Shirley boldly verifies her status as a surefire “first place in any evil contest.” Taking her home, the guy commands her to strip while he changes in the next room, emerging moments later in nothing but a short woolen poncho and gold mask. After tying her down and rubbing her with oil, making sure to pay particular attention to her chest glands, he slashes her hand and foot, and then while she’s alive, guts her like a fish, removing her heart which he does something or other with. 
I’m not the first person who realized that this movie is pretty much a more graphic take on Herschel Gordon Lewis’s 1963 gore film Blood Feast, with all the benefit of 15 years cultural debasement.
I’m not the first person who realized that this movie is pretty much a more graphic take on Herschel Gordon Lewis’s 1963 gore film Blood Feast, with all the benefit of 15 years cultural debasement. In Mardi Gras Massacre the primary differences are few, but fundamental. First, while it’s still minimally budgeted, the gore is thankfully more graphic, as is the nudity. Which, while I’m at it is half the point of this movie, you’ll see what I mean. Second, our killer is an Aztec priest (instead of Egyptian, fine, it doesn’t make much difference). And lastly a catchy disco soundtrack which invades the lungs of every single scene with mechanical, textbook precision until it chokes the very air.
After giving the same treatment to a second “…evil” hooker, the cops get interested and while questioning another hooker, the homicide detective falls in love, a crudely ham-hand executed sideplot which will only have brief insignificant relevance in the last scene.
Finally, after doing in a third bonafide “…evil” prostitute in the exact same manner, but thankfully with a fresh custom molded rubber prosti-torso, the guy’s ready for his big ritual, three women at once, on Mardi Gras. Sounds like an opportunity to quickly end the movie at a climactic moment. Three torso’s and six naked girls was all we could afford. 
Damn if it ain’ genuine hard boiled drecksploitation. 
Frightened by noises and something in the water, Mike and Kim return to the cabin where Dan and Jeri are talking, with less clothes on, a mixed blessing, but at least a change. At last, something starts to happen. Sudden beating on the walls of the cabin freaks everyone out, but Mike fires his tiny .22 pistol which temporarily stops the terror but also signals the end of any further possibility of skin.
Valiantly leaving the cabin to seek help, Mike enters a world of darkness and much of his actions are a mystery because I can’t see a goddamned thing. After Running into a Baptist church where the congregation is in full swing, the film shows promising signs of revival, but Mike passes quickly through a few moments of inspired editing before whacking his head on a rock, rendering him, and the remainder of this film once again unconscious. Waking, he gets a ride back to the cabin with a deputy sheriff, where, confirming our worst fears, the rednecks have already committed all the carnage and his friends, like the film are proven to be long dead.
For a contemporary student of the war itself, many of these stories are surprisingly, not unfamiliar, if unique in the details. What I had to remind myself is that these confessions were not made 30 years later on the printed page with the promise of a royalty check on the far end. These men are still seeing these things in full color in their heads and can still feel the pull of the flesh. Vietnam itself, and their own personal version of it were still very much happening at the time this was filmed.
Afterwards the Guides mutter goofy voodoo at each other and the whole Good Guy team is sent out to matte painting land to participate in Deathsport!, in which they mount minimally modified unwieldy future dirtbikes, and are chased through various minimally dressed flaming sets (or even better, location shots) by Angkar and his lackeys. 
Lord Zirpola tortures another nude woman in his Sonic Pain Chamber, but soon dies, leaving Angkar Moor and his boys to be whittled away in the field until Kaz and Angkar, old rivals can have a clear plastic swordfight. 
Set 1000 years after Death Race, for no reason, Deathsport disposes with all the entertaining elements of it’s predecessor and relies exclusively on Claudia Jennings (Playboy Playmate of the Year 1970) and one other woman’s minimal clothing, and Richard Lynch’s portrayal of minimal morality. Nothing escapes the axe in this cheapquel and except for a few minutes of tits, which of course appeals only to a minimal demographic, it is similarly minimally entertaining.
If Cooper helps Vinh get to American lines (with a big sack of gold and cash he’s stolen from prisoners) the two of them can avoid Hanoi altogether and go free. Without the inclusion of the other prisoners, Cooper refuses. After kicking the ass of Sparks, a recalcitrant POW who disagrees with his plan, Cooper stonyfaces Vinh into caving, and they all roll out of camp with the POW’s hidden in a water truck.
Oozing big dumb water buffalo heroics, and frankly, flat out stupidity, all while draped in an American flag, Cooper smashes through the walls of subtlety to reach the inner sanctum of excess.
‘Namsploitation is arguably a fun little niche from the video era, but this movie manages to use the entertaining staples of the genre to make 90 minutes feel like 190. I lost count of false endings and secondary and even tertiary characters. The one redeeming characteristic is that despite it’s plentiful use of war violence it refrains from the overt sadism of the Norris MIA series, and if one doesn’t nitpick the inaccuracies and machismo, it’s still pretty ridiculous fun.
I was bored with the Faces of Death movies back in the day, and the tagline on my copy of Men Behind the Sun purports to be “In the tradition” of those movies and in a way I can see why some people would say that, but I think there is a fundamental difference.
Ishikawa’s sadistic experiments seem to have little bearing on his stated objective, at least in the context of this film, but that doesn’t stop him from pursuing both with equal vigor and a gleam in his eye. Finally, in the end, as the war draws to a close the 731 has to abandon its base and withdraw to Japan where the victimized Chinese suffer the greatest cruelty of all, the amnesty of the members of unit 731. Men Behind the Sun provides the egregious use of stomach turning violence you expect from a film in the “Mondo” tradition, but also has guts enough to provide someone to blame it all on. That’s a whole new mouthful of flavor.
Alternate Covers:
Relaxing after the (unsuccessful) operation, one of the assistants performs a prolonged striptease while the rest of the ladies, much like myself, stare slackjawed, as the narrator elaborates on the various types of “white trash” they once were, and how they all became despondent sadistic hedonistic nurses. “Their whole life is one big suicide attempt, a suicide attempt in luxurious surroundings.” A lesson in morality to be sure, driven home by the spiraling hypno-cam. 
Ilsa’s failure to please the golem-like living Barbie doll Sabrina leads to deep feelings of guilt which can only be assuaged by a topless (at last) whipping session, and a camper-hunting expedition. The latter results in much of the aforementioned gore, and a coup attempt by Greta, Ilsa’s assistant, who reveals (via narration) the origins of Sabrina and the mystery of the Elvis tattoo birthmark, which in the final on screen tally is all too much for her fragile mind to take, and she goes of the deep end.
In fact, without the hilarious bargain psychoanalytical voiceover, and a few drinks to keep this trainwreck of bloody naked sillyness remotely linear, it might have been almost too much for me too. 
Of all four, only the last features people who actually appear in the film.
Shortly enough, the voice, attributed to a Venutian alien, comes to earth and magically shuts down the power of everything, a la The Day the Earth Stood Still. Now even less convinced of the creatures benevolence, Nelson tells Anderson as much over a drink. 
Alas, she fails, but her death has finally convinced Anderson that he's an asshole, and he bravely gives his life to redeem his soul.
The goldbricking clown of the squad, Huey, attempts to steal sick passes from the doctor's office but is subjected to a prolonged overly intimate fat jiggling session, and a frighteningly enthusiastic rectal examination, a theme to which we are to later return repeatedly with great comic effect.
A series of slide whistle accompanied erection shots follow, and while leading the Swiss miss to her room,. Ramit declares that she is just like hot curried potatoes.
Planning his sexual conquest, Ramit assembles an arsenal of bad sex jokes, but in a cruel twist of fate accompanied by more slide-whistles, Huey lands in the girl's pants, eliciting painful simultaneous yodeling from the Swiss Miss and the soundtrack, more uncomfortable sexual abuse and domination from the rest of the squad, and an intensification of intoxication from this viewer. Eventually of course, with the help of some homophobic jokes, cross-dressing and some well endowed sand table strategy...
...Ramit's boys manage to win the wargames, bringing this film - like my drink - to a happy if hazy and spinning conclusion. Where films like Basic Training approached this subject with somewhat questionable motives, Private Maneuvers gleefully employs the double barrels of racism and sexism whole hog. I would go on to say that it discriminates against stupid people too, but I'm not sure if that's meant to be self deprecating. Every element is taken just a bit further than I'm used to, and scored to popular songs of the 60's, so it's a little but disquieting. I would say that this movie lost something in translation, but instead, I think it gained something in mis-translation. At least I hope so, nothing this beautifully crass could have been planned. 
Having not heard the gunshots or screaming from downstairs, mom (Burns) takes a shower, and after savoring his victory for awhile, Judd ascends the stairs to tie her to the bed. 
