Mardi Gras Massacre

Mardi Gras Massacre

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.

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.