Shriek of the Mutilated (1974) User Reviews

What can I say? This DVD ROCKS!!!!

[rackafrackus · 3/10 · 25 November 2003]

**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. Watch this DVD along with INVASION OF THE BLOOD FARMERS and celebrate the glory of drive-in days gone by.

Shriek of the Audience

[Tender-Flesh · 3/10 · 1 November 2009]

Every once in a while, a movie comes along like this. If you haven't seen it, you are in for a treat. For you see, what we have here is basically a live-action Scooby Doo mystery, with characters I will refer to by that TV show's names. 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. Mind you, the yeti is basically the abominable snow man of Tibet and surrounding regions. 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. Some movies are too inept even to be granted that, but this one succeeds on enough levels of absurdity, bad acting, horrid dialogue, and moronic premise that you just sort of find yourself enjoying it in spite of yourself.

Now, back to the island. The elusive yeti stalks the landscape with a super loud heartbeat, occasionally roars, and when you see him, he has a lovely white fur coat. While rambling about in the woods near a country home not too far off the beaten path, our intrepid mystery hunters, who in fact arrive at their destination in a van not unlike the Mystery Machine--a white Econoline van with blue hippie flowers all over the front, find themselves being picked off in the woods by Bigfoot's white cousin. First, Shaggy gets his leg ripped off. And while parts of Shaggy are laid out to lure the yeti back to being captured, Velma meets her fate. By this time, Daphne is hysterical and Fred is, well, Fred. Practically everyone will have this mystery pretty much solved in the first 15 minutes of viewing, which leaves the rest of the time for you to wonder how they could stretch a Scooby Doo mystery into 86 minutes.

This is a very amateur film, to say the least. I've seen much worse, and at least this has some unintentionally humorous bits. It would have been nice if Velma got naked, but I digress. See, it turns out there is also a blood cult thing going on in these here woods and Daphne is on the menu, along with Shaggy and Velma. Fred is left to tell his tale just as some goof did on a previous failed expedition. And wait til you see how things go for that guy! Unbelievable nonsense that you can't help but find amusing. This is the sort of film you need to watch on a Saturday night with your buddies. Buddies that get your sensibilities when it comes to films, that is.

You may wonder if this is a Scooby Doo Mystery, where is the dog? The whole movie is a dog!

Fun... The campy cheese-fest

[maxwelldrake · 5/10 · 16 March 2006]

Did you ever wonder what happen the Fluffy, the sheepdog that the Brady Bunch kids owed for two or three seasons? Well, apparently he moved to upstate New York and began killing nerdy teenagers. This schlocky Yeti film is just about the campiest of the cinema-de-sasquatch genre. So you bigfootiphiles out there might want to see it purely for the novelty value. However you might find the plot familiar... a group of four teenagers arrive in a van to investigate the local mystery of a supposed "yeti". Yup, this story plays out like a cross between Scooby Do and something by Herschell Gordon Lewis. Seriously, there is the awkward guy, another guy that looks fairly butch but sings show tunes, a pretty girl and the nerdy girl, with the mousy brown hair and thick horn-rim glasses. It is all there for ya, minus only the Great Dane(who must have had a better agent). The acting is bad enough to make this truly enjoyable. The plot is all over the place. 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... watchout...it's the Yetiiiiiii....?"

If you like cheesy B movies this will fill the bill...

A yeti in Westchester county, NY???

[ZEE-11 · 15 April 2002]

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. I think it was well intentioned, but misses it's mark with amusing results. In fact, it has become one of my favorite time wasters. 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!). All this combined with the most gullible group of college students in film (all right, one of the most gullible). The closing "breakfast" scene offers some genuine creeps. Watch for scenes changing from day to night and sunny to rainy and then back again! Cult material deluxe. Watch this with your favorite beverage and ENJOY!

Cheap, stupid, tacky, ridiculous, inept, sleazy...

[capkronos · 1/10 · 6 May 2003]

In other words...a must see! Five minutes into this epic genre masterpiece you'll forget that wannabe horror films like PSYCHO and THE EXORCIST even exist. 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. But First they attend a happenin' 70s party complete with groovy music, fashions and that legendary disco instrumental "Popcorn," which sounds like a bunch of kernels popping. A guy walking in accidentally bumps his head on a low-hanging ceiling light! Another professor from the college warns the four students not to go, but his wife nags him and wants to leave. When the couple return home he cuts her neck open with an electric carving knife!! 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. The filmmakers decided it would be best to blur out of the face of the monster so we never even get a good look at it. But wait! There's more! The monster is actually (surprise!) a guy dressed up, and the island is home to a cannibal clan who want the students as dinner. Wow!

Full of hilariously awful acting, dialogue, FX and editing, this effort from the untoppable husband and wife team of Michael and Roberta Findlay is a laugh riot that deserves a cult following. It belongs with PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE at the top of the so-bad-it's-good genre. More people should see it. For fans of this stuff, it's a classic.

(Quality) Score: 1 out of 10 (And I mean that in a good way!)

From the folks behind BLOOD FARMERS...

[Flixer1957 · 3/10 · 23 August 2002]

Having commented on this movie's companion piece INVASION OF THE BLOOD FARMERS, I would be negligent if I didn't review Ed Adlum's other contribution to schlock cinema. Mr. Ed served solely as producer here, but Michael Findlay and his cast of clowns managed to do for the Yeti what Adlum did for druids and vampires a few years earlier.

Dr. Prell entices four young college students to go on an expedition to find the Yeti. Despite warnings that other Prell field-trippers have been slaughtered by the Abominable Snowmen, the campus clucks eagerly go along. (Where would horror films be without ma-roons like these?) They journey to the uncharted wilderness of Croton-On-Hudson, NY and are introduced to Dr. Karl Werner. The story is transparent from the first frame and I'm not giving away a thing by saying that the enemy is ultimately not a marauding Yeti, but an evil cannibal cult headed by Werner and Prell who routinely run around the countryside in bargain-basement Yeti suits. This "shock ending," by the way, was also betrayed on the movie's posters and in one of the worst ad campaigns of all time.

The big stars are a 1930s actor turned agent (Brock) and a veteran of 1954's CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON (Ellis). Newcomer Jennifer Stock freely indulges her passion for high-school pageant histrionics. Jack Neubeck does lousy W. C. Fields impressions before getting drunk and getting snuffed. Ivan Agar (any relation to John?) steals the show as mute Indian servant Laughing Crow, who wields one mean electric knife; however, stealing this show amounts to petty larceny. This is the sort of film where characters bitch about a heavy snowfall and there isn't one flake in the air or on the ground. So-called nocturnal scenes look like they were shot at eight in the morning. In the plus column are the score, which sounds like better-than-average library music, and Roberta Findlay's occasionally striking photography.

Bloody on its initial release, this movie was shorn of its gore for VHS back in the 1980s. The more recent Retromedia DVD reinstates a beheading that happens even before the main credits; shots of a severed lower leg; the cannibal gang "tenderizing" a victim with meat forks; and a more lengthy electric knife murder. Also, Laughing Crow makes a one-pot meal with a severed head, potatoes and carrots. (Fiber is good for you, after all....)

I still haven't seen the "ripped out guts" mentioned by another reviewer, but I still found the Retromedia DVD to be a cause for celebration. Watch this DVD along with INVASION OF THE BLOOD FARMERS and celebrate the glory of drive-in days gone by.

White meat or dark?

[sol1218 · 3/10 · 30 September 2003]

A film so awful that even the biggest bad movie lovers would run for their lives as soon as they see the opening credits.

"Shrike of the Mutilated" is so badly edited and acted it's a wonder that it ever would have made it to the silver screen to be seen by the paying public even in a place like the Qattara Depression. With a cast of characters so off-the-wall and obnoxious that you'll wonder just how the cameraman could have held the camera study while he was filming this "epic" without cracking up.

There's Dr. Prell. A grade A nut-job par exultant, who's obsession with finding the Yeti has cost the lives of at least a dozen students who were nuts enough to go on his "field trips" that he organizes every seven years in different parts of the world to track and find the Yeti. Why every seven years? Why not six or five or four or what?

There's Laughing Crow. A six foot six hairy Indian who likes to cook, swing an ax and play heartbeats in the evening who doesn't laugh or even talk. It seems that Laughing Crow encountered the Yeti eight years ago and hasn't been the same since.

There's Spencer St. Clair. The only survivor of Dr. Prell's last field trip who upon hearing that Prell has another one in the works flips out and cuts his wife's throat. Who in turn electrocutes him by dropping a toaster into the bathtub where Spencer, fully clothe, plopped down after slashing her.

And of course there's the mysterious Dr.Warner. 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.

Blech!

[mnpollio · 1/10 · 31 January 2019]

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). It is bad enough that pretty much every element of the film is inept, but what makes the film stick out like a sore thumb is that the film feels low rent and downright sleazy - even without any notable sex or nudity.

The entire concept is absurd. Alan Brock is the professor, who seems cursed with questionable ethics and more than a tad unhinged right from the start. His performance leaves a lot to be desired, so we will speak no more of it. The thought that a gaggle of students would follow this guy across the street much less onto an isolated patch of land known as Boot Island requires a major suspension of belief. We never get a good idea of where this Boot Island supposedly is, but it looks suspiciously like northern New York. Who knew that was a stomping ground for a yeti?

Even more stupid is that the students are made aware from the start that the professor's first foray to find "the yeti" seven years earlier resulted in the deaths of all the students involved save one. A drunken wretch who just so happens to show up at the parting party to ramble incoherently and warn the students of impending doom and to not trust the professor. The students are too busy listening to the 70s kitsch class Popcorn to pay attention. This charmer is escorted out by his suitably embarrassed wife. Most film's would have allowed them to exit the action, but instead we follow the couple home where the drunk attacks his wife with a knife before staggering into the bathroom to take a bath fully clothed, where his still alive beaten bloody wife crawls in moments later to drop an unplugged toaster into the tub to electrocute him...yes, the toaster is unplugged, but it still electrocutes him.

The group heads off on their jaunt into the wilderness. They include Brock, studious bland Michael Harris, his innocent girlfriend Jennifer Stock, her dorky friend Darcy Brown, and wise-cracking dude Jack Neubeck. Although Boot Island is purportedly "off limits" they seem to have no problem accessing the island and moving into their accommodations, which are already inhabited by pony-tailed doctor Tawm Ellis who exudes sleaze and mute Native American Laughing Crow (Ivan Agar) - who looks about as Native American as the albino assassin in The DaVinci Code. 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. Ellis insists that although he has found footprints and heard the howl of the yeti in the night, he has never actually seen it. Then shortly thereafter he tells a story of being watched from the woods by the yeti, which is shown in flashback with Ellis giving such a detailed description of the beast that it contradicts what he initially said about never seeing it and none of the students gainsay him. At about the one-third mark, the film completely changes course and ceases being about a yeti, but about a gaggle of cannibals. The change in focus does not improve things.

The film looks like it cost about $1.95 to make on someone's home camera. The yeti is laughable looking like a cross between a chubby guy in a costume and a slobbering chihuahua. The film is not overly gory, but the subject matter and the look and feel of it have the unhealthy miasma of a grind house film. The fact that the professor starts carving up the bodies of the beast's victims to use as bait and the remaining survivors do not immediately head for the door or find suitable weapons to protect themselves from the "yeti" AND the professor and his cohorts is astonishing.

With the technical aspects a wash-out, the acting does not fare much better. The actors playing the villains come across as unsavory from the moment they enter the action, so their revelations as such are no surprise. Harris and Stock are not especially winning as the main couple. She spends most of the running time either looking blank of face or in an over-the-top palsy of prostration. For someone purportedly crazy about her, Harris wanders off repeatedly leaving her to fend for herself. His character seems eternally clueless and by the time the credits roll what little sympathy he may have generated is completely gone.

And let's not even get into the grotesque downer ending. No doubt meant to be darkly humorous, it comes off as just depressing and gross, punctuated by a crummy one-liner and a lingering shot of Harris' blank face uncontrollably drooling. Just yuck!

Great title, lousy movie

[Woodyanders · 1/10 · 9 January 2007]

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. The professor and his students stay at the home of the professor's colleague Dr. Karl Werner (woodenly portrayed by Tawn Ellis, who's best known as the star of the 50's Grade Z sci-fi clinker "Cat Women of the Moon") along with Werner's grunting Native American manservant Laughing Crow. The yeti soon makes its vicious presence felt, randomly dispatching two students and causing the survivors to degenerate into blind panic. WARNING: Major *SPOILER* ahead. 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. Not surprisingly, this worthless grindhouse garbage qualifies as a crushing disappointment considering the people involved in its production: Besides the notorious 60's husband and wife roughie team of Michael and Roberta Findley (who blessed us with the sensationally sick "Flesh" trilogy), we also got screenwriters Ed Adlum and Ed Kelleher (the two dudes who are chiefly responsible for the terrifically tacky kitsch hoot "Invasion of the Blood Farmers"). Moreover, the cruddy mix of an unremittingly nihilistic tone, a disagreeably campy sense of archly affected humor ("On the prowl/Hear him howl/Here comes the yeti now," sings some smartaleck collegian as he plays the piano), rotten gore effects, wretched acting, horrendous dialogue ("We're gonna find it, photograph it, and prove to the world that this fabled beast exists"), shoddy cinematography, and the cheesy gimmick of having a simulated heartbeat pound away on the soundtrack whenever the ersatz yeti is about to attack someone thoroughly negate any feeling of fun or entertainment value this dismal loser might have possessed. An unmitigated stiff.

Shockingly rises above its lackluster working parts

[drownsoda90 · 6/10 · 30 December 2022]

"Shriek of the Mutilated" follows a professor and group of students in upstate New York who go in search of a legendary Yeti on a remote island. Naturally, bad things happen.

This sleazy effort from "Snuff" co-director Michael Findlay is a complete oddball of a film. It almost goes without saying that the production values here are low, and the film has a number of shortcomings due to this (largely the Yeti costume/makeup, which is laughably cheap looking). Fans of B-movies and cult genre flicks will likely find many of these things amusing-it hinges on expectation entirely.

What the film lacks in its technical proficiency (and sense, for that matter), it somewhat makes up for in its surreal and creepy atmosphere. The autumnal-bordering-on-wintry locations here are spooky and the film overall has a dark, cold appearance that is memorable and at times eerie; the '70s interiors also have an oppressive and grimy look that offsets the more absurd and silly aspects of the film. At times, the film very much reminded me of the similar Bigfoot-themed slasher "Night of the Demon", which this film predates (though I ultimately prefer that film, which is slightly more surreal-and disjointed).

Despite its numerous shortcomings, "Shriek of the Mutilated" concludes with an audacious and grim "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" twist ending that is more clever and effective than one may expect, and which, I feel, elevates the film more than it has perhaps earned. Overall, this is a classically bad monster/slasher film hybrid, but one that is creative enough to rise above its cheaper working parts. 6/10.

Absolute Worst Film Of All-Time! Watch It And See!

[Pi_1 · 1/10 · 26 October 2006]

I'm 27 years old. I saw this movie when I was........well........probably about 10. Still to this day I consider this the worst movie I've ever seen in my life! I remember seeing it at the video store and thinking it was so cool. The box art was of a claw ripping through the front of the box. I pestered my dad to get it every time we went to the video store, but he refused (obviously wiser than I). Then, for my birthday party that year, my friends and I talked him into letting me rent it to watch at the sleepover. I was so excited at the prospect of watching Shriek of the Mutilated. Boy were we in for a treat, I thought, mesmerized by the terrifying box art! Yeah, right........

We got it home, popped it in the VCR, watched it, and although I don't remember all that much about it, I still remember it as the worst movie ever made. 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?!?!?! (watch it and this can become a lifelong joke for you too!!)

Shriek of the Unprepared Viewer

[El-Stumpo · 8/10 · 19 February 2004]

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. Yet even their non-sexploitation films have a very similar feel - they merely play like porn films without the porn. So prepare yourselves for a frustrating experience - bad library music, bad sets stacked with bad furniture, filled with bad actors with bad haircuts and worse comb-overs yelling the most pointless exposition and wretched dialogue that at best can be described as "florid". I repeat: BAD. And that doesn't begin to describe the joy of how appallingly wonderful the film is.

Shriek... begins with a group of college kids at a party preparing for a field trip set up by their obsessed professor Dr Prell to bag a real-life sasquatch. Amidst the general boogying to that hideous 70s song "Popcorn" and popping corn, an ex-teacher and now janitor grabs a bottle of vodka and goes nuts relating the story of how his last group of students were torn to pieces by an unspeakable abomination. "They said no more field trips!" he spits out, before going home and carving up his girlfriend with an electric knife. Why? She dropped his second bottle of vodka. Nuts, I tells ya.

Undeterred, the kids press on, and wind up at the country estate of Prell's associate Dr Werner, an odd duck in a turtleneck whose interest in Native American folklore extends to employing a Red Indian hatchet manservant named Laughing Crow. Not that Laughing Boy ever cracks a smile, particularly when the kids start getting picked off one by one by what appears to be a car seat cover with plastic Dracula fangs or the first screen appearance of Chewbacca, take your pick. 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. And that's really saying something. To get to that moment, however, you have to endure some of the most excruciating brow acting from the doctors, two unmitigated hams who are convinced the angle of the eyebrow is in direct correlation to each scene's level of intrigue. 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). Such is the karmic nature of the Beast. Then again, if he'd made kids films, he would probably have been torn to pieces by homeless alcoholic Santas. In the overall scheme of things, there should be no forgiveness for films like this one - a porno in a boiler suit, a gore film without a money shot, a bad film but still a GREAT bad film.

The Passion of the Yeti

[rcoates-661-22249 · 6/10 · 19 February 2010]

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, seeing this opus in its mutilated form is better than not seeing it at all.

How about "Hot Buttered Popcorn" is this a good choice of theme song?

[TomR727 · 1/10 · 6 January 2005]

How about the selection of "Hot Buttered Popcorn as a theme song? Isn't that a great choice? How about the acting in the restaurant scene when the professor asks the student " How was your salad Dan? Wasn't that great acting with the clever response. "Gee professor you sure know how to treat a guy. Isn't that wonderful dialog to say nothing of the acting? Even Martin Koslick at his best couldn't save this turkey of a movie. i really licked the seen when the ex-student beat his wife, got drunk and took a bath.he threw a beer can like a slob out of the tub just in time to be electrocuted by his half dead wife in her last act of being alive.this was drama at it's lowest.

A few cheap shocks, but pretty tedious.

[youroldpaljim · 17 November 2001]

I first saw this film back in the eighties on "Commander USA's Goovie Movies." This must be one of schlockiest seventies movies he ever showed. The film had a few good shocks, like the death by toaster scene, but I found this film mostly pretty tedious. The phony bigfoot costume, which looks like Santa Claus in an angora sweater and pants,would not have fooled anyone.

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. This kind of plot contrivance, having the fantastic element turn out to be a trick has always annoyed me. When will film makers ever realize no one likes films like this? This has turned up in films as far back as the twenties and still pops up in made for T.V. movies today. A guy running around in big foot costume would not scare people away, it would attract them! In real life reports of bigfoots, aliens, lake monsters, haunted houses only attract hordes of the curious. The island should have been over run by guys with shot guns trying to be the first guy to "bag" a bigfoot! The only good film where the fantastic events turn out to be a trick is MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935), and even that films ending disappoints its admirers.

So bad that it's......still pretty bad.

[microfame · 2/10 · 2 January 2010]

I love shlocky horror and sci-fi, especially from the 50's, 60's and 70's, so I had picked this up on DVD. A lot of my favorite movies are "so bad they're good", but that scale is on a circle, and I've discovered that some bad movies shoot past "good" and end up back into "really bad". 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. That plays like a Cannes Film Festival winner, next to "Shriek..." And for something newer, and great, see "Abominable". For heaven's sake, see anything first, before hurting yourself with "Shriek of the Mutilated". You'll never get those 90 minutes of your life back, you know....

Extremely bad and amusing Yeti flick.

[HumanoidOfFlesh · 4/10 · 4 August 2008]

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.

Popcorn!

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 30 October 2020]

There are tons of Bigfoot films to watch. Trust us, we know. We have an entire Letterboxd list packed with the ones we've made it through. And we know that Scarecrow has an even larger section in the store that's all Yeti, skunkape and sasquatch based.

We decided to go back to the classics and rewatch this 1974 Michael Findlay film, in which Professor Ernst Prell takes four of his graduate students - Keith Henshaw, Karen Hunter, Tom Nash and Lynn Kelly - into the woods to discover if the Yeti really does exist.

Despite a mysterious dinner the night before - their dish of gin sung is broken up by a drunken former student and his wife who loudly proclaim that the last trip to see a Bigfoot got everyone killed - everyone decides that going into the brush to find the beast is a dandy idea.

As if that isn't enough, that lout keeps drinking and decides to cut his wife's throat with an electric turkey knife before she responds in kind by dumping a toaster into the bloody bathwater as he tries to clean himself up.

When the students get to Boot Island, they have more gin sung, meet a mute Native American named Laughing Crow and listen to Tom strum a little tune he wrote about the Yeti, who liked that song so much that he rips Tom apart, leaving only his leg as evidence.

The professor isn't someone I'd like to have as a teacher, as he's willing to use that leg and the body of another of the students, Lynn, as bait to catch his white whale. Or white Yeti, you get the allusion.

That said, the reveal of this all - spoiler warning for a 46-year-old movie - is that there's no Bigfoot at all, but a big society of cannibals looking for either victims to be fresh meat or those willing to help them consumer the flesh of their fellow man.

If you're a big film geek like me - seeing as how you're reading about a Sasquatch film from the last century when you could be doing something much more productive, I get the feeling that you are - you'll wonder, did the print Sam saw have Hot Butter's "Popcorn" in the soundtrack? Yes. It did. It sure did.

In 1982, if you were lucky enough to still have a drive-in around ou, chances are you could have seen this movie as part of an event named 5 Deranged Features. Don't be fooled by some of these titles, as you may have seen them all before! They're Coming to Get You is not All the Colors of the Dark, but instead Al Adamson's Frankenstein vs. Dracula. House of Torture is The Wizard of Gore. Night of the Howling Beast is The Corpse Grinders. And Creature from Black Lake wasn't so lucky as to get a name change.

Yeti crap.

[insomniac_rod · 3/10 · 16 August 2008]

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! It's not bloody, gory, or even unintentionally funny. It's just a horrible movie with zero budget and none production values.

The putrid stench of another Findlay film

[movieman_kev · 1/10 · 2 March 2005]

Dammit! I got tricked into watching a Micheal Findlay film again. For those who don't know, I reviewed one of Findlay's other cinematic travesties, "Snuff", a while back. It was so VERY bad. This tale of the search for a 'Yeti' by a group of college students and their professor is equally horrid. Some people just never find their true calling in life. Sadly Micheal Findlay was one of those people. I'm just so very glad that I didn't get sucked into Something Weird DVD release of his three "...of her Flesh" movies. If I had, I might of pulled a Kurt Cobain. And by that I mean, have Courtney Love kill me.

My Grade: F

DVD Extras: A TV trailer is all you get, I'm thankful for there not being more actually

Better Than I Guessed It Would Be

[Rainey-Dawn · 7/10 · 20 April 2015]

I started out watching this film knowing it was going to be a campy b-rated flick.... I did not expect much out of it - just thought I'd get a few laughs out of a cornball horror story. To my surprise, it was much better than I was guessing it would be. 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. (Watch the film to find out what the students find out). This is one of those 'so bad it's good' type of horror films with a twist at the very end.

Watch this film if you like bad b-rated horror films that are filled with campy goodness.

7/10

Pretty weak, even for a mid 70s schlock.

[HorrorFilmHellion · 2/10 · 29 July 2022]

This low budget 70's back woods type slasher is just kind of ok. The acting, sets, and effects are rough even for the period... but most of all, it's just tedious and draggy and clean, with unconvincing actions and script. The most brow-raising part of the whole thing was the bravado use of the Dies Irae theme about 3/4's through that is strikingly similar to the way it was used for The Shining years later. Hmmm... If you are re-living your 70's sleazers, this one is nothing great. Certainly no match for other obscure marvels such as The Jezebels (1975), The Centerfold Girls (1974), Bonnie's Kids (1972), etc...

They don't make 'em like this anymore

[benzing · 10/10 · 21 August 2001]

Yes, I'm another one of those "Did I see this as a youngster or was I dreaming" types. I saw this on "Shock Theater" with Dr. Creep in the late seventies on Ch. 22 WKEF out of Dayton, Ohio and it scarred me for life. What a bizarre and twisted plot for a movie. The "Popcorn", "White Meat or Dark" and "Death by Toaster" scenes alone should guarentee this piece of Drive-In filler a place in the halls of 70s horror history forever.

Shaggy dog or Yeti?

[moycon · 7/10 · 11 July 2008]

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. There is a big scene in the film where everyone is partying and yes...popping and helping themselves to popcorn from one of those big movie theater popcorn machines. (Wild wild party!!!!) Unfortunately the rights to the song could not be obtained (The DVD still has the credits for the song and band though!) so they changed the music to some lame Casio keyboard crap. Better to watch the old VHS version with the song intact.

Anyways, this flick is full serious over acting. These guys no doubt thought they were in line for an Academy award maybe. A professor take his students to a supposedly desolate, un-inhabited island. I say supposedly because this "island" has paved roads with guardrails, and obviously landscaped trees and shrubs everywhere. In fact the desolate island, kinda looks like the woods in a backyard most of the time. They are on the island to find a Yeti!! Mind you there isn't a lick of snow to be found, but sure enough a shabby Yeti with shaggy dog fur and those plastic Dracula teeth you used to get for a quarter is prowling around and he is hungry!!! There's a HUGE shock ending that's almost as good as the one from Planet of the Apes. Well not really. In fact it's kind of ridiculous, but that's OK because the whole movie pretty much is. If you haven't watched it, go ahead and try it out. It's a terrible terrible movie to be sure, but it's terribly entertaining as well.

Ugh, boring film with a dumb twist ending

[JoeB131 · 1/10 · 21 November 2023]

So a college professor takes a bunch of his students up into the woods to look for a "yeti" (even though Yetis are from Asia, so he would be looking for a sasquatch). Except that the Yeti is really just a guy in a suit and they are all part of a crazy cannibal cult that has to scare a woman to death in order to eat her.

Of course, the problem was the Yeti Costume was so fake-looking that absolutely no one would have been fooled by it. The supposed hero of the film, one of the students whose girlfriend ends up on the menu, is perfectly fine using the bodies of his friends as bait for the yeti.

The thing becomes even more absurd with the "Twist" ending, where a bunch of bad racial stereotypes show up to engage in the feast. The whole movie was uncomfortable to watch.