Meatcleaver Massacre features an Egyptologist, but Celtic, rather than Egyptian lore, and top billing for one minute of Christopher Lee, who thought he was going to be in a different film and nearly sued as a result. And most tellingly, absolutely, positively, no meat cleavers!
Meatcleaver Massacre is another one of those wonky, idiosyncratic 70s horrors, a testament to just how experimental filmmaking was back then, regardless of the genre.
Dr. Cantrell is an anthropologist/occultist, diving into Celtic mythology to a largely enthralled lecture hall at an unnamed California university. Four of his undergraduate students, with beards/wrinkles that make them look like his contemporaries or older even, decide to scare him.
They venture to his Hollywood Hills home for a prank, and things go horribly awry. Like, Manson Family awry.
They clock the doc into unconsciousness/paraplegia, and murder his son and daughter thinking they’ve gotten away with it. However, they are overcome by both personal and actual demons, courtesy of the comatose prof, who’s sending spirits their way to exact revenge.
Now, this all sounds stupid as all hell. And it is. But it’s also phantasmagorical, with strange mind-bending LSD-esque scenescapes, as each of the perps is tormented/taken out by spirits in a material world, to quote The Police.
Hardly a masterpiece, Meatcleaver Massacre (in some cuts, known as Hollywood Meatcleaver Massacre) leans heavily on guerilla/permit-free shots of seedy Los Angeles, and protracted brothel/peep show scenes. There are some procedural elements for good measure, with a walrus slob of a police detective, investigating the one-by-one disappearance/death of ancient looking (speaking of Egyptology) college students.
Dumb, but nonetheless super fun.
*** (out of 5)
For more, check out the podcast discussion of Meatcleaver Massacre.
Really Awful Movies 