MEATCLEAVER MASSACRE (1976)
Label: 101 Films
Region Code: B
Rating: Cert. 15
Duration: 84 Minutes 12 Seconds
Audio: English PCM 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Keith Burns
Cast: Paul Kelleher, James Habif, Larry Justin, Doug Senior, Robert Clark, Bob Mead, Christopher Lee
'70s proto-slasher and Texas Chain Saw Massacre name-biting Meatcleaver Massacre (1976) aka Hollywood Meatcleaver Massacre might be missing the titular "meatcleaver" but it does manage to deliver a massacre in Hollywood early on followed by some tasty psychotronic occult revenge that brought a smile to my face, schlocky though it may be. It opens with Los Angeles based college professor of the occult Professor Cantrell (James Habif, Female Chauvinists) giving a lecture about “Morac, destroyer of the destroyers,” a three-eyed demon who can be summoned to exact revenge on one's enemies, as depicted in a pretty cool painting shown during the lecture. After class he has a confrontation with problem student Mason (Larry Justin, Dolemite) and his dipshit pals (Doug Senior, The Human Tornado), Sean (Robert Clark) and sex Phillip (Bob Mead). Later that night Mason and his pals are drunkenly cruising the neon-lit Hollywood Boulevard when decide to pay the professor a late night visit, donning pantyhose over their heads they climb the wall to his property, promptly kill the family's pooch, enter the home and knock the professor upside the head with a candlestick holder, strangle his wife and son, and stab his daughter to death on the staircase - it definitely has a Manson family feel to it. The Prof manages to survive the attack but is left paraplegic and goes in and out of a coma state at the hospital, but manages to somehow invoke the demon Morak from his earlier lecture to carry out his revenge against the murderous miscreants.
Detectives Wexler (J. Arthur Craig) and Shaye (Paul Kelleher, Night of the Demon) are on the case but are not even close to solving the case. It seems the foursome have gotten away with it, but when they learn that Cantrell is alive three of the guys become wracked by guilt and paranoia, except for the cold-blooded Mason. The guys suffer from horrific visions and nightmares, remembering the gruesome murders, each of them attacked by an unseen force with Sean getting disemboweled while walking through the desert, Dirk is killed while working on a car with the hood slammed on top of him repeatedly, the hood latch puncturing his skull, and film projectionist Phil has his faced burned-off when the film projector goes on the fritz.
This leaves Mason, who believes that somehow the professor is behind the bizarre deaths, and finds himself visited upon by the three-eyed demon in the flesh after returning to the scene of the crime while searching Cantrell's home for some sort of counter-incantation. Low-budget and plenty schlocky there's just something about this drive-in era curiosity that hits me in the sweet-spot Maybe it's the proto-slasher blood and gore, the violent home-invasion stuff, or the supernatural occult-revenger elements, probably a bit of all three, but it mixes together to form a seedy '70s exploitation stew that I find quite tasty. I also love how purely evil mason is, I certainly don't think it's an accident that his name is one letter off from Manson, especially coming so soon after the infamous murders. It is a bit of a bummer that we do not get the titular meatcleaver part of the massacre, but the assortment of bloody murders followed by the demonic comeuppance for the villains is quite a bit of fun. The look of the summoned creature is pretty dang terrible and it's for the best that we don't get a good look at it till much later in the film. It's looks nothing like the three-eyed monster seen in the painting, it's a guy in a slapdash make-up looking like a no-budget bearded Swamp Thing with a cheap googly-eye glued to his forehead to create that third eye - it's more than a bit disappointing but for lovers of '70s drive-in schlock it's also the gift that keeps on giving. Oh, and theatrical cut of the film is pretty notorious for featuring a intro-outro featuring horror icon Christopher Lee giving a spiel about demonic entities and such that has absolutely no connection to the actual film, and was shot for a completely different project that never manifested, which is just exploitation at it's finest.
Audio/Video: Meatcleaver Massacre (1976) arrives on region B locked Blu-ray from 101 Films in 1080p HD widescreen (1.85:1) with the Hollywood Meatcleaver Massacre title card, looking pretty solid. The source is in great shape with hardly a blemish, grain is well-managed and colors looks nicely suffused. There are moments of inherent softness, and scenes that are poorly lit, it's amateurish in many ways, but looks true to the source. The film was shot by cinematographer Guerdon Trueblood who only lensed this one flick, but also directed exploitation classic The Candy Snatchers (1973), and contributed scripts and story ideas for animal-attack flicks like The Savage Bees (1976), Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo (1977), Ants! (1977), Terror Out of the Sky (1978) and Jaws 3-D, and then went onto become a digital compositor for Tippett Studios and ILM on some big Hollywood flicks like Armageddon, Speedracer, King Kong and lots more - dang, where's the documentary about this guy's storied career!?!. Audio comes by way of English PCM 2.0 with optional English subtitles, the track is in good shape with no overabundance of source related hiss or pops.
This flick was previously released by Shout Factory here in the U.S. as one of their now out-of-print site exclusives that featured both the Original Cut and Theatrical Cut, plus a Trailer. For it's UK debut 101 Films step up to the plate with a fine release featuring those extras, as well as a trio of newly produced extras, making this the more desirable of the pair. We start of with the 20-min The Murder Weapon - An interview with actor Doug Senior who played Dirk, he talks about his memories shooting the film, hating the 30's style haircut he has in it due to another film he appeared in, the audition process, the various titles the film is known under, the improvisational nature pf the shoot, how the beer they drank inthe film was real, shooting the L.A. strip scene, Keith Burns directing it initially, before Burn disappeared, leaving various members of the crew to direct, including the notorious Ed Wood (Plan 9 from Outer Space), how his Dodge Demon shows up in the film, and what it was like on-set while shooting the film, including his detailing his scenes, and why there's no meatcleaver kill scene, and how Christopher Lee ended up framing the film. Then onto the 21-min Searching For Clues - An interview with actor Paul Kelleher who plays one of the cops. he starts off talking about being a monster-kid from a young age and having a subscription to Famous Monsters, the films that left a mark on him like Them! and The Exorcist, and getting his break in film with Meat Cleaver Massacre, recalling his scene was directed by producer Ray Atherton, and how the film premiere in Casa Grande, Arizona, but not seeing it till a few months later in Hollywood, and his reaction to seeing himself up on the screen. The 20-min The Man. The Myth. The Legend. - Director and writer Keith Burns on Meatcleaver Massacre, he discusses how he came to work on the film with producer Ray Atherton, shooting the dead dog scene, freely admitting he borrowed scenes from other films, and getting fired, and who credited director "Evan Lee" truly is, how they added a sex scene, and his understanding of what Ed Wood's involvement was; and trouble he had shooting scenes with star Lee Justin who oftentimes "wasn't feeling it", and scenes he shot that are not in the film, and how the film did at the time of it's release. The two cuts of the film look to be of the same solid quality, the only difference i noticed was the absence of the tacked-on oddball Christopher Lee intro/outro, which also features heavily into the included theatrical trailer.
We were only sent a "check disc" sans any sort of packaging, but the retail copies of these also include some nice packaging from the look of it, with Limited Edition Booklets, the first with Axploitation in Blazing Color by Dylan Dean Staley, and another with the Original Lost Script ‘Professor Cantrell’s Messiah’ by Keith Burns.
Special Features:
- The Original Cut - The Hollywood Meatcleaver Massacre (77:07)
- The Theatrical Cut - Featuring Intro / Outro with horror icon Christopher Lee (84:12)
- The Man. The Myth. The Legend. - Director and writer Keith Burns on Meatcleaver Massacre (19:33)
- The Murder Weapon - An interview with actor Doug Senior (19:41)
- Searching For Clues - An interview with actor Paul Kelleher (20:45)
- Theatrical Trailer (3:43)
- Limited Edition Booklet: Axploitation in Blazing Color by Dylan Dean Staley
- Limited Edition Booklet: Original lost script ‘Professor Cantrell’s Messiah’ by Keith Burns
101 Films Blu-ray of Meatcleaver Massacre (1976) is the definitive version of the film to date, easily besting the OOP Shout! Factory release with over an hour of new interviews and what looks to be some very cool packaging.
Screenshots from the 101 Films Blu-ray:
Extras:
