Hollywood Meatcleaver Massacre

AKA: Meatcleaver Massacre

Professor Cantrell is an expert on the occult, and teaches a class about the supernatural at a local college in Los Angeles. But instead of treating the class like a fun elective, Mason has decided the subject is insanely stupid, and he’s none too happy when the professor gently calls him out for his nasty attitude. Deciding to get some revenge, Mason enlists the help of his three friends to break into Cantrell’s house, under the guise of “scaring him.” But once they arrive, things quickly get out of hand when Mason reveals his true intentions and bashes in Cantrell’s head. Then he goads the others into helping him cover up the crime by encouraging them into killing the rest of the professor’s family. They then leave the scene, thinking they’ve committed an untraceable crime, but unbeknownst to them, Cantrell isn’t actually dead. Now paraplegic, barely clinging to life, and with nothing left to lose, Cantrell offers up his soul and invokes the ancient demon Morak to avenge him and his murdered family by seeking bloody retribution on his faceless assailants.

Oh, pantyhose, how original.

So, Meatcleaver Massacre is kind of an odd duck which, honestly, shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. I mean, at this point that’s pretty much par for the course with what I watch, right? Anyway, depending on how you look at it, the 1976 film is either a psychedelic horror, or an early example of a slasher. Which might sound kinda fun, until you realize it was also partially directed by Ed Wood, so that should tamper any and all of your expectations regarding the quality of this film. Or maybe it’ll make them higher. Maybe you like watching this weird stuff. I don’t know. Far be it from me to judge anyone’s taste in film. Regardless of your preferences though, seeing Wood’s name associated with the film should at least tell you how low-budget the movie was. So incredibly low-budget, in fact, that I’m pretty sure it managed to weasel them out of a potential lawsuit.

…. Though, I’m still not sure if that should be considered good or bad.

From a production standpoint I suppose that counted as good.

So, a fun fact about this movie is that there are actually two versions of it. The original version, which happens to be the one I watched, originally titled Hollywood Meatcleaver Massacre, was released in 1976 and is only 77 minutes long. But at some point after the initial release the film’s producers bought some footage of Christopher Lee (yes, Sir Christopher Lee) narrating, what Lee thought, would be some dialogue related to some kind of documentary about the occult. But, unbeknownst to Lee, the footage was instead sold to the producers of Hollywood Meatcleaver Massacre, who then cut and pasted some of his footage onto the beginning and end of their film (upping the run-time to 85 minutes), tacked Lee’s name onto the poster, and then re-released the film as Meatcleaver Massacre “starring Christopher Lee” in 1977. Lee was none-too-happy about the sneaky, underhandedness, or the false advertising, and actually initiated legal proceedings against the film’s producers. But, he withdrew the suit when it was pointed out to him that it likely wouldn’t be worth it, because the entire process would be a long, lengthy, and very expensive legal procedure that would likely net him…. Probably nothing other than a severely dented bank account, because this is a freaking Ed Wood film. So instead of making an expensive point, there was no lawsuit for Lee. Proving that, at least in one instance, having Ed Wood’s name attached to a project was actually useful to him.

And, in the unlikely case you’re wondering, I went back and watched the Youtube clips and, no, Lee’s footage does not in any way up the caliber of the film, or make the movie any more bearable. I mean, HE looks and sounds great and all, but all that footage does is add an extra, unnecessary 8 minutes of runtime to the film. So unless you really like Christopher Lee’s voice, or watching him sit in a library speaking directly into the camera, then there’s really no need to watch the film’s “extended cut.”

Oh, and one final “fun fact”: no one actually uses a meat cleaver in this movie. Yeah, at least one character gets sliced-and-diced with a knife, but it’s a standard carving knife, not a real cleaver. So, way to add even more false advertising to the film, you jerkwads.

See, not a cleaver.

As far as the film’s basic plot goes, it’s not bad, though pretty sub-standard. There are worse plots to be had than watching a bunch of drunk stoners get ruthlessly murdered by a supernatural force out seeking bloody revenge, after all. I know. I’ve watched them. The problem, unsurprisingly, arises with just about anything else regarding the story, because precious little of it, namely basic things like logic and motive, make any sense. Case in point: Mason and his friends. Okay, so if Mason thinks the subject matter of his class is so stupid, then why did he sign up for the class in the first place? Surely in a city as big as LA he could have found something else to take if he was in such desperate need of another humanities credit. And why the hell did his friends keep going along with his stupid plan? I know the simplest answer is that they were just drunk and stupid. But while Mason feels like that one self-important asshole that everyone remembers from high school that no one would be surprised about if they read his name in the paper in association with a murder before their 10-year reunion, the other three seem to have their shit together. Like, they actually seem to have lives, and jobs, and relationships, and maybe even, I don’t know, prospects and junk? So it doesn’t really make sense that, drunk or not, all three of them would throw that away just because one guy insulted and goaded them into cutting up a whole family. I can’t tell if the writing was just that bad, or if they were subtly trying to make some kind of drug/peer pressure PSA and totally missed the mark. But I’m leading towards the former, because even the lead detective in the movie can’t seem to escape the “making horrendously stupid decisions” trope. The guy is smart enough to figure out who the family’s killers are, but when he confronts the last one he does it alone, unarmed and in complete darkness, knowing full well that this dude helped slice-and-dice a whole family. Like, seriously my dude, how the heck did you make it that far in the department with self-preservation skills like that?

Well this was avoidable!

And that’s not even going into HOW the film was shot, and all the inexplicable and unnecessary scenes they included, which I can only assume they added to pad out the runtime. There is this whole, long, drawn out scene where one of the characters starts feeling guilty, gets really drunk and starts to contemplate suicide. And the scene keeps jumping back and forth, back and forth between images of him sitting in his chair bemoaning his fate, and slitting his wrists in the bathroom. Only to then have him finally get up and start to slit his wrist before he notices the time and realizes that he has to go to work, and that whole trippy scene ends up being a fake-out so he can have his head bashed in by the demon later. I don’t know if I should be annoyed by the cop-out, or impressed that the movie was actually that dickish to the guy. Oh, and why did I need to know that a black preacher went into a sex shop to get a blowjob? Like, what the hell, movie? Did you add that just to fulfill some kind of self-imposed “black quota”? Did you think the topless chick in the very next scene wasn’t going to make your movie sleazy enough? What the hell was the point of showing me that? I really don’t understand. Though I guess it does mean that I can add this movie to the short list of “horror films that don’t kill off the only black character.” So it looks like you managed to buck the trend, Sleazy Preacher. Good for you.

“A storm of passion has entered my forest of serenity.”
Ew.

If you’re hoping that the “monster” makes up for some of the film’s deficiencies, then I can only assume that you must have recently been born under a rock. Morak is, at best, underwhelming, and at worst, laughingly hysterical. Oh, they certainly build him up enough by continuously showing you a painting of a green, tentacled thing with huge teeth, but considering what type of movie this is I’m sure you know it never lives up to that image. It admittedly doesn’t start off too bad though, when you can initially only hear unearthly voices, or see a creepy black clawed hand reaching out from somewhere. Sticking with that alone might have actually been preferable, since the limited visuals coupled with the various killer’s ever growing guilt could have potentially turned the movie into some kind of trippy psychological horror. But no, they HAD to show us the creature, which ends up looking like some kind of balding Yeti costume that the prop department partially painted green. So instead of a tentacled hellbeast they turned poor Morak into some kind of creepy, hairy, ape-lizard…thing. I don’t know. I started to call him a poor man’s version of Swamp Thing, but then I realized that would be an insult to Swamp Thing, and that poor guy has enough problems. Suffice it to say, as soon as you finally see it you will immediately want him to go back into his dark hide-y corner, just so you can stop laughing at how pitiful he looks.

Hint: It doesn’t work. You’ll still laugh.

I’d mention more about the acting, but considering the quality of the rest of Meatcleaver Massacre I think it’s safe to assume that you can already guess that it’s pretty crappy. What’s surprisingly NOT crappy is the film’s picture quality. Oh, it’s still not great, but the movie has been recently restored, so it looks better than it likely ever has. And miraculously, much of the cinematography is actually pretty decent too, with only a couple of shots being piss-poorly framed. Meaning despite the weirdness and illogic behind much of the story, you should at least always be able to at least see what’s happening on screen. SEE, mind you, not understand. That is beyond this film’s ability. But, its weirdness still doesn’t make it unwatchable. So if you have a high pain tolerance and like odd, low-budget 70s film experiments, then go ahead and give this one a whirl. Christopher Lee won’t approve, but you might.

Meatcleaver Massacre is available on a variety of streaming services.

Meatcleaver Massacre is also available on Bluray from Shout! Factory.

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