Ostensibly a Bigfoot flick but really just a
psycho-killer/Satanic-cult gorefest made in the trashy Herschell Gordon Lewis
style, Shriek of the Mutilated is
completely devoid of redeeming qualities. The acting is atrocious, the
storyline is moronic, and the thrills are nonexistent. The picture even fails
as an excessive splatter movie, because the special makeup effects are
amateurish. Following a few random vignettes that get the movie off to a
disjointed, uninteresting start, the story proper begins when college professor
Dr. Ernst Prell (Alan Brock) organizes a group of students for an expedition
into the woods where a Yeti has allegedly been sighted. (Why a Yeti and not
just Bigfoot, since the picture is set in America rather than Asia?) Prell
loads a group of bland young adults into a van and schleps them to the remote
home of his colleague, Dr. Karl Werner (Tawm Ellis). Karl’s a strange cat who’s
balding on top but wears a graying ponytail, and he favors creepy ensembles of
turtlenecks and way-too-tight pants. He’s also prone to florid lines like,
“Your Yeti waits for you still, Ernst.” Before long, the college students start
getting killed during attacks by a “monster” who’s really just a dude wearing a
gorilla suit that seems like it’s made out of white shag carpeting, some pasty
makeup, and a pair of dime-store Dracula fangs. It turns out the doctors are
actually cultists who lure students to the woods, dress up like Yetis to scare
them, and then kill the students for pagan rituals. This plot “justifies”
close-ups of decapitated heads and dismembered limbs, none of which have any
shock value—more like schlock value. Literally the only amusing moment in the
whole movie is the scene during which one of the college students sits at the
piano and croons a ditty he’s written about the situation: “On the prowl, hear
him howl, here comes the Yeti now!”
Shriek
of the Mutilated: SQUARE