Doctor Movie: Episode 311: Mardi Gras Massacre

Show Notes

Join Doctor Movie for a look at your favorite movies from behind the steering wheel. We take a trip appeantly down south where sacrifice is a pastime. Its the 1978 mess of a movie Mardi Gras Massacre. How evil are you?

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Cinematic oddities and awesomeness under the watchful of the all-powerful Ming and Doctor Movie!

Somebody is killing all the women right around Mardi Gras all time.

And a police officer who's in love with a prostitute tries to save the day.

All that and a whole lot more right here on Doctor Movie.

Everybody, what's going on?

Welcome back to another episode of Dr.

Movie.

Your favorite podcast on wheels.

Or one of your favorite podcast on...

Your favorite podcast.

Period.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Speaking of smoking, this movie is not.

We are looking at a gem, and I don't mean G-E-M or J-E-M or G-E-M.

I think it's more like a G-I-M.

We are looking at the 1978 horror crown thriller, Mardi Gras Massacre.

This is one of those that just kind of popped up as one of those recommendations on my 2BQ.

SPEAKER_2: Oh, 2BQ, how I love you, 2BQ.

It's that kind of day, folks.

Mardi Gras Massacre, horror slash crime thriller, 1978.

Yeah, directed by, where'd the dude go?

Jack Weiss, or Weiss, however you want to say it.

It's, yeah, I mean, if you look up this guy, he's just done some other kind of smutty kind of stuff.

So not a lot to write home about.

This thing got a 3.9 out of 10.

And, you know, there's a mixed bag here in this one.

And as far as the cast, there's really nobody to talk about.

When you look up the cast, there's nobody's picture.

It's just names.

So that lets you know right there.

It didn't go much further than this for those folks.

So we're not going to even waste our time there.

It's, hey, we got something different here instead of why to watch.

It says, in a nutshell, this movie in a nutshell is unsettling, vulgar, and gory.

Yeah, maybe.

I'll go ahead and tell you the formula of this movie.

Oh, it does say it was inspired by?

Blood Feast, which, you know, makes a lot of sense when you see the effects, because there's definitely a Herschel Gordon Lewis flair to it, if you know what I mean.

You know, you're going to make something really gross, but it's going to be with just items you have at home to make it work.

That's the best way to describe it.

It's kind of like when kids try to trick you out when they act like they got hurt and they put ketchup on their hand.

Yeah, it's kind of that kind of effect.

But it's okay.

You do what you got to do.

This movie feels like, here's the strange thing, because it's more of a cop drama than it is really anything else.

I wouldn't really call it a horror movie.

Besides the massacre part, if you want to call it that, which is more of a sacrificial thing instead of a massacre.

So the name is just fodder.

Matter of fact, we're even in Louisiana, where nobody talks like they're from Louisiana.

I mean, I'm not incredibly too far from there.

And I know that people live in there and don't talk like they do living in New York, which is kind of how these people talk in this movie.

I think you got one girl, possibly two people in this movie that actually speak with a Southern accent.

Everybody else is definitely not from New Orleans.

I can just go ahead and say that.

Nor do I think this was filmed in New Orleans, but I could be wrong.

Who knows?

I didn't really dig into it.

Another beauty of this show, sometimes I dig, sometimes I don't.

It matters what it is and if I'm curious or not.

I'm not curious on this one.

This feels like an episode of The Streets of San Francisco, which is an old TV show, TV series that came on.

Crime drama.

Karl Malden, a very young Michael Douglas.

It was a popular show.

That's what this movie feels like.

And then you got a few snippets of a Herschel Gordon Lewis movie stuck in it.

That's basically what you got here.

So 78, we're on the heels of Halloween.

So this may be one of those first attempts to find any calendar date that we can tie a horror movie into.

And so we get Mardi Gras Massacre.

So this movie starts off.

There's a bar.

A gentleman walks into a bar, a three-piece suit, a nice dressed man, walks up to these two ladies of the night sitting at the bar who apparently work for the bartender.

So, you know, the bartender is making it happen on both ends, right?

He's setting them up and knocking them down.

He's, you know, it's 1978.

Those gas prices were through the roof.

So, you know, sometimes you got to multitask to make ends meet.

So, not only am I a bartender, but I'm also a pimp.

But the girls are there.

This gentleman walks up, and he asks the lady, who's the most evil woman in here?

And it's funny.

Here's their chance to make some money.

But I guess the question just threw them, and they were like, or maybe they just thought, man, this guy's really wanting something weird, which they are right.

They say, well, that's gotta be Sheila, Shirley, Sandra, whatever her name is.

So they point out a girl.

So the gentleman walks up to her and greets her and says, hey, for how evil are you?

And she says, well, I'm pretty evil.

And he says, I'll give you 200 bucks.

She's like, well, for that, I can be as evil as you want me to be.

Something to that effect.

And so that's kind of your setup.

So instead of her pocketing the money, she takes the money and gives it to the bartender and says, hold on to this till I get back.

Well, they go to his place, and she lays down on this table, strips off naked, and he's got a table of lead in there, and he lays her on it, and he straps her down, and then he says, I'll be back in a minute.

Now, she's butt naked, spread eagle, strapped down to this table, and the director, either they didn't want to waste any film or this director has a problem with concept of time, because throughout this movie, when somebody says, I'll be right back or something like that, instantly, they're back.

I mean, like, almost like supernatural poof, there you are kind of stuff, right?

So he poofs back up, but he opens this curtain behind her, and he's wearing this mask and a headdress, and he's got all these ritualistic things behind him, some kind of statue that he's worshiping, and she's gonna be a sacrifice.

Now, let's get to the nitty gritty of this.

There's a scene where he's rubbing her down with oil.

I guess it's part of the ritual.

Who knows?

Either that or he just, you know, wants to grease her up.

I don't know.

But he's working on the mid torso, right?

So up to the cleavage, and when you first see this, there's a lot of skin in this movie, first thing, because it has to be, right?

It sure does.

It kind of fooled me, because somebody spent some time and made some body cast of all the actresses in this movie that end up in this situation.

And from the look of it, because he's massaging, right?

And he's massaging this prop, and it's pretty impressive.

I'm like, well, okay.

Now, it looks good until he decides that he's going to do the ritual part, which he stabs one of the hands, because that's the evil hand they took the money with.

He cuts both feet, which, you know, not a big thing there to pull off.

And then he, like, stabs them in the chest and cuts them open and pulls the heart out.

When he cuts them in the chest, that's when you really tell, you know, this is obviously a really bad kind of dummy, because there's no thickness to the body.

It's just floppy, you know.

So that's the giveaway there.

Plus, also, the second lady this happens to, when they set up the scene in the camera, they didn't get the full effect in screen, and it goes past the effect.

And you can see just, like, from the belly button down, there's nothing there.

So it's just like this cutoff body laying there that he's doing this to.

Just saying, you know, something you can see if you want to check this one out.

Not that I'm recommending it.

And this is kind of the problem with the movie is, this is what he's going to do every time.

He does this three weeks in a row on the same day of the week, because it's all leading up to the big shebang to, you know, do the ultimate one and bring this evil spirit back to Earth.

Who knows?

It's one of those things, right?

You know, we've seen the story before.

This is 78, so this might be a new deal for the time.

But it's just very redundant.

You know, do we really need to see this happen to two other ladies?

Well, I will say, the third one, though, is pretty interesting, because it's just a young lady.

And he brings her home, and she's hungry, so he orders Chinese food.

And so he feeds her.

And the guy brings the food, he gives him a tip, he leaves.

And then after she eats, he's like, okay, let's move on to what we're here for.

He takes her back there in the room.

And, you know, she's a pretty girl.

And she's like, oh, what do you want to do?

He's like, oh, what do you do best?

She says, I dance.

So she strips off naked.

And we get to see the first ever, to my knowledge, some nude ballet, which is a foundation that is near and dear to my heart.

We need to start funding more efficiently the Nude Ballet Institute.

I'm going to assume in New York, because this is not New Orleans.

So there's that.

There's also another foundation we got to talk about, because the first girl, when she gets killed, the cops are investigating, and one of the cops is questioning one of the women that saw the guy for the first time, can you recognize the guy?

And she's like, nope, all I know, all I remember is he had this huge ring on.

So that's what I remember, because every guy that they're picking up on is these kind of wealthy-to-dude guys, right?

But this guy starts having a conversation with the lady, and the next thing you know, they're sitting at a table and having dinner together.

But the cop also talks to the bartender, and he talks about the envelope that she's got her money in.

And sorry, I had two deer just run out in front of me.

Luckily, with my incredible vision, I saw them.

Sorry about that, folks.

We have, you know, he takes the envelope, the cop does, and just puts it in his pocket, and just takes the money.

Says it's evidence, but you know, anywho.

But he goes and has dinner with this woman, and chances are he used this money to pay for it.

Well, they end up going back to her place.

So the cop is now, you know, messing around with the prostitute, and they fall in love.

Aw, it's so sweet.

But then later on, she gets a phone call from the bartender saying, hey, that cop that you're messing around with, you're falling in love with, he stole that $200 that belonged to Sheila, Shirley, Samantha, whatever the first girl's name was.

And she's like, USOB!

You took that money.

We all had to scrounge together and get money together to have her buried because she didn't have insurance, which is another foundation I'm fond of that we have to support, which is the burial, I don't know what's the term here, the Ladies of the Night burial institution.

Because hookers need love too, especially at the end, so anywho, give freely if you can.

But this kind of turns into a deal breaker for their relationship, which is, I love the two cops in this too, because the other cop's always giving this one the hard time of, ah, so you're dating her, huh, she's a hooker.

Well, she doesn't know it, but she got the raw end of the deal because you're the problem.

It's like, man, this guy beats him up the entire time about how much of a crappy person he is.

So, anywho, this movie goes on, we're trying to figure it all out.

And at the same time on this last week, our killer needs three women to go to a room, and of course, he's gonna drug them, put them in the room, sacrifice them all, and that's gonna bring the ultimate evil to the earth.

You know, that kind of scenario.

He's no David Lopin by any means.

And lo and behold, one of the women that signs up for it is the angry prostitute that has now split up with the cop because he took some money, which, let's just face it, that's what she does for a living.

But, you know, here we go.

She's one of the ones that's going to be sacrificed, and now the cop is panicking because he can't find her and he's trying to figure out the thing.

And, you know, they're trying to crack the code.

And it comes down to they realize that somehow, they go to a Chinese restaurant and start asking questions and find out that the guy that delivered the food can recognize the place and the address.

And how do you know?

Well, we say, well, the guy gave me a $10 tip.

You kind of remember that.

This is 1978, $10 tips.

Pretty fricking huge, right?

And he does talk about the guy with the big ring, right?

So there you go.

There's your tie in.

And from there on, things get a little crazy.

So the cops are on their way to try to stop the bad guy and save the women.

And I'm gonna leave it there because, you know, you may want to watch this if you like low-budget horror police dramas.

And you can kind of see how it goes from there.

Pretty good ending, but you can tell that they are piggybacking off of what had happened with Halloween.

So just gonna leave that there.

Yeah, I mean, it's not good.

But I've definitely seen worse.

So you may want to check your chances on this one.

That whole concept of the director not dealing with the concept of time happens many times.

Matter of fact, the scene where the girls are getting drunk that's got the stuff in it's gonna knock them out, it's like they take a sit up and then the next picture, bang, they're on the ground and they're all knocked out.

It's not a fade in, it's not a dissolve, it's like an edit.

Once they're sitting up, the next scene, bam, they're on the ground unconscious.

This guy, I'll give him credit, he does not waste any time on the screen.

So it does have that going for it.

So if you're a fan of maybe the Herschel Gordon Lewis kind of stuff, you know, maybe check this one out.

I don't really recommend it, but that's my take on it.

And out of a one to five, I'm gonna give this a two.

That's kind of where I stand on it.

All right, folks, that's it for this one.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Let me know what you think about this one, and we will catch you later.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.