Shriek of the Mutilated (1974) (USA)

aka Scream of the Snowbeast

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Some elderly college students journey into the wilderness to aid their professor in finding the fabled Yeti on Boot Island. The night before their adventure begins, most of the group attends a party where they encounter an alcoholic former student of the professor and his wife. The drunk flips out when he’s told another group of students are heading out and he shares that a previous Yeti-hunting field trip ended in the death of everyone besides he and the professor. While this is going on, Professor Prell and his student Keith are having dinner. At this dinner Keith samples a special dish called “gin sung”. “Brennan, why the hell are you going on about what some dumbasses are eating? Have you become some kind of lazier, less descriptive George R. R. Martin?” The answer is “No.” and you should really be more patient. The meal is important because it ties into Prell’s true intention when it comes to the Yeti hunt on Boot Island. There is no Yeti, in fact the ratty-ass monster seen wandering around the place and killing off various people is, in fact, some dude in a shaggy monster costume. The professor and his weird-ass friend who lives on the island (along with his mentally challenged “Indian” Laughing Crow), Dr. Karl Werner, have discovered the benefits of eating their fellow man. They plan on using Keith to spread the Yeti legend so their little club of satanic cannibals can carry on eating people and if he doesn’t, they’ll be letting everyone know he participated (albeit unwittingly) in consuming that old long pig or they’ll just eat him… a win-win in their eyes. Legendary trash purveyor Mike Findlay directs while his even more legendary wife Roberta picks up the cinematography responsibilities. The cast is all sorts of incompetent and it only works in the film’s favor, adding a level of ineptitude that pushes it over the edge into blissful garbage. Tawm Ellis as Karl is something to behold, looking like John Carpenter two weeks into an opium bender and acting like his ass would be more comfortable twirling his mustache and tying damsels to train tracks, he comes off like a dimensional traveler who popped into our world to feature in a Bigfoot flick and then vanished back to his home realm, leaving us scratching our heads and slightly forlorn over his absence. The Yeti costume is hilarious, definitely riddled with fleas and rented from the same New Jersey costume shop where they found their “Native American”. It drags in a few parts and the backyard theatrics can get a little grating but it’s a scuzzy bit of fun nonetheless and it features one of the worse-realized members of the Sasquatch tribe ever caught on camera.