El enviado del diablo

"Meatcleaver Massacre" starts with long occult monologue of British horror legend Christopher Lee.A famous professor of occultism named Cantrell and his family is attacked in their home by four knives wielding students.Proffesor survives the attack,but his entire family is murdered.Whilst lying and vegetating in his hospital bed Cantrell summons an old Gaelic god to take vengeance on the murderers.And guess what?The killers begin to die one by one in some rather psychedelic ways for example one of them is killed by film projector.Incredibly cheap and delirious horror flick which rarely makes sense.There are some downright hilarious scenes and quite disturbing hallucinations throughout.The atmosphere is strikingly dreamy and nightmarish sometimes.The acting is awful and there is no meatcleaver massacre.6 rusty meatcleavers out of 10 and that's being generous.

What kind of college curriculum involves lectures on the occult, the professor muttering Satanic incantations in the dark while projecting details from a gory 15th-century painting of the avenging demon Morak, destroyer of destroyers?

Amazingly, Professor Cantrell's rather irregular course on demonology seems to be popular with his students, apart from Mason Harrue (Larry Justin), who isn't happy about being pressured to turn in a term paper on the subject. To teach Cantrell a lesson, Mason and his gang break into the professor's home and slaughter his family, leaving the teacher in a semi-vegetative state, unable to speak.

Mason and his thrill-kill pals think they have gotten away with murder, but they shouldn't have messed with an expert in the occult: even in his debilitated condition, Cantrell is able to summon Morak and send the demon to seek retribution.

Behind this film's sensational title lies a tedious piece of amateurish trash that doesn't even have the good grace to feature a meat cleaver. The opening mean-spirited murders promise something wonderfully gritty and grimy, but the remainder of the film is simply boring, the deaths of the gang members unimaginative and frustratingly lacking in gore. The direction by Keith Burns (going by the pseudonym of Evan Lee) is lifeless, and his actors are, without exception, wooden and unconvincing. According to Wikipedia. Burns was replaced by legendary craptastic director Ed D. Wood Jr, which speaks volumes about Burns' film-making skills.

For movie masochists who decide to give this one a whirl, there are two versions available: the original cut, which goes by the title Hollywood Meatcleaver Massacre, and a shorter, re-released version with the title Meatcleaver Massacre, which features a prologue and epilogue by Christopher Lee, shot for an entirely different movie! Either way, the film sucks.

1.5/10, rounded up to 2 for the hilarious ending in which Morak, depicted as a three-eyed monster with massive fangs in the painting, turns out to be a hairy man covered in green slime.

"Meatcleaver Massacre" follows a group of college students who kill their professor's entirely family (yes, you read that right) for kicks. The professor survives but is in a coma. Unfortunately, he is also an occult expert, and, from his unconscious state, he summons a Gaelic demon to dispatch them.

Infamously known for its prologue and epilogue featuring Christopher Lee as a narrator (note: this footage was actually recycled from a scrapped project and tacked on to give the film some "star power"), "Meatcleaver Massacre" is not exactly the "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" rip-off its title may lead you to believe. Rather, the film plays like a psychedelic, borderline-Lovecraftian affair wrapped up in cheap '70s finishings.

The film at times feels like a TV movie from its era, though it is much bloodier. The premise itself is fairly unique, and in some ways reminded me of 1972's "Tragic Ceremony", where a group of young people bear witness to something horrible and are haunted (and killed) by an unseen force. In "Meatcleaver Massacre", however, the characters engage in a Manson Family-style crime and, despite each of their expressions of guilt (aside from the cold, nihilistic ringleader), none of them are exactly likable.

The low budget shines through here in some of the choppy editing and overwrought dialogue, but there are moments in the film that are quite elegant and scary. A sepia-toned dream sequence in the first half of the film is spectacular and ominous, as is a number of other LSD-esque visual montages. These elevated moments outweigh some of the cheaper working parts.

All in all, I found "Meatcleaver Massacre" to be a decent low-budget horror flick. It manages to combine elements of the supernatural with the slasher film (similarly to 1980's "Night of the Demon", though I think that is a far superior film) and has a handful of great visuals. Despite the cheap raw working materials, there is an artiness about the film that most will not see coming. 6/10.

The one and only reason why "Meatcleaver Massacre" hasn't vanished into complete obscurity and oblivion just yet is solely the fault of Christopher Lee. This living horror legend appears as the narrator at the beginning and ending of this film and afterwards attempted to initiate a lawsuit against the producers because he wasn't aware for what movie he was hired to narrate. Well, when comparing Lee's monologues to the actual content of the film, I definitely do believe he didn't have a clue about what for the footage would eventually be used for. The narrations at the beginning & end are completely irrelevant to the film's actual substance. Christopher Lee, reliable and stern-voiced as ever, compellingly proclaims wonderful stories about the strength of the soul and how it can be a foreteller of great things to come. I particularly enjoyed the parable about the soul of great knight leaving its host while he was asleep and then afterwards leading him to great undiscovered treasures. Or the cute little saga at the end, about two sorcerers engaging in a magic showdown and gradually involving the entire world. In other words, I actually enjoyed listening to Christopher Lee a lot more than I did watching the mediocre middle-section of the film. If this man would have lectured at my university, perhaps I would have attended some more of the classes. But in all honesty, the rest of the film isn't as bad as reputed to be. "Meatcleaver Massacre" – which doesn't contain any sequences with meat cleavers whatsoever – is a standard and derivative story about spiritual retribution, occult summoning and teenage hoodlums. Professor at college and expert in demonology Dr. Cantrell embarrasses one of his students, tough kid Mason Harrue, in front of his friends. The kid is obviously quite offended because he promptly recruits three of his docile friends to pay a nightly visit to the professor's house. The gang sadistically murders the professor's wife, son, daughter and dog. The dog's name was Poopers, so I guess the poor thing is better off dead. Prof. Cantrell himself survives the attack – though just barely – but has enough strength left to summon an avenging demon from his hospital bed. The demon, which remains invisible throughout in order to save budget and because probably nobody knew what it should look like, imaginatively ticks off the assailants one by one but keeps something extra special in store for Mason. "Meatcleaver Massacre" is a largely unoriginal film with several tedious moments and amateurish production values, but I've seen movies that are a lot worse. The dialogs are quite hilarious ("The professor is lying in his coma like a carrot") and the murder sequences are pretty decent (especially the head-crushed under car hood moment). All in all, this is still a much better film than "Funny Man" in which – to my recollection – Christopher Lee appeared voluntarily!

Actually, Christopher Lee IS here, in a way. He is sitting at a desk and spouting some mystical hocus-pocus at the beginning and the end of the film. I was about to say "I hope he enjoyed a nice paycheck for this", but then I read the trivia section for this movie on IMDb and it seems that the exploitation of his name to fool the paying audience was not his idea and was done without his permission. Anyway, "Meat Cleaver Massacre" doesn't have enough story to support a feature-length film, and the killings are not interesting, memorable or explicit enough. As for the actors, I doubt most of them ever worked again in another film. Avoid this schlock, even if you are an avid horror fan. (*1/2)