There is an intoxicating tactility present in every frame of Jack Weis’ New Orleans set, exploitation horror film “Mardi Gras Massacre,” a production so derided by audiences and critics at the time of its release that even it’s dubious status amongst the infamous “Video Nasties” of Britain in the 1980’s, a moniker which banned its exhibition throughout the country, would not herald it’s niche cultural reclamation until the twenty first century. Each sequence feels cobbled together with sweat, spit, and suspiciously coerced funds, often filmed in half-lit bars with amateur actors or on the streets of the French Quarter to the bemused amazement of passersby and tourists. The ritualistic murder sequences are both cartoonish and upsetting, the blood redder than it should be, the rubber torsos of the flayed sex workers more flesh-like than you would imagine; giving the impression that the audience is in fact watching something that they should not, a fever snuff nightmare scored by a cataclysmic droning which could be slowed down cable car sounds or the yelps of hell hounds in the pit of damnation. Who’s to say? The dialogue is stilted, the blocking is wooden, the story is simplistic, and everything the film does has been done better in some other movie. And yet, ”Mardi Gras Massacre” holds a bespoke charm all its own, something distinctly human and flawed yet sublime for its imperfection; the product of a singular auteuristic vision that transfigured a manic desire to make movies into a person-to-person delivery system of undiluted perversity, an unblinking account of truths perhaps left unsaid, unexplored, or unexhumed within the smoldering heart of New Orleans.
Jack Weis was the king of New Orleans exploitation filmmaking, a reputation calcified by his five-film career, which ended with “Mardi Gras Massacre” in 1978. A friend and collaborator on four of those films (“Storyville,” “Death Brings Roses,” “Crypt of Dark Secrets” and “Mardi Gras Massacre”), Ronald Tanet, also a New Orleans native, film/TV producer and attorney, remembers Weis as a passionate creative, a consummate showman and a born salesman, as the finest independent filmmakers always inherently are.
“Jack was a hustler, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. He was just the only guy in New Orleans who had anything to do with the movie business at that time,” explains Ronald. “I met him as a referral on a case in 1969 that was so simple that I didn’t charge him. He was so stunned that he didn’t just begin referring business my way but, after a two or three-martini lunch one day, he asked if I knew how to ride a horse. I did. Then he asked if I wanted to be in a movie.”
“Mardi Gras Massacre” is a sleazy cat and mouse game between a pair of morally malleable NOPD detectives, “Guiding Light” star Curt Dawson alongside Ronald, as they follow the trail of eviscerated sex workers left behind by a serial killer snatching women on Tuesdays leading up to Mardi Gras day. The killer, John, a severe-looking dandy in a finely tailored suit played by Bill Metzo, is methodical in his approach; offering sex workers throughout the French Quarter obscene amounts of money for their services, always looking for the most “evil” of willing participants to bring back to his apartment. Once behind closed doors, John, now adorned in golden ceremonial vestments of Aztec origin, would guide his victim into a red curtained altar room and bind them to a bare table with rope to begin massaging their naked bodies with fine oils, lulling them into a false sense of serenity. Then he stabs them, once in the hand, once in the foot, before shoving his ornate dagger into their stomach, sawing through both belly button and intestine, digging his arm into her body cavity as if reverse stuffing a turducken, excising her heart from her body in vicious fashion. This macabre sequence of theatrical precision, utilizing an honest-to-goodness pig’s heart and blood, plays out three times throughout the movie, each filmed almost entirely in a single wide-angle shot, as if the audience were not viewing a film but a sacrificial chamber as theatrical production before a harsh, red curtain, with a woman laid out like so much pre-sliced king cake. While normally, the knife stays in the box, this time it stays securely within her torso; though it’s fair to say some form of baby is ultimately removed from the vessel in classic Carnival fashion. The effects work is matter-of-fact and all the more nauseous for its simplicity. As titillation, it doesn’t bother with much in the way of foreplay, choosing instead to be frank with the gore and butchery. To label the film as bordering on soft-core pornography would be stretching the definition of bordering, as it was certainly a selling point of the film’s drive-in theater bona fides for audiences to get a glimpse at forbidden fruit with a side of popcorn, although Weis seemingly kept the exploitative nature of the film on screen and not off.
“Jack kept a closed set when the women had their clothes off, with only the camera people and actors present,” remembers Ronald. “The bodies of the girls that were stabbed were rubber molded with the heart and blood already inside. That way, when he stabbed with the knife, you would see the blood squirt out. I watched them do that once, and it was enough for me. I didn’t want anything to do with that.”
Though many films of the era felt sleazily secreted from the minds of perverted “filmmakers” without style or artistic flair, Jack Weis’ New Orleans feels purposefully haunted, the soundtrack whooshing and clicking as if howling goblins were crouched just behind the camera lens. We are watching things we should not, and that, of course, is the point as Jack stalks the back alleys and strip joints of the Quarter in search of unholy offerings, worthily evil harlots, to bleed upon the altar of his Aztec God. And while the plot machinations continue, with Curt Dawson’s Detective first questioning and then falling for a “sex worker with a heart of gold” (long-time theatrical actor Gwen Arment), it is the cycle of blood that holds firm the film’s once beating pig heart, as rituals of drink, debauchery, and murder cycle through mid-Carnival New Orleans. John’s sacrifices feel inherently Lynchian, kept at a distance and unnerving on an ethereal level. Perhaps it is the red drapery, or the yawning drone of the score, but it’s easy to imagine this exact series of murders replaying again and again in some hidden corner of the Black Lodge from “Twin Peaks”, somewhere between a perpetually screeching Laura Palmer and that weird tree that was actually the arm of the mysterious “Man From Another Place.”
As respite between each detestable dissection, Weis ushers the audience out into 1970’s New Orleans, accidentally creating a time machine of a city both recognizable and foreign to modern eyes. Dawson and Arment take a romantic stroll through the Quarter of yesteryear during the day, past flowing fountains with the Steamboat Natchez chugging in the background. Then, night falls, and the city becomes the realm of the lurking and the curious; the streets basked in darkness with piercing pin pricks of irradiated light illuminating wayward travelers and barflies flowing from bar to eatery to strip establishment and back again. Several New Orleans mainstays are shown prominently, including Old Absinthe House and Papa Joe’s, the first and only trans-friendly club in the city for nearly 50 years. Weis purposefully paints the city in blobs of sunshine, black, and blood, while the climax of “Mardi Gras Massacre” has the audacity to take place in and around the celebrations of Fat Tuesday; a bold choice that any production of higher budget or creative oversight would assuredly avoid. Weis follows both the detectives and a stalking, gold-masked Jack through revelers swarming to view the Krewe of Rex parade with a roving camera that captures the sights and sounds of Carnival long ago; the stunning handmade masks, giddily cross-dressing revelers, and an overall frivolity where all comers are welcome. Beyond the haircuts and the distinct lack of bounce music coming from speakers, this could be a St. Anne’s Parade from 2026, the past and the present pinched together in temporal solidarity.
It was during the filming of this sequence that Ronald Tanet actually ran into someone he knew, a Judge whose court he had argued in many times. Seeing the Judge, visible in the film as a man holding an umbrella amongst the dancing mob, Ronald asked him to come near the camera and be included in the film; a decision which later made His Honor so mad that he recused himself from any cases involving Ronald in his court. Though in truth, the Judge was not the only viewer of “Mardi Gras Massacre” who failed to find its appeal. Ronald learned this the first and only time he saw the film in a theater when a woman came up to him asking if he was the star of the movie.
“I am, I said, thinking she might want an autograph,” recalls Ronald. “She said she would always go to the movies in the Summer to cool off during the day, and this was the worst movie she had ever seen. She demanded her money back. So I gave her back her four dollars.”
While “Mardi Gras Massacre” did eventually find its audience in the exploitation-obsessed culture of modern movie fandom, its charm is less in its failings, and more in its intentional choices; it’s perverse celebration of all New Orleans is and the seedy underbelly that defines the city as much as parade floats and Jazz trios. What Jack Weis was able to conjure was nothing less than the goopy, actively rotting heart of a community immortal, born from the collective imaginations of mostly non-actors, local business people, and passersby on the street. Making movies is never easy; making independent movies is even harder. It takes a unique brand of madness to even attempt a production, a madness shared with a community built around a singular trust and vision, almost ritualistic in its fanaticism, a cult of belief impenetrable from any outside or unwilling participants. In effect, a Krewe. What could be more Mardi Gras than that?
“Mardi Gras Massacre” has the soul of its city nuzzled within the gaps of each film splice, something uniquely our own that, if we are honest with our baser natures, should not be castigated but instead celebrated every year.
You can rent a copy of “Mardi Gras Massacre” and a wide selection of other New Orleans/Louisiana-set films from Future Shock Video.
“Mardi Gras Massacre” is available on Blu-ray from Severin Video, among their wide selection of many other Video Nasties.
For more movie recommendations, and to see all the films in the “Mardi Gras At The Movies” series, CLICK here to follow me on Letterboxd.
You’ll be glad you did.
