And there’s also a dirty secret in New Orleans’s past. That dirty secret… is disco.

Actually, now that I think about it, I’d venture to say that most American cities and unincorporated townships went to bed with disco at some point and woke up the next morning regretting it. But not all American cities have a New Orleans’s footloose and fancy-free Mardi Gras celebration reputation.

And it’s the unholy union of Mardi Gras and disco that begat the little plastic bead of entertainment known as Mardi Gras Massacre.

Well, Mardi Gras, disco, and good old fashioned whoring.

But before I pimp my review here, a slight tangential diversion. There are seminal movies out there which, for better or worse, caused countless imitations to pop out of the fertile loins of the Movie Machine. The Movie Machine can smell a lucrative plot formula once those ticket receipts are counted up, and, while imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, it can make for some pretty formulaic viewing. Then again, sometimes that’s really all you want. So, many a movie can trace its heritage back to the big daddies and hot mamas of popular cinema: Star Wars for your sci-fi space operas, Jaws for your horrors of the deep, hell The Road Warrior alone kept many a sweaty Italian guy employed, not to mention well-oiled.

And then there was John Carpenter’s Halloween. I remember seeing Halloween when it came out in the theaters. (Even as a six-year-old I was terribly polite and well-behaved, so I didn’t infringe upon others’ viewing pleasures… then again, what kind of parent would take a child of such tender years to this kind of movie? Hi Mom!) And, thanks in part to Halloween, the slasher formula for horror showed that you could get big bucks for blood and boobies. Particularly if there’s a holiday-themed title attached to it.

So, here comes Mardi Gras Massacre. (I’m working on the assumption that Halloween slightly predates Mardi Gras Massacre, even though both appeared the same year. But the budget for Mardi Gras Massacre puts it pretty squarely in the neighborhood of a Herschell Gordon Lewis goopy gore movie, even though Halloween’s budget wasn’t exactly big enough to choke a horse.)

So, here comes Mardi Gras Massacre…

…and it took about an hour and a half of my life, an hour and a half I’m never going to get back. Damn thing didn’t even have the decency to throw plastic beads at me or slip me a slice of king cake.

What goodies does Mardi Gras Massacre have in store for us? Well, one female singer warbling most of the many disco-tinged tunes in the background. And a fair amount of 1970s pubes. And an evildoer (who, as far as I could tell, was never actually named) who… loves… to… use… weighty… pauses. One of the first things he does when he walks into a swinging New Orleans bar that doubles as Hooker Central is to ask a couple of floozies “Tell me, of all the ladies in this bar tonight, which one do you think is the most… [PAUSE FOR TEN FRIGGIN’ SECONDS] …evil?”

Our evildoer (since he kind of reminds me of that Enzyte spokesman with the creepy ass smile, I’ll just call him Bob) is looking for an evil woman. Why? So he can sacrifice her.

In the red light district, no evil woman is safe from Evildoer Bob, particularly if she tends to hang out where disco music is playing.

And no place playing disco music is safe from a visit from Detective Frank, the grumpiest man in homicide. And since Frank used to work vice, he knows the ins and outs of the sweaty underbelly of New Orleans.

But back to the sacrificing, which is more or less the meat and bones of the movie.

Despite what you might think, seeing as the movie is set in New Orleans, the sacrifices here are not related to voodoo at all. Instead, Bob is an Aztec high priest. He needs evil women to sacrifice to the evil Aztec goddess Coatlicue.

Now, the first time I heard the goddess named in the movie, I thought they had mispronounced Quetzlcoatl. (If the ichthyologist in Humanoids from the Deep can pronounce coelacanth as “coal-uh-canth,” then there isn’t much that can surprise me in terms of mispronunciations in moviedom.) But, no, turns out there is an actual Coatlicue, the Lady of the Serpent Skirt, in the Aztec pantheon. And it’s Bob’s goal to bring her back to earth. Why? We are never told, for that way lies madness, utter madness.

Bob’s ritual can be summarized thusly: he goes to a bar/strip club/den of iniquity and asks around for the most… evil… woman there. (As an aside, if Mardi Gras Massacre taught me nothing else, I now know that it’s only polite to clap after a stripper finishes bumping and grinding for you.) And he picks some doozies; one of them has hair like Rosanne Rosannadanna, another is so skinny you can see her hipbones through her gold lamé pants, and yet another (who was only a potential victim) is ready to go out and turn a trick in an alleyway while wearing the devil girl make-up she had be wearing during her strip show (red face paint, little horn hairband… you get the picture). He takes them back to his modest apartment and leads them to a small room that has an altar-type table on it. Actually, truth be told, if it had stirrups on it it would look pretty much like the average ob/gyn’s examination table. Bob has the woman strip down and climb up on the table while he steps out of the room.

And then… ta-da… a curtain at the back of the room is drawn back, and there’s Bob in a golden serape of sorts (which doesn’t come down nearly low enough to hide his bony man knees) and a small golden mask. Oh, and there’s a large stone effigy of Coatlicue in the background. The woman invariably says something along the lines of “ooh, kinky,” as Bob strolls out, arms raised up, and begins the Ritual.

The Ritual consists of Bob oiling the woman’s torso and then tying her down. Then he brings out a sacrificial blade, which to me looked more like a cake server. He nicks the woman’s left breast with his super cool secret decoder ring before droning, in a slow manner: “For the hand that accepted the money for your evil” before stabbing her right hand. Then he drones, in a verrry slow manner: “For the foot that led you to evil” before slicing the bottom of her left foot. Now, all of this is, naturally, accompanied by gallons of thick red paint.

But then comes the crowning moment. Bob drones, in a very verrrrrry slow manner: “For the part of you that you use for evil” before aiming for… the woman’s stomach? Well, I thought that’s what he was going for, but instead he pokes into the belly and cuts up through the leathery/rubbery skin to where the heart’s supposed to be (ribs? who needs them. lungs? oh, I don’t think so) before cutting it out and… tossing it across the room into a bowl.

And that, my friends, is what goes into a blood sacrifice to Coatlicue.

Bob does this a few times, and it’s up to Detective Frank to try to crack the case. During Frank’s investigation, he shacks up with Sherry, the typical hooker with a heart of gold, who met Bob at the beginning of the movie but only remembers Bob’s super secret decoder ring. Frank and Sherry eventually have a spat, and Sherry goes back to turning tricks. But not before she drowns her sorrows at one of the countless discothèques. She’s so distraught, she even starts a catfight on the lighted dance floor with a woman who’s about a head taller than her dance partner before being escorted home by Detective Frank’s partner.

As luck (and the title of the movie) would have it, Mardi Gras is here and Frank’s superior officer demands results, now! Frank’s told that all the weirdoes will be out on the street, so he needs to get his ass in gear if he wants to nip the bad guy in the bud. And, no, there’s no possibility of closing the beach during this crisis; tourist dollars must be stuffed into stripper g-strings at all costs.

And so we’re treated to a bit of a visual treat as we get some exterior shots of Old New Orleans during Mardi Gras. It’s parade time, and… well, let’s just say that even though it’s free entertainment I would have felt compelled to ask for my money back. I think I saw men in saggy clown costumes, riding on a small parade float whilst bobbing around and waving hi to the crowd, but I could be very much mistaken.

Yet people are just so happy during Mardi Gras. So happy that they can’t contain their enthusiasm for staring into the camera as the makers of Mardi Gras Massacre film them.

But, as Detective Frank’s superior officer said earlier, Mardi Gras is the time for all weirdoes to come out and strut their stuff, so Bob gets to wear his barely-qualifies-as-a-fetish mask in public.

So, forsaking the totally boss entertainment afforded by the parade, Frank visits the local expert on all things weird, Dr. Lewis. Dr. Lewis reads from his script as he tells about how devil worship and ritualistic killing and ancient Aztec goddesses and the Manson family are all connected

During the festivities, Sherry and two other girls are pimped out to Bob, who needs to perform a triple sacrifice on Mardi Gras in order to bring Coatlicue back. The girls find themselves in Bob’s apartment (and Sherry doesn’t recognize him, nor his super secret decoder ring), and he slips them a mickey before rolling them back to the altar room.

But, basically, Bob’s downfall has nothing to do with Frank’s mad detective skillz. Rather, it’s Bob’s love of Chinese food that brings him no end of trouble.

But what exactly is Bob’s downfall? Will Sherry be saved? Will Frank get him some again?

I’d tell, but to spoil the ending of Mardi Gras Massacre would just be… evil.

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