Dr. Ernst Prell (Alan Brock) is a college professor and amateur Yeti hunter. Prell believes that there is a Yeti living on an obscure island somewhere in upstate New York called Boot Island. Prell led an unsuccessful expedition to the island seven years ago with some of his students. The only two people who survived the expedition were Prell and one of his students, Spencer Ste. Claire (Tom Grail). The event resulted in Spencer suffering from PTSD.
Seven years later Prell is planning on another expedition to Boot Island with four of his current students. The members of the party are Karen Hunter (Jennifer Stock), Keith Henshaw (Michael Harris), Lynn Kelly (Darcy Brown) and Tom Nash (Jack Neubeck). Boot Island is a desolate area. The only people living on the island are Prell’s friend, Karl Werner (Tawm Ellis) and his mute native servant, Laughing Cow (Ivan Agar).
The night before the trip, Karen, Lynn and Tom got to a party on campus. Spencer and his wife, April (Luci Brandt) show up as well. During the party Spencer gets drunk and has an episode. He begins ranting about what happened during his visit to Boot Island. He and his wife go home where Spencer continues his raving. The episode culminates in Spencer and April killing each other.
The next morning, Prell and his students leave campus for the six-hour journey. Upon arriving at Werner’s estate, they meet their host, settle in and hear about a run in Werner previously had with the Yeti. He believes the creature got marooned on the island by crossing from the mainland during a winter freeze-over and is now living in some ancient caves on one side of the island.
The next day Prell and the students begin searching the island. One by one the students get picked off by what they believe is the creature.
“Shriek of the Mutilated” AKA “Mutilated” AKA “Scream of the Snow Beast” was released in 1974 and was directed by Michael Findlay. It is a low-budget American horror movie. The film had a limited release and was shown mostly on the drive-in circuit. Later is made the late-night television roster for a while.
The film first starts out as merely boring with some really questionable acting. But the more you watch it, the stranger it gets. Things shift drastically about an hour into the film resulting in a hysterical WTF ending. The music is canned and includes the song “Popcorn” by Hot Butter. For the most part the movie is bad, but the last part of the film makes it worth checking out. It’s your standard bad horror film that took a left-hand turn into absurdia.
There are at least two home versions of the film out there. The copy I have was a television version released by Lightning Video and has been edited to remove most of the opening pre-credit footage and a lot of the gore. The film was later released by Retromedia in 2003 restoring the cut portions but altering the music slightly. Retromedia had problems with copyright issues using the “Popcorn” song, so it used some generic techno style music for the scene. If you are interested in hearing the entire song, you can find it here on the "Scream" in “Stupid Songs 4” in “lists, essays and cool stuff”.
Supposedly there really is a Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti type creature living somewhere in the wilds of New York’s North Country, specifically, Whitehall, New York. Searching for a Bigfoot in New York is allowed, but hunting or killing one is illegal.