Review #333: Mardi Gras Massacre (1978)
October 2025 Holiday Horror Review #6 - Mardi Gras Massacre (1978)
Mardi Gras Massacre is a movie about a series of ritualistic murders of prostitutes in New Orleans in the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras, following both the man committing the slayings and the pair of detectives on the case. In the end the cops chase the guy to the city docks, at which point he drives a car into the river, and though they retrieve the car, his body is never found.
This movie looks and sounds like a cheap 70s porno, except one where they never get to the sex scenes and we're just left with bad acting and bad dialogue amidst blaringly loud cheesy music. There are editing mistakes galore in this movie- odd cuts in the middle of scenes, dialogue that was clearly meant to be added in later but was forgotten, and cheap sets made out of plywood that the characters desperately try to claim look expensive. There's a scene in this movie where the principle characters are having a tense conversation in a bar, and run out in a panic at the end of the scene- but before we go to the next scene, the camera cuts to a random dude sitting at the bar (someone we have not seen previous and will never see again) so he can deliver one line of dialogue as the stinger for the scene. But I couldn't tell what he said, so I listened back to it three times, and was still at a loss. So I put the captions on, and all that showed up was "(speaking foreign language)". So, to reiterate- the stinger for this tense scene was an otherwise-unknown character pointedly saying a line in another language before cutting away to the next scene. Who thought this was a good idea?
This movie is bo-o-o-o-ring. Almost nothing happens for the first hour and ten minutes, as the killer gets a prostitute from a bar (always asking the bartender for "the most evil girl here", not sure what any of these girls did to deserve that finger being pointed at them), he takes the girl back to his "apartment", sacrifices them on an altar, and then does it all again ten minutes later (often using some of the same footage and audio tracks, even). The detectives on the case clearly aren't treating these murders as any sort of a priority, as a week passes between each murder and after three murders one of the detectives says, "Nah, I think three is the magic number. He's probably done, I don't think we need to look anymore." It isn't until his ex-girlfriend (a prostitute) gets taken by the mysterious killer that he decides it's worth getting involved, and that leads to the end of the film.
If this movie was even a little bit more fast-paced or had a little bit more to the plot I think it could have been a fun romp, but it really isn't. By far the best part of the movie was the Mardi Gras sequence, just because it's a couple minutes of footage of tons of people on the street having a good time (and I'm willing to bet most of them were not paid extras, as tons of them spend the whole time looking straight at the camera). The rest of the movie was such a joyless slog that it was a nice change of pace.
I don't recommend this movie. Apparently one of the lead actors (Ronald Tanet) was accosted at the premier by a poor woman who regretted paying $4 to see the film, so he paid her back from his own pocket because he understood where she was coming from. And so do I!
Overall Rating: 2/10 Ceremonial Gold Rings
Hollywood Debut: There's a scene in this film where some characters are sitting around at a bar, drinking from easily-recognizable red Solo-brand cups. I thought it was funny that those cups were still a standard for drinking alcohol even back in 1978, and my wife Lisa looked them up- apparently, that cup design was patented in 1976! Which means it's very likely that this movie is one of the first (if not THE first) example of those cups being used in a Hollywood movie!
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