company: Happy Enterprises
year: 1980
runtime: 91′
country: United States
director: Nathan Schiff
cast: John Smihula, Fred Borges,
Michael Siegal, Paul Smihula,
Richard Stone, Nancy Canberg
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A pair of murderous madmen (one wearing a pillow case and goggles) butcher Long Island locals for Jack (Fred Borges) so that he might feed his family, who are suffering from a bizarre cannibal leprosy.  Inspector Cameron (John Smihula), having discovered the remains of a young woman on an isolated beach, works to track down the killers.

Nathan Schiff strikes again!  This, his second Super 8mm feature, was produced shortly after WEASELS RIP MY FLESH and continues in that effort’s tradition of blending creature-feature homage with ridiculous no-budget gore effects.  The scale is increased in some ways and pared down in others, in accordance with lessons learned during the making of WEASELS.  You won’t find any tabletop trips to Venus or desk lamps standing in for rocketships here, but rest assured that the lengtheir and more focused narrative of THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE offers up plenty of inspired insanity all the same.

As with all his productions, Schiff wears his inspirations on his sleave.  Inspector Cameron is a cop of the Dirty Harry variety, fed up with the system and itching for a chance to take his quest for justice offroad.  A spate of gruesome homicides seem to be just what the doctor ordered, and Cameron is off the force and on his own in no time.  But this inspector has more than just a chip on his shoulder, and his character arc takes  some truly unexpected turns by the end of things.

The rest of the story, focusing on Jack and his hired serial killers, is a madcap mash-up of H. G. Lewis-esque ultra-violence and odes to the classic Roger Corman monster pictures of old.  A scene halfway through, in which one of Jack’s family dies of starvation because he’s not strong enough to fight for food, is an almost verbatim replay of one from Corman’s THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED.  The relationship between Jack and his hungry father echos that of Lee Van Cleef and the Venusian in IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, though the monster’s plans here are even more twisted as he goes about the countryside raping young women so that he might raise a race of cannibal children!

As the title (and any experience with Schiff’s other work) might suggest, there’s gore to be had in spades here.  The film opens with a tour-de-force,  Jack’s hired killers attacking a young woman with a lawnmower, and doesn’t let up much from there.  The graphic imagery on display is gruesome, and the camera hovers lovingly over each of the gut-ripping and head-smashing setups – there’s no room for the squeamish here.  The conclusion is the best of Schiff’s career, bringing the killers, Inspector Cameron, Jack and his chainsaw-wielding monster of a dad neatly together for a grue-strewn death battle of epic proportions.

From a purely technical standpoint, THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE is a big step up from Schiff’s previous film.  Writing, photography, and editing are all improved, and the frequent action scenes are particularly well handled.  This is still an amateur effort, to be sure, but there’s something undeniably infectious about the enthusiasm of a teenager who decided one day to shoot an 8mm feature film, and did.

Never intended for any sort of widespread consumption, Image Entertainment saw fit to release THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE along with WEASELS RIP MY FLESH and THEY DON’T CUT THE GRASS ANYMORE to home video in February of 2004.  While not so feature-laden as those other two discs, Image’s DVD of MASSACRE is still impressive, especially for a film so obscure as this.

Image presents THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE in its original full-screen aspect ratio in an interlaced transfer.  The footage still looks very rough at times, exhibiting scratches and speckles that have been inherent in the source since it was first edited together.  But once one looks beyond the aesthetic limitations of a 29 year old feature shot on 8mm reversal film things don’t seem so bad.  There has been a good deal of color correction work, and I doubt the image could be improved drastically beyond this without an extensive (and expensive) restoration effort behind it.  The audio fares quite well, with dialogue and stock music cues carrying through quite nicely.  Some alterations were made to the score along the way to account for unlicensed music, but the new tracks merge well with the rest.

Supplements include interviews with writer / producer / director Schiff as well as his chief cast members, Fred Borges and John Smihula.  Smihula practically carries the film, playing a cop, a killer, a mutant, and Borges’ monster dad!  Also included is a feature commentary track with Schiff that brings the production information available here into full-on overkill mode.  Trailers for all three of the Image-released Schiff films are to be found as well, though there are no shorts made available here as they were with the other two DVDs.

The collected works of Nathan Schiff are certainly an acquired taste, and one I’ve railed against in the past.  But as with everything else, opinions change.  THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE is a grim sort of cornball insanity and I don’t mind saying that I enjoyed every minute of it – and what a title!  Recommended.