EL GRITO DEL MUTILADO Roberta Findlay Refuses To Explain It All For You

For the less continental, that'd be Shriek of the Mutilated...

If you think the infamous film actor/producer/writer/editor/cinematographer/director Roberta Findlay would be impressed that you knew anything at all about her work, let alone that you knew she was the cinematographer on the nearly forgotten semi-shocker Shriek of the Mutilated (1974), or the credited co-director (with her late husband Michael) of the infamous exploitation movie Snuff, or that she’s made films using over 15 different aliases in her career, including Anna Rivas, Linda Michaels, and, yes, Bob Davis, be assured she would be unimpressed. In fact, she’d probably think you were a demented stalker, or perhaps just plain ol’ demented.
And you might think, look who’s talking. This detachment from artistic rationalization about her work, and her outright refusal to romanticize anything, is one of the things that New York Press writer J.R. Taylor discovered when he tracked her down for a little bitter nostalgia over the grimy old days of Times Square and the scratch-and-claw realities of grindhouse filmmaking in the ‘70s. To appropriate the famous country-and-western tune, Roberta Findlay was exploitation when exploitation wasn’t cool, and she harbors damn few illusions about the lasting value of what she continues to do. Take a look at Taylor's fascinating article for a visit with a filmmaker whose oeuvre may be, to some eyes, worthless, but who, if nothing else, would cock her head back and laugh a dismissive, throaty, nicotine-ravaged laugh if she ever heard anyone referring to her oeuvre, or if she was ever offered the kind of cushy Hollywood deal that seems to be the goal of most Sundance-oriented independent filmmakers in the post-Tarantino age.

And here, for those who don't mind reveling in some schlock movie memories, is the ad I remember seeing for this mind-numbing shocker in the Portland Oregonian around 30 years ago...


Blaaagh, don't you have a story about this unheralded classic? If so, would you mind sharing it?

(My apologies for being a bit late in pointing the way toward this article, which ran in the Press almost two weeks ago. Now, with this duty done, if I could just get to those Netflix rentals that mock me every time I walk into the living room, or the 12 or 13 books I’m a chapter or two into, or that back porch shelving project I can’t seem to get started, or…)