Malatesta's Carnival of Blood

Malatesta's Carnival of Blood (1973)

*** (out of 4)

Malatesta (Daniel Dietrich) runs a fun carnival where he hired a couple people to help run the place. What Malatesta doesn't realize is that the two people are basically working undercover because they're searching for their child that went missing at the carnival. What the parents don't realize is all the sinister things going on there including the fact that Malatesta is a vampire.

MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD is the only film from director Christopher Speeth and it was pretty much forgotten and never seen for thirty-years. All of this changed when the director started selling copies of a DVD from his personal website. Before long the film gained a small reputation but then Arrow Video released it to Blu-ray and DVD in a Special Edition form. As the introduction by Stephen Thrower states, it's a pretty weird little film and certainly one that deserves more of a following.

If you're looking for a coherent storyline then you probably won't enjoy this movie. There's actually very little of an actual plot and instead the film really plays off like a dream you might be having while you're also running a very high fever. Some have called the film's look psychedelic, which might be a good way to describe it. The story is basically being told by the visuals, which are actually quite striking and I'd argue that the dream-like nature of the picture actually works for it. The entertainment value certainly comes from the bizarre and surreal atmosphere.

The performances are a bit all over the place with some of them being incredibly good while others are clearly being done by inexperienced actors. Still, none of them are bad enough to ruin the film. There's also an effective music score that helps build up the atmosphere and there are some really nice gore effects throughout the picture. There's not a lot of violence but when it does happen with get some of that classic 70's overly-bright red blood.

MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD isn't the greatest film ever made and there are certainly some flaws throughout it including some pacing issues. Still, at just 74-minutes the film is certainly worth watching and it's bizarre and surreal atmosphere really makes it stand out.

If any of you doubt that people used to eat a lot of acid in the 1970's as well as during the 1960's, go find MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD. Not only is this one of the most mind-bending films ever made by people who were either completely insane OR tripping their head's off, it is also one of the most unique American shockers made during the horror boon years of the early 1970's when US filmmakers struggled to keep up with their European counterparts. Here's one that did.

THE PLOT: A nebbish small town family goes to work at a carnival in some decrepit, decaying upstate armpit half-city that is actually a front for a perverted cult of fanatics who feed on human flesh and watch old silent movies down in the catacombs below the carnival. One by one the family and their friends are lured to their deaths, and eventually eaten. I guess.

This is another one of those movies that isn't really about it's story: This one is about creating atmospheres or moments out of piles & piles of used second hand rubbish, like sheets of mylar, hand made puppets, old junk you'd find along the river down by the train tracks and lights filtered by patterns made out of colored bubble wrap. Made on a budget of about 1/100th your average "low budget" shocker these days, MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD is a triumph of ephemeralia as production design, and set in the cold blooded creepiest carnival or fairgrounds ever built -- That it was a real world pre-existing locale makes it even creepier. Everything is old, rickety, about ready to fall apart, shabby, unkempt, peeling with old paint and badly in need of some shoring up. "Accidents, we've had lots of accidents" relates Mr. Bean, the carnival's oldest employee who sports a hook for his right hand.

Yet people still flock to this "carnival" looking for fun: You can play dunk Bozo or shoot ducks for prizes, there is a tunnel of love, and a roller coaster that people are just losing their heads over. A hard working handyman keeps the grounds clean with his litter stick, picking up trash, drink cups, bloody remains of people torn apart for lunch, and a smile on his face that is the very essence of "frightening". He loves his work though, and like all of Malatesta's employees enjoys a special place that is more like a family than just a job, much like how that nice man Charles Manson's family was more than just a mob of brutal, psychotic, homicidal maniacs. Malatesta himself is an odd bird, not much of a businessman and more like an impresario, or figurehead of some kind of underground society, I can't make up my mind.

It's strange to think that THE EXORCIST was made the same year as this movie: The two couldn't be further apart as far as aesthetic exercises in creative design. One is a literal depiction of evil that spells it all out & leaves nothing to the imagination, the other is all about creating visual paradigms with layers of meaning that go beyond just what you see or hear. You watch THE EXORCIST and (if you are like me) cannot help but sit there & tick off the cinematic tricks doubtlessly being used to create the appearance of fire and brimstone ... You watch MALATESTA and you wonder not only how the hell did they stage what you see, but how the hell did anybody think this up?? Hazard and chance as production design elements perhaps, tons of blotter acid maybe, but the film is *SO* tightly scripted and choreographed that it cannot possibly all be improvisation.

It's like a big hippie movie from hell, with trippy sights, weirdo sound & music effects, singing baroque cannibals (who are pretty good, actually), double meaning laden dialog that never quite sounds like people just delivering lines, all topped off by an ending so open that no sequel was even needed: There is a Carnival of Blood in every small or large town just waiting to be discovered and explored by people who might need to vanish. Feeding the hungry is also a national past time -- why not do it ourselves? the movie asks. And while sure, this is one of the creepiest, most atmospheric and potentially unnerving non-Hollywood horror movies ever made it is also an incredible study in how you can make movies for just peanuts. Watch the lady washing her hair in a mud puddle or the finale calliope organ number with the bendy mirrors, and tell me you have ever seen anything quite like it. While it might make a great double bill with CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS (another Manson-inspired ultra low budget regional American horror classic) there isn't another movie to my knowledge that looks like this. And at about 74 minutes it's just the perfect length, with excellent pacing and nary a dull moment.

You may not understand what you are seeing but you sure won't be bored by it, and it's most assuredly a "love it or hate it" kind of experience: You'll either say this film is just too bizarre and nothing happens or you'll wish that there were more bizarre movies with even less happening like it to enjoy. There aren't, so live it up.

10/10

"Malatesta's Carnival of Blood" follows a husband, wife, and their young adult daughter who visit a rundown amusement park posing as potential new employees; they are actually there to locate their missing son, who worked at the carnival. To their horror, however, the park's mysterious proprietor, Malatesta, is hiding a gaggle of cannibals in caverns beneath the rides.

This little-seen horror flick plays like "Alice in Wonderland" on bad acid, but in a good way. It is remarkably low-budget, with sets that often appear to be vinyl-lined tents standing in as limestone caves (unconvincing, to say the least), but the shortcomings oddly don't seem to matter because they are obscured by the stylish cinematography and general atmosphere of complete and utter weirdness.

In similar fashion, the screenplay for "Malatesta's Carnival of Blood" is also a slipshod effort, with little connective tissue to make sense of what exactly is going on (even the main characters' arrival at the carnival is barely elucidated, making it somewhat confusing as to why they are there in the first place)--and yet again, it doesn't really matter, because the film is more a mood piece than anything. Surreal visuals reign supreme, with creepy carnival props, underground halls of mirrors, silent movie theaters where the cannibal ghouls congregate to watch movies(!?)--the weirdness never ceases.

The film's main character, Vena, leads the audience through the proceedings as she spends a hellish night in the amusement park searching for her missing brother, and the proceedings have an "Alice in Wonderland" sensibility about them. The actual nature of the villains here is also not totally explained, but their ghoulish appearance in slathered-on grey makeup manages to be effectively captured in the claustrophobic cinematography. In the end, the film doesn't really register as a narrative piece, but it succeeds magnificently as an otherworldly, nightmarish adventure that resembles a bad trip. 7/10.

Malatesta's Carnival of Blood was thought to be a lost movie until 2000, when the director eventually released the film on DVD. Some might argue that it would have been better if the film had stayed lost, but then fans of trippy z-grade garbage would have been deprived of what has to be one of the weirdest movies of all time.

The film takes place in a dilapidated carnival whose owner, the enigmatic Malatesta (Daniel Dietrich), appears to be a total stranger to the term 'health and safety'. The rides not only look like death traps, they ARE death traps, the people who go on them winding up as tasty snacks for the ghouls who live in the caverns below, or simply losing their head (as one poor guy does while on the rollercoaster!). The newest employees at the carnival are Mr and Mrs Norris (Paul Hostetler and Betsy Henn), and their teenage daughter Vena (Janine Carazo), whose job it is to run a shooting gallery. However, the real reason the Norrises are there is to try and find out what happened to their son, who went missing while at the carnival. Friendly carnie Kit (Chris Thomas) tries to help Vena stay alive for the duration, but the attraction's vampiric manager Mr. Blood (Jerome Dempsey) has his heart set on drinking her blood.

Crazy camerawork, eccentric performances (a wild-eyed litter-picking ghoul, singing cannibals, a transvestite fortune teller, and Hervé Villechaize as creepy dwarf Bobo), incomprehensible dialogue, and set design that consists largely of assorted junk, and large sheets of plastic, aluminium and bubble wrap: Malatesta's Carnival of Blood is quite unlike anything I have seen before, and quite unlike anything remotely resembling coherent film-making. The action randomly veers off into nightmarish surreality at the drop of a hat, and features bizarre characters who drift in and out of scenes, while director Christopher Speeth exercises his creativity with his oddball aesthetic combined with disconcerting sound design (the weird visuals including back projection of horror classics The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame). There's even some fun gore to be had: the aforementioned rollercoaster decapitation, death by litter-picking stick, a juicy spike in the eye, and the half-eaten body of some poor schmuck.

The result is an undeniably unique experience, but so is pouring a bucket of fire ants down your trousers.

3.5/10, rounded up to 4 for Villechaize talking in rhyme.

The Norris family get jobs working at a seedy old carnival as a cover for searching for their missing son who disappeared after visiting said carnival. Eccentric manager Mr. Blood turns out to be a vampire while the evil owner Malatesta rules over a gaggle of ghastly ghouls who watch silent movies when they aren't feasting on human flesh.

Director Christopher Speeth grew up in the world of theater, and at college was trained in the tradition of the documentary. He made one film called "Sugar" following two very different diabetics, and then "Dona Nobis Pacem", an anti-Vietnam War film featuring footage of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. If he had done nothing else, this footage would have made him immortal, even if not necessarily famous.

By pure coincidence, Speeth met Richard Grosser on an airplane. Grosser had a strange background, starting out as a violin virtuoso and then getting mixed up in the development of the ENIAC and UNIVAC computers. Grosser proposed the idea of a horror film to Speeth, with his thought on the matter being quite simple: under the current rules, an investment in a film could be used as a tax shelter. The film was birthed as a write-off!

Playwright Werner Liepolt was hired to construct a script. He started with legendary cannibal Sawney Bean (also a source for "Texas Chainsaw massacre" and "Hills Have Eyes") and then incorporated circus elements. Allegedly, Speeth's house had a fortune telling machine and merry-go-round horses converted into chairs, so Liepolt assumed this was the sort of thing Speeth would like to see on screen. Liepolt was very conscious of the words he used, with "carnival" literally being a celebration of meat.

Much of the film's dreamlike narrative came about during post-production. The movie was edited again and again, which produced a non-linear quality to the picture, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. If you like cut and dried plots, this might not be for you.

You might wonder, if this is a good film (and it is), why have I not heard of it? Well, there could be many reasons, but the biggest is simply that the film was not available. Apparently after a screening or two, it ended up in Christopher Speeth's attic, collecting dust until 2003. At that point, Windmill Films released it on DVD, but it quickly went out of print. Don't be ashamed if you never heard of Windmill Films, because no one else has either.

This film is presented on glorious blu-ray as part of Arrow Video's American Horror Project (Volume 1). Of the three films in the set, it appears to be the leanest on special features, with no audio commentary listed. But this is just an oversight, as we do have one, from Richard Harland Smith of Video Watchdog. Furthermore, we do have brand new interviews with director Christopher Speeth and writer Werner Liepolt which should provide viewers with plenty of insight. (If you're still hungry for more, track down a copy of the December 2009 issue of Video Watchdog and check out the in-depth article from Shaun Brady.)