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.

Apparently, this film was presumed lost for many, many years. If you ask me, there were more things "lost" here. Like writer/director Christopher Speeth's control over his own twisted imagination, or the minds and sanity of literally all the people who were involved! This movie is messed up, and there isn't too much else I can write about it.

A family of three, parents and daughter in her late teens, infiltrate in a sinister carnival and attempt to fit in, but their real mission is to find out what happened to their son/brother who vanished without a trace but was last seen at the same carnival. Oh yes, there is something resembling a plot, but it's subordinate - by far - to the grueling Z-grade atmosphere, the uniquely eccentric cast of characters and the wide variety of random moments of sheer madness. Who knows, maybe Speeth aimed for art-house but couldn't overcome the budgetary restrictions? All I know is there are ghouls that munch and gaze at silent horror films in the carnival's backstage area, park rides that decapitate people or make them disappear altogether, vampires that walk around in broad daylight, transvestite fortune tellers, and a rhyming dwarf who pops out of secret carny wagon doors.

Pure 70s grindhouse insanity, complete with thick more-orange-than-red blood, decors and scenery that seem to come straight out of the junkyard and the director's family & friends filling in all the supportive roles to do him a favor... or out of pity. I can't possibly rate this any higher than an already very generous 5/10, but rest assured that it comes recommended.

"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.)