Carnival of Blood

True it is not the best movie and the plot is somewhat mundane, it's actually kind of bad even if you are into schlocky gore trash, but this movie does have some great, fun characters.

There is the the amazingly obnoxious "dumpy lady" who sets out to harass everyone she runs into, the insanely drunk Sailor and his trampy girlfriend (who keeps stuffing his cash into her panties whenever he isn't looking), the creepy fortune teller who warns everyone to go home & "Gimpy", the impaired weirdo with the mysteriously sore covered space. All of whom get theirs as a psycho stalks them through a beachside carnival.

It even has a few gimmicky over the top gore scenes, like a nasty gizzard filled teddy bear. The movie plays out like a tribute to HG Lewis with it's gross-out stalker killings.

It also has some interesting odd electronica in the background that sounds like it was lifted directly from the Forbidden Planet soundtrack.

As far as late night schlock this is certainly not the greatest but definitely not the worst ....

When a patron is decapitated while enjoying the "spook house" ride, we know we've entered the CARNIVAL OF BLOOD. Said riders should have listened to the midway fortune teller (Kaly Mills), who had "bad vibes" about their situation. They won't be the last, since whoever the killer is is just getting started!

For its era, this is a fairly grisly movie. In addition to the aforementioned noggin removal (aka: a dummy head with extra ketchup), there's a rather disgusting disembowelment that could send the easily-sickened racing for the restroom!

In spite of its low-low budget and long stretches of nothingness between murders, CARNIVAL manages to remain semi-entertaining throughout. It gets extra points for its proto-slasher status, especially for the gushy -most likely pig- guts! Some releases don't include them, so, buyer beware!...

Way back in the early days of home video you had to cough up $59 to own this movie. Now you can find it on DVD for a fraction of that amount; isn't technology wonderful?

Okay seriously now. I first got this film because I hoped it might actually be MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD. It wasn't (duh!) but I certainly got my money's worth. Set in a Coney Island carnival most of our attention is focused on Tom (Earle Edgerton) who runs a booth where you throw darts at balloons to win a prize and his fire scarred pal Gimpy (he's billed as John Harris but WE know he's really Burt Young). Tom seems like a nice enough guy but you have to wonder how he gets through the day when the people who come to his booth all seem to be obnoxious, ill-mannered, drunken loudmouths.

There is also a mad killer stalking the midway. Whoever it is commits some very brutal, but not entirely convincing, murders. I mean, Andy Milligan had more believable gore in his films and you REALLY have to be at the bottom of the barrel to be less effective than Andy! A knifing on the beach is very bloody but the camera stays on the victim so long we get too close a look at what must be a rubber dummy and Karo-syrup blood. Another victim is killed by a dart . . . oh when will low budget directors learn that you need a mighty good pitching arm to throw a dart through a persons skull, and even so a wound like that would probably not be fatal? Oh well, just keep repeating "It's only a movie . . ."

So what did I mean about disturbing in parts? Well near the end when we find out not only who the killer is (no, I am not going to tell you! Sit through this movie and suffer like I did if you want to know!) but why he is doing it (a violent mental shock when he was a child; no wonder psychologists love to analyse these movies!) there is a scene of the heroine (Judith Resnick) finding a teddy bear stuffed with human entrails! That is the scene I remember most over all the previous cheap gore moments, it is unexpectedly effective and emotionally jarring. Tis' a pity the rest of the movie could not keep up.

Truly this is one for junk movie completest only. I'll bet once Burt Young hit it big in the ROCKY movies he crossed this title off his resume.

PS: Did I ever find MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD? I sure did! Check out my review of that one sometime.

Someone is stalking the patrons of a seedy, ramshackle carnival amusement park, murdering and mutilating them in a variety of gruesome ways. The multitude of suspects weighs heavy with iniquitous reprobates, but nobody is above suspicion.

CARNIVAL OF BLOOD is the "beau ideal" of early 70s grassroots film-making...there isn't the slightest hint of virtuoso evident in so much as a single frame of this picture, but it certainly does shine as a sort of attestation to resourceful creative vitality. This turkey here is about as Spartan a production as ever there was, but the clever use of a carnival for the story's nucleus creates an illusion of the movie being something substantially "bigger" than it actually is...a breadline, bush-league, bottom of the barrel crock-o-schlock.

While it certainly owes stylistically to the cinematrocious exploits of trash-film pundits like H. G. Lewis and Andy Milligan, CARNIVAL actually marches drunkenly to the freaky beat of a spaced-out drummer all it's own. As bad as it is, it's hard not to like...or at least be amused by...this gore-soaked, beggared lump of collective incompetence.

5.5/10...I think just about anyone with a good sense of humor could find this enjoyable.

A maniac is on the loose in Coney Island ripping women apart. A couple of amateur sleuths discover that prior to their murders, all victims seem to have visited a dart game booth and a fortune teller who foresaw their eventual fate.

As I watched this Z-grade horror effort, I suspected quite strongly that this must be an Andy Milligan movie on the basis that he was a New York based exploitation director who made bargain basement splatter films around the same time as this one that featured ropey cinematography, cheap gore effects and misanthropic characters. As it turned out, this wasn't the work of Milligan at all but instead the creation of director Leon Kirtman who was seemingly a director of porn flicks, which might explain quite a lot of the technical short-comings to be found here. He was also responsible for the later horror flick Curse of the Headless Horseman (1972), which was a pretty mind-numbing effort in rubbish cheapo film-making. Apparently, that one played alongside Carnival of Blood as part of a double-bill at the time. I can only imagine how unimpressed most of the unfortunate patrons who went to see that endurance test must have been.

This one falls into the same bracket as the splatter films typified by H. G. Lewis. But it seems to have been made on even less of a budget and, unlike in Lewis's flicks, the gore is pretty half-heartedly executed, although there is a decapitation that is relatively well done. More damagingly, it suffers from poor pacing, with lots of scenes of more or less nothing going on. It reminded me a little of the earlier film She Freak (1967) which contained endless scenes of people hanging out at a carnival, doing carnival type things, i.e. reasonably good fun if it's you doing it but not so entertaining if it's you watching people do it. Despite this definite drawback, the location does work in the film's favour in some ways, as it has a definite of-its-time unusualness, while the production on the whole does benefit a bit from the overall scuzzy atmosphere that is generated. Amusingly, despite the rock-bottom production values, we have future respected character actor Burt Young of Chinatown (1974) and Rocky (1976) fame appear as a deformed carnie called Gimpy. It's not a role he will necessarily be fondly remembered for and he did hide under the pseudonym of John Harris, but the joys of the internet age means there is no hiding place anymore.

In all honesty, this is a pretty ropey and low quality effort. Its grimy grade-Z nature almost saves it but its overall tediousness negates those qualities somewhat. You know you're usually in bother if you are watching a feature film helmed by someone who normally directs porn flicks, and Carnival of Blood is no different.