Carnival of Blood

There is something that kept me watching, entertained by this "Z" grade horror film. I love creepy carnivals so that is what drew me into watching this film - but the overall psycho-delic look and strange story kept me watching it. I got hooked from the start and actually finished watching this film and would watch it again!

OK some of this film does not make sense - best example: (The girl and guy that are engaged) She refuses to go back to the carnival after murders happened there. He comes into her apartment with a mask and it scares her and they argue, he leaves. She then goes down to the carnival alone to speak to her friend who's a carny there. --- WTF? She wouldn't go with her boyfriend, she fought him over going (then broke up with him) then she goes by herself to the carnival to tell her carny friend?!! Hhahaa. I guess her boyfriend did what he set out to do - get her over the murders and get on with her life - unafraid!!

As carny, err corny, as this film is I actually enjoyed it!

6/10

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.

This is a terrible movie in every way. The story is awful, the special effects are laughable... wait, what am I saying? Special effects? There apparently wasn't even a budget for lights and microphones on this one! That's a big handicap when most of the movie was shot at night on the noisy Coney Island boardwalk and Astroland. Let's face it, this flick just has nothing going for it.

But... it was shot in Coney Island in 1969/1970. I gave it two extra stars because I was a kid growing up in Coney Island in the 70's, so there was a big nostalgia factor for me. I rode on many of the rides shown in the film. I ate at that Nathan's and walked on that boardwalk.

If you're not nostalgic for 1970's Coney Island, pass this one by; you won't be missing anything at all. If you are, though, see it with the sound turned off and pay more attention to the backdrop than the movie itself.

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.

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.