The Beasts' Carnival

While the movie is little more than excuse to show us some decent female nudity and while the movie's low budget is clear as day, "El carnaval de las bestias" is a decent entry in the genre which won't scare you, but it will entertain you if you are fan of the genre. It has to be said that the movie is very rare, but I managed to find it on archive.org. This is not a movie for a casual. This is a movie only for people who don't have hight standards and know what to expect from Euro 80-s horror jank. Luckily, Naschy is great as the movie's antihero and beautiful women appearing throughout the movie will make watching it an easier job it would have otherwise been. I give it 6/10, but I recommend it only to hardcore fans.

Paul Naschy wrote and directed this Japanese/Spanish co-production, but instead of playing his regular hero or sympathetic monster, the Euro-horror star's character is a complete and utter git. Naschy plays Bruno Rivera, a ruthless mercenary hired by crime-boss Taro (Kogi Maritugu) to carry out a daring diamond robbery. As Bruno waits for the day of the heist, he romances Taro's sister Mieko (Eiko Nagashima), getting her pregnant, so it comes as a surprise when the mercenary double-crosses his employer and jilts his lover, running off with the sparklers. Taro and Mieko, naturally miffed, vow to hunt the scoundrel down.

During a shootout, Taro is killed and Bruno wounded, but Mieko's target gives her the slip. Eventually passing out from loss of blood, Bruno wakes to find himself in the home of doctor Don Simón (Lautaro Murúa) and his sexy daughters Alicia (the lovely Azucena Hernández) and Mónica (Silvia Aguilar), who nurse him back to health. Meanwhile, Mieko is closing in, determined to take revenge.

What follows is a fairly typical example of Euro sleaze, with both Mónica and Alicia lusting after Bruno, meaning that Naschy gets to roll around with both girls naked (remember, he wrote this, the sly old devil). There's also some naughtiness involving shapely servant girl Raquel, Don Simón giving her a flogging on her ass for disobedience (giving us a hint that the old guy isn't quite the saint that he at first appears to be). There's also some violence, a mysterious figure creeping about the house killing various visitors, allowing for a smattering of gore.

With the nudity and blood boxes well and truly ticked, Carnival of the Beasts should give most Naschy fans a reasonable time, but to be honest, the plot is pretty lousy, the acting not great (not helped by terrible dubbing on the version I watched), and the whole thing is rounded off with a very silly twist ending (all of which are probably plus points for many Euro-horror fans).

5/10, if only for this hilariously un-PC line of dialogue spoken about Asian women: 'They all look the same to me'.

Paul Naschy (born Jacinto Molina) was Spain's most famous horror star, best known for the role of the lycanthropic Waldemar Daninsky, whom he played a total of 12 times in movies released between 1968 and 2004. Along the way, Naschy - who died of pancreatic cancer last year - acted in a couple of non-werewolf movies, including "El carnaval de las bestias" (alternately called "The Beasts' Carnival" and "The Human Beasts" in English). This one concerns a man (Naschy) who gets shot by some Japanese gangsters whom he betrayed and gets taken in by a mysterious doctor and his daughters...and later discovers that they have a gross passion.

I guess that I didn't like this one as much as Paul Naschy's other flicks, partially due to the rather vague plot, and also just because I prefer watching Naschy grow fur and fangs. But even so, it was an OK movie. Just see if you want to eat meat after watching it.

I wonder what the result would have been had Paul Naschy ever worked with Pedro Almodóvar.

"Human Beasts" is an odd mix of crime drama, action film, and horror - in that order. Naschy plays a criminal hired by Japanese gangsters to steal some diamonds. One of the gangsters is his girlfriend who is in loe with him, but the movie doesn't do much with this. When he steals the diamonds he cold-bloodedly murders everyone involved in transporting them, which shocks his employers, making one wonder what they expected when they hired a hitman to carry out the job. Naschy double crosses them and escapes into the Spanish highlands, but is injured in the fracas, and awakes in a mansion where a rich man and his beautiful daughters care for him.

We see Naschy bandaged up lying in bed with a doting woman standing beside him, there is a cut to something else, and cut back, and - what do you know - that doting woman is naked in bed with Naschy! This has to be one of the most unintentionally hilarious edits I have seen in a movie. Who needs things like seduction, sexual tension, chemistry - this is Naschy we're talking about. You know the girls are going to get naked. Why not just show her in bed with him and be done with it?

The man who owns the mansion is inexplicably kind to Naschy, and his brutal criminality begins to soften. But right from the beginning we are shown that, surprise surprise, all is not as it seems in this spooky mansion. In one of the weirdest moments, we see the man whipping the panty-clad butt of his beautiful black maid, while she admonishes him, "harder! harder!"

Is she a maid, or a... slave?

The movie seriously stalls when Naschy starts living at the mansion. Considering how it skips the details of Naschy's apparent seduction of the daughters, this is strange: it's like it misses necessary scenes to replace them with filler. The movie cuts to the Japanese that Naschy has ripped off, but for no real reason I can tell, other than the fact that the movie is a Japanese co-production. There are also some dream sequences, and a ghostly apparition of a woman who serves no purpose other than reminding you you are watching a horror movie.

In one of the movie's more memorable scenes, a man is... meant to be eaten alive by some bloody-snouted pigs.

Finally, there is a crazy fancy dress party at the mansion, which is probably the movie's best moment. As the rich eccentrics eat, the pigs are cut back to, reminding us for the nth time that Eurohorror basically exists to show rich people behaving like swine.

This scene comes too late, though, and I'd be surprised if many who watch "Human Beasts" would still be paying attention by this point. The film has some good moments, but the structure is too weak to string them all together, unfortunately. I think all Naschy is worth watching for cult/horror fans, but this isn't one of his best.

Paul Naschy plays a cold, heartless man who thinks nothing of stabbing his close ties in the back, however sordid they may be. But when he wakes up in a countryside estate, rippled with bullets, being nursed back to health by a very unusual family, he begins to open up his heart and shed his evil ways. But can he escape the wrong doings of his past and his destiny? Be prepared for some crazy twists and turns in this original, entertaining thriller.

Naschy wrote, directed and starred in this very strange film. Departing from his regular Gothic tales, this movie mixes double-crossing, revenge, Oriental mobs, killer pigs and voodoo to create a very unusual but tasty tale. Some very offbeat characters, a slight touch of comedy, some racial political incorrectness and several splashes of gore add just the right flavor. Bon Appetite!