Malatesta's Carnival Of Blood

Malatesta's Carnival of Blood (1973)

Runtime: 74 minutes

Directed by: Christopher Speeth

Starring: Janine Carazo, Jerome Dempsey, Daniel Dietrich, Lenny Baker... and Herve Villechaize!

From: Windmill Films

I discuss Arrow's new streaming service... and whatever the heck this movie was.

Just a few days prior I saw on Bloody Disgusting that starting on the 1st of this month, Arrow Video would be launching their own streaming platform. As the first month is free, it was only logical to give it a shot, especially considering its lineup so far is mainly horror-centric. Its look and layout: quite similar to Shudder; in fact, they share several titles. This cult movie was selected first mainly due to its brief 74 minute length. There was no issue concerning my streaming of it last night. As for Carnival of Blood... even stranger than I expected.

The plot was ostensibly about a mom, dad and teen daughter joining a run-down amusement because the son disappeared after he started employment there... how this is presented is rather off the wall. Carnival of Souls has been mentioned multiple times as an obvious inspiration... so has Night of the Living Dead. Much of this comes off as a nightmare, between the overall tone, all the surreal moments, the bizarre characters that populate this, the unique visuals, the early 70's electronic score, and the ability to film at a real life rundown amusement park-Willow Grove Amusement Park, to be exact... a few years later it was torn down and replaced by a shopping mall, where Muzak probably did fill the air-that naturally presented a creepy atmosphere in the day, nevermind how strange it was at night.

It is easy to nitpick this strange piece of cinema... I won't as I was perversely entertained, entranced by all the bizarre happenings and the few moments of graphic gore. There was more than one “that guy” in the cast but the most famous face was Herve Villechaize. Not only was it a gas seeing him point a full-sized gun at someone, The Man with the Golden Gun was not his only picture which featured a sequence in a Hall of Mirrors setting.

It was a real struggle trying to reason a rating for this. Ultimately it will receive a pretty favorable one; the filmmakers seemingly wanted a strange movie and that they did accomplish here. It featured cannibals moving about as they view silent horror films on a giant screen... there are other moments from Malatesta I will never forget.