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DIRECTED BY: Christopher Speeth
FEATURING: Janine Carazo, Jerome Dempsey, Daniel Dietrich, Lenny Baker, Hervé Villechaize
PLOT: Vena and her family come to work at a strange amusement park marked by an ever-growing number of disappearances, deaths, and unusual goings-on.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: A collection of unsettling scenarios that make their low-budget DIY components into advantages, Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood cares not for your fancy storytelling and logical progression of events. A consistent mood of unease and an off-kilter sensibility make this an underappreciated companion to other amateur horrors, both good and bad.
COMMENTS: Biz Markie’s ode to loss and frustration, “Just a Friend,” was one of the biggest hits of 1989. Seemingly recorded with a mic and a Casio preset, Biz howled out his pain over the cheapest, tinniest piano loop. It was awful, but by gum everybody knew the damn song, and you couldn’t help but laugh and join in with the crowds screaming out “OH BABY YOU!!!” mid-chorus as Biz shredded his vocal cords in existential pain. It’s a legendary song despite its amateurishness, and possibly because of it.
Perhaps you can see where I’m going with this. We have spoken before about the glories of the 1970s indie horror scene, a genre unto itself populated by low budgets, first-time directors and screenwriters who tend to become only-time directors and screenwriters, and a fervent hope that blood and bodies will do all the work. Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood is a masterful example of the form, with major shortcomings in storytelling that perversely enhance the atmosphere of discomfort and dread, homemade effects that betray their homemade origins yet occasionally become transcendently original, and an incompetence that’s downright charming.
Speeth and screenwriter Werner Liepolt have a couple things working for them that lift Malatesta above the other amateur one-offs. One is its location, a working amusement park, which grounds the action in a tangible, believable milieu. The filmmakers had access to Philadelphia’s beloved old Willow Grove Park, at the time d/b/a “Six Gun Territory” and only a couple years away from being leveled and replaced with a mall. The picture also benefits from some unexpectedly decent acting. The performers are by no means brilliant, but they display a professionalism that is rare in this sort of film, managing to sell scenes that would otherwise be laughable. We only have the vaguest idea why the Norris family joins up with these carnies (revenge seems to be the primary goal), but Betsy Henn and Paul Hostetler are quite charming as the nervous Nellie and her heat-packin’ husband. Villechaize brings his particular brand of oddness, only a year before The Man With the Golden Gun. My favorite of these is Dempsey as the amoral impresario Mr. Blood, who is tasked with most of the exposition and delivers his lines with the sinister gentility of Vincent Price playing a maître d’. He remains confident even as he demonstrates a complete inability to operate a fire extinguisher. In his most delightful scene, he interrupts our heroine and the ratty tunnel-of-love operator by sliding up in a bumper car. Where did he come from? When he departs, where’s he gonna go in a bumper car? No matter how ridiculous things get, this kind of commitment helps sell it.
Sometimes the film hardly bothers with basics of storytelling, dispensing with voice or foley during tense scenes in favor of dramatically mismatched music. It’s actually an effective method; applying an eerie synthesized sting to a chase scene is as unsettling as any number of screams and crashes. Speeth has great confidence in his ability to let the images do the heavy lifting, and every now and then, he’s absolutely right. He attaches his camera to the walls of a rotating tunnel, adding a level of disorientation to an already head-scratching attraction. He places his heroine in the center of a giant tarp that actually takes on a sinister quality as she tries to escape. Perhaps his most effective visual is the room full of ghouls who have assembled to watch Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera, equally as delighted to be at the movies as they are hungry for blood. Speeth must have recognized a good thing when he saw it, because he replicates the shot with an unconscious Vena in the foreground and the leering Mr. Blood sneaking up on her like Chaney on the projection screen. The director is unquestionably an amateur, but every now and then, a unique vision comes through.
I feel like the film’s ending speaks for the filmmakers, as the evil mastermind Malatesta celebrates another successful night of carnage by taking a spin on the park’s chair swing. As he blissfully takes in the ramshackle setting, cavalierly disregarding the likelihood that a haunted amusement park that kills its guests, employees, and investors is a park that’s going to have a hard time luring in more of them, he leans his head back in gentle bliss. A job well done, Malatesta. A job well done, Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood. You’ve got what we need.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by Parker. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
