Halloween Horrorthon 2018: MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD (1973)

Welp, this was a movie.

I used to own a first printing of Michael Weldon’s Psychotronic Film Guide, and the entry for this film fascinated me.  At the time, this was a lost feature; even Weldon was working off of rumors about its plot.  He specifically mentioned scenes of monsters eating people while watching silent films.

Now that I have seen it (Director Christopher Speeth suddenly emerged in 2003, selling DVDs of it on his website), I can confirm there are, in fact, grey skinned ghouls eating people while silent horror films play on a movie screen.  There’s also a vampire, and a killer who utilizes one of those long poles with a nail in it you use to pick up trash, and a transvestite fortune teller, and Herve Villechaize waving a...knife?...around, and a Volkswagen Beetle suspended from the ceiling, and a ‘teenaged’... protaganist?...of an indeterminate age who thinks nothing of wandering around the skeeviest amusement park imaginable in nothing but a shapeless nightgown, and a father who hints that he knows what’s going on, and some weird machine that does...something?

It’s really inept. 

I’ve read some reviews of this film that claim it’s something of a surrealist mini-masterpiece, but I think they’re trying to overcompensate for the fact that this is just a film put together by a bunch of locals (and Herve Villechaize) taking advantage of a broken down amusement park in their backyard to make a horror movie.  The acting is awful all around, there’s a plot that’s just a series of Stuff That Happens, the gore effects are silly, it’s seemingly edited with a butcher knife, and there’s a sense that the script was incidental to whatever Speeth wanted to do.  I don’t think I ever said ‘What The Fuck?’ to myself more in a long time.  It’s obvious to me that Speeth had seen a lot of Mario Bava judging from the lighting choices he makes, but it seems like he didn’t quite grasp why Bava’s use of color was so expert.

I want to be madder at this movie, especially given how long I have waited to see this.  But it’s hard to rail against the equivilent of a bunch of kids putting on a show.  When it comes down to it, this is an example of Regional Horror Cinema--it was made in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania (where life is cheap) on what is now a flea marker--that kind of failed, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  At times, there’s a sort of goofiness that is charming, like when one character explains that the ghouls are cannibalistic because ‘no one taught them it was bad.’  Sadly, the ineptness of the filmmaking interferes with those small moments of crazy fun. 

This was Christopher Speeth’s only film.  I’m not surprised.  I do not recommend this.

EXTRA: How YOU Can Curate The 2nd Half Of The Horrorthon!

I’m planning on doing this Horrorthon through October 31st.  I don’t know how many films I’m going to end up watching.  More importantly, I’d like to watch stuff I might now know about.

Here’s where you come in.

In this time where we just witnessed victims of sexual violence being pilloried for coming forward with their stories, I’d like to ask my film friends to lend a hand.  I’m going to ask you to donate $31 to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network.  If you do this before October 15th and send me the receipt proving you did, you can name one movie I have to watch during the Horrorthon.  There are some things I won’t do (so no Eli Fucking Roth movies, for example), and it has to be a movie I can find.  If you’re an independent filmmaker and are willing to make the donation, by all means send me the film.  I will do as many as I can before October 31st, and those I can I will view in the days after Halloween during ‘Beyond Halloween Horrorfest.’  It’s as simple as that.

So go donate to RAINN, send a copy of the receipt to dejat44@gmail.com ,  and tell me what I should watch.  I'll post a list of the requested films here as they come in.

I look forward to the lack of control.