Malatesta's Carnival of Blood (1973) User Reviews

How? Why?

[BA_Harrison · 4/10 · 9 August 2020]

Malatesta's Carnival of Blood was thought to be a lost movie until 2000, when the director eventually released the film on DVD. Some might argue that it would have been better if the film had stayed lost, but then fans of trippy z-grade garbage would have been deprived of what has to be one of the weirdest movies of all time.

The film takes place in a dilapidated carnival whose owner, the enigmatic Malatesta (Daniel Dietrich), appears to be a total stranger to the term 'health and safety'. The rides not only look like death traps, they ARE death traps, the people who go on them winding up as tasty snacks for the ghouls who live in the caverns below, or simply losing their head (as one poor guy does while on the rollercoaster!). The newest employees at the carnival are Mr and Mrs Norris (Paul Hostetler and Betsy Henn), and their teenage daughter Vena (Janine Carazo), whose job it is to run a shooting gallery. However, the real reason the Norrises are there is to try and find out what happened to their son, who went missing while at the carnival. Friendly carnie Kit (Chris Thomas) tries to help Vena stay alive for the duration, but the attraction's vampiric manager Mr. Blood (Jerome Dempsey) has his heart set on drinking her blood.

Crazy camerawork, eccentric performances (a wild-eyed litter-picking ghoul, singing cannibals, a transvestite fortune teller, and Hervé Villechaize as creepy dwarf Bobo), incomprehensible dialogue, and set design that consists largely of assorted junk, and large sheets of plastic, aluminium and bubble wrap: Malatesta's Carnival of Blood is quite unlike anything I have seen before, and quite unlike anything remotely resembling coherent film-making. The action randomly veers off into nightmarish surreality at the drop of a hat, and features bizarre characters who drift in and out of scenes, while director Christopher Speeth exercises his creativity with his oddball aesthetic combined with disconcerting sound design (the weird visuals including back projection of horror classics The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame). There's even some fun gore to be had: the aforementioned rollercoaster decapitation, death by litter-picking stick, a juicy spike in the eye, and the half-eaten body of some poor schmuck.

The result is an undeniably unique experience, but so is pouring a bucket of fire ants down your trousers.

3.5/10, rounded up to 4 for Villechaize talking in rhyme.

Should have been an hour shorter.

[zombiepaddington · 4/10 · 22 April 2023]

This movie felt like an awful fever dream. I was looking forward to seeing it because it's set in a carnival and it's from the 70s, two things I love! I thought it would be an instant hit for me but it wasn't. I found it to be quite boring, it really could have been cut down to a 30 minute short film without sacrificing anything at all from the viewing experience. The movie had a lot of potential but they didn't make the most of the carnival grounds as a backdrop. The movie didn't offer me any reason to give it a second viewing. It had a couple scenes I thought looked neat but the visuals didn't ooze into other areas of the film. Most of the time you're staring at a plain black background. The movie doesn't look good and wasn't filmed in a way that made me feel engaged, it was amateurish and left me thinking what could have been if it were handled with more care. The characters are stiff as a board and I didn't really care what happened I just wanted the movie to end. The few death scenes that were in the movie were a bit comical in their corniness, they at the least deserve to be shared to friends as standalone clips.

Hahaha I love these movies!

[kevrcjr-26969 · 4/10 · 25 August 2021]

If you have a sense of humor, and you know the people that made this movie, tripped balls give this one a watch and LOL! I've seen worse.. and I can never look away. Crazy.

Surreal Atmosphere Makes for a Nice Gem

[Michael_Elliott · 7 March 2017]

Malatesta's Carnival of Blood (1973)

*** (out of 4)

Malatesta (Daniel Dietrich) runs a fun carnival where he hired a couple people to help run the place. What Malatesta doesn't realize is that the two people are basically working undercover because they're searching for their child that went missing at the carnival. What the parents don't realize is all the sinister things going on there including the fact that Malatesta is a vampire.

MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD is the only film from director Christopher Speeth and it was pretty much forgotten and never seen for thirty-years. All of this changed when the director started selling copies of a DVD from his personal website. Before long the film gained a small reputation but then Arrow Video released it to Blu-ray and DVD in a Special Edition form. As the introduction by Stephen Thrower states, it's a pretty weird little film and certainly one that deserves more of a following.

If you're looking for a coherent storyline then you probably won't enjoy this movie. There's actually very little of an actual plot and instead the film really plays off like a dream you might be having while you're also running a very high fever. Some have called the film's look psychedelic, which might be a good way to describe it. The story is basically being told by the visuals, which are actually quite striking and I'd argue that the dream-like nature of the picture actually works for it. The entertainment value certainly comes from the bizarre and surreal atmosphere.

The performances are a bit all over the place with some of them being incredibly good while others are clearly being done by inexperienced actors. Still, none of them are bad enough to ruin the film. There's also an effective music score that helps build up the atmosphere and there are some really nice gore effects throughout the picture. There's not a lot of violence but when it does happen with get some of that classic 70's overly-bright red blood.

MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD isn't the greatest film ever made and there are certainly some flaws throughout it including some pacing issues. Still, at just 74-minutes the film is certainly worth watching and it's bizarre and surreal atmosphere really makes it stand out.

What did I just watch?

[rogue9102 · 1/10 · 11 July 2020]

Everything in this movie was awful...the plot, the directing, the lighting, the acting. As a fan of b-movies that are so bad theyre good, I couldn't see one good thing about this mess.

Alice in Wonderland, on acid, at the carnival (with cannibals)

[drownsoda90 · 7/10 · 24 January 2021]

"Malatesta's Carnival of Blood" follows a husband, wife, and their young adult daughter who visit a rundown amusement park posing as potential new employees; they are actually there to locate their missing son, who worked at the carnival. To their horror, however, the park's mysterious proprietor, Malatesta, is hiding a gaggle of cannibals in caverns beneath the rides.

This little-seen horror flick plays like "Alice in Wonderland" on bad acid, but in a good way. It is remarkably low-budget, with sets that often appear to be vinyl-lined tents standing in as limestone caves (unconvincing, to say the least), but the shortcomings oddly don't seem to matter because they are obscured by the stylish cinematography and general atmosphere of complete and utter weirdness.

In similar fashion, the screenplay for "Malatesta's Carnival of Blood" is also a slipshod effort, with little connective tissue to make sense of what exactly is going on (even the main characters' arrival at the carnival is barely elucidated, making it somewhat confusing as to why they are there in the first place)--and yet again, it doesn't really matter, because the film is more a mood piece than anything. Surreal visuals reign supreme, with creepy carnival props, underground halls of mirrors, silent movie theaters where the cannibal ghouls congregate to watch movies(!?)--the weirdness never ceases.

The film's main character, Vena, leads the audience through the proceedings as she spends a hellish night in the amusement park searching for her missing brother, and the proceedings have an "Alice in Wonderland" sensibility about them. The actual nature of the villains here is also not totally explained, but their ghoulish appearance in slathered-on grey makeup manages to be effectively captured in the claustrophobic cinematography. In the end, the film doesn't really register as a narrative piece, but it succeeds magnificently as an otherworldly, nightmarish adventure that resembles a bad trip. 7/10.

Suffers from terrible dialogue, wooden acting and headache-inducing editing

[tomgillespie2002 · 3/10 · 12 January 2016]

Every now and then I'll come across a movie made by a director who has since vanished into cinema obscurity; a one-off of such outright lunacy that it may have just been pretty good had more money been in the pot, they employed actors who could act, or the screenplay was written by someone with the ability to string a few half-convincing scenes together. George Barry's Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977) comes immediately to mind. The experience is confusing and often laughable, but somewhere beyond the ropey special effects and wobbly sets, there's something interesting going on. Christopher Speeth's Malatesta's Carnival of Blood is one such movie, having recently emerged from decades in the basement.

The plot, if you can call it that, revolves around a run-down carnival operated by the creepy Mr. Blood (Jerome Dempsey). A young lady called Vena (Janine Carazo) and her family move into a trailer in town to run a shooting gallery at the carnival, and Vena quickly becomes close friends with the hunky guy who runs the tunnel of love. However, lurking beneath the fairground is the owner, another creepy guy called Malatesta (Daniel Dietrich), who looms over a family of weird zombie-cannibal types who stalk the grounds at night. As she awaits the arrival of her boyfriend, Vena and her family quickly discover that they are in danger, but will they escape Malatesta's grasp before they are devoured?

If you're a fan of acid-trip cinema, you just may enjoy Malatesta. There is a moment in the film when Vena, trying to escape the clutches of a hungry hoard, seems to experience a series of dream- like moments, caught up in weird devices and running down an abandoned road. It's a visually striking, mind-bending moment, but sadly the only aspect of the movie to be savoured. Along with the confusing plot (the father keeps talking about getting revenge for something that isn't made clear), the film also suffers from terrible dialogue, wooden acting, headache-inducing editing, shoddy make-up, and a distinct lack of action. I find carnivals a fascinating setting, especially for horror, but the park here is constantly empty and in darkness. See only for an early appearances by a near-inaudible Herve Villechaize.

An American Horror Project

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 12 April 2016]

The Norris family get jobs working at a seedy old carnival as a cover for searching for their missing son who disappeared after visiting said carnival. Eccentric manager Mr. Blood turns out to be a vampire while the evil owner Malatesta rules over a gaggle of ghastly ghouls who watch silent movies when they aren't feasting on human flesh.

Director Christopher Speeth grew up in the world of theater, and at college was trained in the tradition of the documentary. He made one film called "Sugar" following two very different diabetics, and then "Dona Nobis Pacem", an anti-Vietnam War film featuring footage of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. If he had done nothing else, this footage would have made him immortal, even if not necessarily famous.

By pure coincidence, Speeth met Richard Grosser on an airplane. Grosser had a strange background, starting out as a violin virtuoso and then getting mixed up in the development of the ENIAC and UNIVAC computers. Grosser proposed the idea of a horror film to Speeth, with his thought on the matter being quite simple: under the current rules, an investment in a film could be used as a tax shelter. The film was birthed as a write-off!

Playwright Werner Liepolt was hired to construct a script. He started with legendary cannibal Sawney Bean (also a source for "Texas Chainsaw massacre" and "Hills Have Eyes") and then incorporated circus elements. Allegedly, Speeth's house had a fortune telling machine and merry-go-round horses converted into chairs, so Liepolt assumed this was the sort of thing Speeth would like to see on screen. Liepolt was very conscious of the words he used, with "carnival" literally being a celebration of meat.

Much of the film's dreamlike narrative came about during post-production. The movie was edited again and again, which produced a non-linear quality to the picture, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. If you like cut and dried plots, this might not be for you.

You might wonder, if this is a good film (and it is), why have I not heard of it? Well, there could be many reasons, but the biggest is simply that the film was not available. Apparently after a screening or two, it ended up in Christopher Speeth's attic, collecting dust until 2003. At that point, Windmill Films released it on DVD, but it quickly went out of print. Don't be ashamed if you never heard of Windmill Films, because no one else has either.

This film is presented on glorious blu-ray as part of Arrow Video's American Horror Project (Volume 1). Of the three films in the set, it appears to be the leanest on special features, with no audio commentary listed. But this is just an oversight, as we do have one, from Richard Harland Smith of Video Watchdog. Furthermore, we do have brand new interviews with director Christopher Speeth and writer Werner Liepolt which should provide viewers with plenty of insight. (If you're still hungry for more, track down a copy of the December 2009 issue of Video Watchdog and check out the in-depth article from Shaun Brady.)

Where is my mind?

[Coventry · 5/10 · 7 November 2020]

Apparently, this film was presumed lost for many, many years. If you ask me, there were more things "lost" here. Like writer/director Christopher Speeth's control over his own twisted imagination, or the minds and sanity of literally all the people who were involved! This movie is messed up, and there isn't too much else I can write about it.

A family of three, parents and daughter in her late teens, infiltrate in a sinister carnival and attempt to fit in, but their real mission is to find out what happened to their son/brother who vanished without a trace but was last seen at the same carnival. Oh yes, there is something resembling a plot, but it's subordinate - by far - to the grueling Z-grade atmosphere, the uniquely eccentric cast of characters and the wide variety of random moments of sheer madness. Who knows, maybe Speeth aimed for art-house but couldn't overcome the budgetary restrictions? All I know is there are ghouls that munch and gaze at silent horror films in the carnival's backstage area, park rides that decapitate people or make them disappear altogether, vampires that walk around in broad daylight, transvestite fortune tellers, and a rhyming dwarf who pops out of secret carny wagon doors.

Pure 70s grindhouse insanity, complete with thick more-orange-than-red blood, decors and scenery that seem to come straight out of the junkyard and the director's family & friends filling in all the supportive roles to do him a favor... or out of pity. I can't possibly rate this any higher than an already very generous 5/10, but rest assured that it comes recommended.

Fairly unseen flick about a family that goes to work at a carnival.

[robocopssadside · 7/10 · 18 February 2005]

A man named Mr. Blood (who looks like Frasier, if he dressed up like Dracula) seems to be the front man. After settling in, the more carnival workers they meet, the sooner they realize the place isn't right. The movie seems to be fairly cut, there are a lot of inconsistencies in the plot. For instance, there seems to be a revenge type back story with the man of the family by the way he talks in some scenes, but there's never any concrete evidence to prove this theory.

Anyhow, when it goes dark, a whole heap of cannibals who used to be workers inhabit the carnival, and eat the flesh of people who visit. The explanation is that they eat human flesh because they were never told it was wrong, lol. Same cannibals also have great tastes in classic horror. Several scenes in a small theater show the flesh hungry crowd watching Cabinet of Dr Caligari and other films from yesteryear. There's also ghouls, a cultist/wizard named Malatesta and Hervé Villechaize from Fantasy Island. Wacky bunch of freaks, I tell ya! Most of the gut munching scenes were cut out, but you can view them in the outtakes section of the DVD. It's a shame they weren't added back in, but apparently American Zoetrope had a problem with the MPAA while remastering this lost film for DVD. A few scenes are still lost, for the time being, I believe. Either way, the cut scenes are worth watching, because it is pretty damn nasty in a few scenes. Another worthy mention of gore is a guy who smokes a joint getting beheaded while on a roller coaster. Lots of fun there, and a good creepy atmosphere.

Surprisingly no nudity. Surprising because the female lead runs around for half of the movie in her nightgown, pursued by ghouls and Malatesta. Great little trippy nighttime chase scene with her through the entire carnival, where death and carnage is discovered in all corners.

It has a great little bizarre ending too. Lots of fun to be witnessed in this incoherent, mindless Drive-In slice of cheese. Recommended for Fans of I Drink Your Blood and Carnival of Souls.

Pure Garbage even for '73

[dommer909 · 1/10 · 16 January 2023]

To enjoy this movie because it's bad is to be as pretentious as the folks that made it. Incomprehensible trash from start to finish. Someone wrote this was "existential"..... no, it's just amateurish and awful. Barely a plot cobbled together so the director and set director can show how pretentious and up their own a$$ they are. Using footage from classic films that are in the public domain like some kind of homage. Did the director and writer actually watch those films? Did they notice that even with no sound they made sense? I've watched a lot of bad movies, this is hands-down one of the worst. Rather embarrassing it's made its way onto streaming, literally anything is better than watching this.

Genuine American Classic On That Brown Acid From Woodstock

[Steve_Nyland · 10/10 · 17 May 2006]

If any of you doubt that people used to eat a lot of acid in the 1970's as well as during the 1960's, go find MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD. Not only is this one of the most mind-bending films ever made by people who were either completely insane OR tripping their head's off, it is also one of the most unique American shockers made during the horror boon years of the early 1970's when US filmmakers struggled to keep up with their European counterparts. Here's one that did.

THE PLOT: A nebbish small town family goes to work at a carnival in some decrepit, decaying upstate armpit half-city that is actually a front for a perverted cult of fanatics who feed on human flesh and watch old silent movies down in the catacombs below the carnival. One by one the family and their friends are lured to their deaths, and eventually eaten. I guess.

This is another one of those movies that isn't really about it's story: This one is about creating atmospheres or moments out of piles & piles of used second hand rubbish, like sheets of mylar, hand made puppets, old junk you'd find along the river down by the train tracks and lights filtered by patterns made out of colored bubble wrap. Made on a budget of about 1/100th your average "low budget" shocker these days, MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD is a triumph of ephemeralia as production design, and set in the cold blooded creepiest carnival or fairgrounds ever built -- That it was a real world pre-existing locale makes it even creepier. Everything is old, rickety, about ready to fall apart, shabby, unkempt, peeling with old paint and badly in need of some shoring up. "Accidents, we've had lots of accidents" relates Mr. Bean, the carnival's oldest employee who sports a hook for his right hand.

Yet people still flock to this "carnival" looking for fun: You can play dunk Bozo or shoot ducks for prizes, there is a tunnel of love, and a roller coaster that people are just losing their heads over. A hard working handyman keeps the grounds clean with his litter stick, picking up trash, drink cups, bloody remains of people torn apart for lunch, and a smile on his face that is the very essence of "frightening". He loves his work though, and like all of Malatesta's employees enjoys a special place that is more like a family than just a job, much like how that nice man Charles Manson's family was more than just a mob of brutal, psychotic, homicidal maniacs. Malatesta himself is an odd bird, not much of a businessman and more like an impresario, or figurehead of some kind of underground society, I can't make up my mind.

It's strange to think that THE EXORCIST was made the same year as this movie: The two couldn't be further apart as far as aesthetic exercises in creative design. One is a literal depiction of evil that spells it all out & leaves nothing to the imagination, the other is all about creating visual paradigms with layers of meaning that go beyond just what you see or hear. You watch THE EXORCIST and (if you are like me) cannot help but sit there & tick off the cinematic tricks doubtlessly being used to create the appearance of fire and brimstone ... You watch MALATESTA and you wonder not only how the hell did they stage what you see, but how the hell did anybody think this up?? Hazard and chance as production design elements perhaps, tons of blotter acid maybe, but the film is *SO* tightly scripted and choreographed that it cannot possibly all be improvisation.

It's like a big hippie movie from hell, with trippy sights, weirdo sound & music effects, singing baroque cannibals (who are pretty good, actually), double meaning laden dialog that never quite sounds like people just delivering lines, all topped off by an ending so open that no sequel was even needed: There is a Carnival of Blood in every small or large town just waiting to be discovered and explored by people who might need to vanish. Feeding the hungry is also a national past time -- why not do it ourselves? the movie asks. And while sure, this is one of the creepiest, most atmospheric and potentially unnerving non-Hollywood horror movies ever made it is also an incredible study in how you can make movies for just peanuts. Watch the lady washing her hair in a mud puddle or the finale calliope organ number with the bendy mirrors, and tell me you have ever seen anything quite like it. While it might make a great double bill with CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS (another Manson-inspired ultra low budget regional American horror classic) there isn't another movie to my knowledge that looks like this. And at about 74 minutes it's just the perfect length, with excellent pacing and nary a dull moment.

You may not understand what you are seeing but you sure won't be bored by it, and it's most assuredly a "love it or hate it" kind of experience: You'll either say this film is just too bizarre and nothing happens or you'll wish that there were more bizarre movies with even less happening like it to enjoy. There aren't, so live it up.

10/10

Gore Mongral Movie Review: Malatesta's Carnival of Blood

[ChiefGoreMongral · 2/10 · 28 August 2006]

Malatesta's Carnival of Blood is a long lost drive in flick starring Herve'de (De Plane De Plane) Villechaize that showed up over the last year on DVD. I wish this would have stayed lost lets take a look at this train wreck. The movie in a nutshell is about a man who is running a carnival that below it harbors zombie-like cannibal people that eat some of the patrons who visit.

Let me start off by saying that when the movie first started I thought this would be something along the lines of an H.G.Lewis or one of the many other cool drive-in classics that are out there. However once I reached the end I realized I had just seen a "movie" that was so incoherent that I was amazed that someone actually wanted to dare release this in the first place let alone re-release it to DVD. Where to begin lets start with the good...... It had Tattoo in it from Fantasy Island.....it had cannibals.....someone gets decapitated.....oh who am I kidding this movie BLOWS!!! For me to say that is a lot as I always try to find something good in everything I watch. Let me just skip to the bad here and it is a lot. Do you have an hour of course not so Ill do a brief list of the issues: 1) Editing was GARBAGE. 2) The story (though sounding quite simple) was confusing (thanks to the poor editing and a director that does not know what he is doing). 3)We do not know where the cannibal people come from until the last 3/4 of the movie. 4) Unless I was heavily drugged (or on drugs) most of the sequences were mindnummingly trippy (in a bad way). Lastly 5) The editing was Garbage..oh I already said that.

In conclusion if your idea of a good movie is a scotch taped story held together by horrible editing that would make a 3 year old Mongoloid proud and weird sequences that you cannot tell if the person in the movie is dreaming or if it is really going on (again this goes back to editing) Then have at it. I was hoping this would be a cool drive-in movie but it turned out to be THE WORST EDITED FILM I HAVE EVER SEEN (and that is saying a lot cause I have seen A lot). If you could look past all the confusion that this story conveys you are still left with a massive gleaming mess.

My Score: 2/10 Very Bad Movie, and not in the good sense either.....I give 2 points for Tattoo only and we don't even get him in the film until the midway point....Please avoid this carnival at all cost, you'll be a better person if you do.

That is it for now I hope to have some more reviews up over the next week until then remember: Midgets are cool but midgets used in bad films just makes the film fall that much "shorter".

At last the carnival has come to town!

[reptilicus · 8 November 2003]

After waiting for 30 years I have finally been able to see this movie! Other people who read my earlier entreaty finally contacted me and told me where to look. Lo and Behold I found out I could order a copy on DVD . ..and so I did. I have just finished watching it. Was it worth the wait? YES. The action takes place around a carnival that sometimes appears brand new and at other times looks like a wreck. You have to pay close attention if you want to know why; in a single throwaway line we are told "It's all an illusion." The movie becomes an exercise in existentialism very quickly. The carnival is built over a sulfur spring and the workers there are all cannibals because "No one ever told them eating human flesh was bad." Many of them have never seen sunlight in all their lives, however long that might be. They are also movie buffs who enjoy watching things like THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925), THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1923) and THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1919) in between snacking. The manager, the aptly named Mr. Blood, is a vampire and Mr. Malatesta is a . . .well . . .he might be a ghoul, he might be a wizard . . .that is one of the many things we must wonder about. The one "normal" family who comes to work there is questionable too. Dad seems to know something is wrong about the place and asserts "If anything happens I'll have my revenge." while checking his snub nose .38 to make certain it's loaded. Has he come to get even for some earlier victim? That is something else we never learn. I could easily say the shortage of gore is a weak point but remember this was made in 1973 before audiences were really used to loads of graphic gore in their movies. There was enough here to satisfy audiences of the time I think. A quick decapitation, an eye puncturing and the ghouls snacking on the flesh of a still living victim! Okay, I was not satisfied with the ending and I probably would not have been even if I had seen the movie when it was brand new but still I was not disappointed! Performances are all good, effects are . .. well . . . adequate, editing is effective at times and frustrating at others (fadeouts are happening constantly!). Is MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD worth seeing? Yes! The movie is out on DVD now but who knows how long it will be on the market. Get your ticket for this carnival now!

Dingy indie horror of the 1970s

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 27 December 2017]

MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD is a quirky independent horror flick of the 1970s with an evocative abandoned carnival location. The film feels a little like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes in terms of plot, with an unsuspecting family arriving at a deserted location and finding themselves assailed by the crazed family of maniacs living there. This is a dark and dingy production that manages to mix in zombies, vampires, and an evil dwarf played by The Man with the Golden Gun's Herve Villechaize. Overall, it's a very cheap and unconvincing production that doesn't really offer up anything that hasn't been seen before; it reminded me of Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, albeit not as much fun.

Watch It At Your Own Peril

[horrorcrave · 3/10 · 9 May 2020]

This film was not particularly entertaining or engaging but it did have some interesting and fleetingly memorable moments and characters that feel like it could have inspired Tobe Hooper. I enjoyed the character of the trash collecting carnival ghoul with the stick and sack for picking up trash. He seemed so thrilled to find candy bar wrappers, yet was just as eager to quickly turn the pointy end of said stick on to unsuspecting, helpless carnival goers! His lazy, independently moving left eye will haunt me for days. I did seriously love the atmosphere of the real amusement park with rollercoasters and funhouse rides. That kind of atmosphere is absolutely ripe for bizarre and terrifying horror; but the filmmakers utilization left me wanting more. I wasn't crazy about the cheap set decoration of plastic bubble wrap and sheets of aluminum but I did appreciate the horde of cannibalistic underground dwellers and their penchant for tearing people limb from limb though unlike Romero, this was mostly implied. Not much in the way of gory goods, aside from one fun beheading. So much of the film feels like a dream within a dream and you're just existing in Malatesta's wicked world; however I really didn't find Malatesta or his sidekick Blood convincing; though Bobo the dwarf was decent. I feel I have to give this movie a 3 out of 10, because it is not only below average in entertainment value and fun. I just can't see myself rewatching this film aside from a few clips near the beginning and towards the middle of the film. From about mid way to the end the Carnival of Blood just completely falls into impressionist nothingness. I sadly just didn't care. Is it worth at least a one time watch? Maybe...but you could have a lot more fun with Tobe Hooper or George A Romero's early work instead.

A mess, but interesting

[BandSAboutMovies · 4/10 · 10 December 2018]

Released with The Witch Who Came from the Sea and The Premonition as part of Arrow Video's American Horror Film Project, this movie is all about the Norris family looking for their lost son who got lost at an evil carnival. As a cover, they get jobs working in the carnival. And then things go wrong...

The carnival's manager, Mr. Blood, is a vampire. Go figure, with a name like that. Meanwhile, the evil owner Malatesta is in charge of an entire army of goons who watch silent movies and eat human flesh. Hervé Villechaize from TV's Fantasy Island is one of them.

After directing this movie, Christopher Eric Speeth went on to work in documentaries. This film is, well, a mess. You're never sure when something is a flashback or a dream; things appear in a fuzzy multicolored haze, much like you've been staying up all night doing drugs and listening to overly loud jam bands. I'm not saying I don't like it. I'm just trying to tell you how it is.

If your idea of a good time is watching people do autopsies while singing show tunes, then you're on the right spectrum for this one.

Innovative, unsettling, imperfect

[eddie-177 · 8/10 · 6 July 2017]

The horror films I enjoy usually fall into one of two categories: excellently made, or not well-made but still enjoyable in a trashy or kitschy way. This is a rare example that straddles the line between the two.

The film was obviously made with very little budget and by people with only minimal experience in film. But the cast and crew still had experience in the art world. They had good ideas. They knew how much a movie could be driven by its aesthetics.

To start with the negatives: the pacing is off, the acting is sometimes amateurish, and while the dialogue is okay, the script is hard to follow. You don't walk away understanding much regarding character motivation, or how action A led to consequence B.

But those are secondary concerns if a film is pleasurable overall, which this one is. The framing and lighting are disquieting throughout, with some dream-like scenes producing eerie effects that I've never quite seen before. Certain images--such as a closeup to a distorted view of the main girl's head wrapped in plastic, or a tracking shot of a bleeding man being slung across a ceiling in some kind of otherwise purposeless contraption--will haunt the view regardless of whether or not she could follow the plot.

The film's strongest aspect is probably its sound effects and minimalist score, which a blu-ray extra explains were made by a duo consisting of the director's older brother and a man who had been a military audiologist (seriously). The "weaponized" sound effects overcame technical limitations to produce a simulacra of bass-heavy "fear notes," the likes of which were copied and stolen by hundreds of horror pictures.

Overall, I'd consider this an important film if it were more well-known. I'm not exactly a horror buff, but I'm somewhat knowledgeable and I'd never heard of it until it was released on Blu Ray by Arrow Films (it's not even mentioned in the Psychotronic Video Guide). But its effects upon trash and horror cinema are palpable, and it's plenty enjoyable for anyone who has a moderate interest in such films.

The carnival is over.

[HumanoidOfFlesh · 8/10 · 6 July 2010]

Malatesta's carnival of blood welcomes its guests with cannibalistic ghouls and blood-sucking vampires.It's weird and very loosely narrated assault on the viewer's senses.The sets and images are gloriously surreal,the atmosphere is dreamy and there is a nice amount of blood as we see the ghouls devouring its human prey.The action is fast and there are some truly odd characters for example Malatesta,a creepy dwarf named Bobo with his annoying French accent,psychotic Mr.Blood and a transvestite fortune teller.If you liked Frederick Hobbs movies or "Death Bed:The Bed that Eats" check out "Malatesta's Carnival of Blood".8 out of 10.A surreal treat of epic proportions!

C This is the Van Der Graf Generator of progressive 70s avant-garde horror!'

[Weirdling_Wolf · 9/10 · 10 June 2021]

The weary Norris family gain employment in a freakishly dilapidated amusement park run in a somewhat desultory manner by the cadaverous proprietor, Mr. Blood (Jerome Dempsey) fatefully taking residence there in the hope of discovering the whereabouts of their missing son, but instead unearthing an unspeakably lurid B-movie bacchanal of surrealistic subterranean savagery more than worthy of gaudy schlock-instigator, Andy Milligan or chaotic psychotronic prankster, Ray Dennis Steckler, with an appropriately Rollercoaster-like alacrity the anxious family unsettlingly find themselves beleaguered by the increasingly nightmarish plasma craving parasites that prowl nightly in 'Malatesta's Carnival of Blood'.

Director, Christopher Speeth's singularly sinister, frequently outlandish, playfully perverse, outré horror extravaganza has a decidedly warped, Todd Browning-infused Gothic dissonance that eerily imbues the shambling, decayed Amusement Park with a palpably unsettling threat of inevitable doom! A truly demented diorama wherein unspeakably vile, dark-dwelling wraiths lurk and gibber insensibly in the labyrinthine voids of this despicable, far from genteel locale; these pallid, cannibalistically-inclined ghouls all under the maniacal thrall of that eldritch moustachioed arch fiend, Malatesta himself!!!

While the actors performances are uniformly exuberant, with misanthropic, Mr. Blood and the truly wretched wastrel, Mr. Stick (William Preston) expressing the film's more refined theatrical sensibilities, the real stars of the fantastically skewed, psychedelically lewd 'Malatesta's Carnival of Blood' are the actively malevolent locations and the vividly imaginative art direction of surreal visionaries 'Alley Friends', it is their phantasmagorical explosions of garish idiosyncrasy that makes, Christopher Speeth's kaleidoscopic Carnival of carnivorous calamity such an unforgettably bizarre cinematic experience.

'Perhaps, even an esoteric genre unto itself, the artfully strange nightmare 'Malatesta's Carnival of Blood' is most certainly not for the faint of mind, and while the cost of entry might initially appear to be a mere bagatelle, the price of your exit could prove infinitely steeper than you could possibly imagine! - This is the Van Der Graf Generator of progressive 70s avant-garde horror!'

A free-form amateur spook show.

[EyeAskance · 11 January 2004]

An off-road ramshackle amusement park is maintained and operated by an odd assemblage of resident vampires, ghouls, zombies...and Herve Villachaiz. When night falls and the gates are closed, these fun-loving fiends retreat into their subterranean home within the murky depths below the park. A strange family unit of sorts, they enjoy watching old horror classics while they wait like hungry spiders for juvenile delinquents and random miscreants to illegally enter the carnival grounds.

There's an omnipresence of highly effective eeriness in this divergent, psychedelirious obscurity...in fact, the entire film is viscid with an unearthly distortion of its own secret recipe. It's entirely possible that this surreal edge could be merely incidental to misguidance or clumsiness during production(a scarce but occasional phenomenon exclusive to the country-club of penniless amateur cinema). Whatever the case, it works in a gangly, but wonderful way.

MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD is a gratifying sensory overload in a very elite minor-league of uncatagorizables, agnate examples of which might include BLOOD FREAK, DEATH BED;THE BED THAT EATS, and GODMONSTER OF Indian FLATS. This crazy flick slipped through the cracks once already...let's not let it happen again.

7/10

Singular 70's horror oddity

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 5 May 2015]

The Norris family get jobs working at a seedy old carnival as a cover for searching for their missing son who disappeared after visiting said carnival. Eccentric manager Mr. Blood (a flamboyantly sinister portrayal by Jerome Dempsey) turns out to be a vampire while evil owner Malatesta (an unnerving performance by Daniel Dietrich) rules over a gaggle of ghastly ghouls who watch silent movies when they aren't feasting on human flesh.

Director Christopher Sheeth, working from a quirky and inspired story by Werner Liepolt, makes excellent and effectively unsettling use of an actual rundown amusement park, does an adept job of crafting a supremely spooky'n'surreal dreamy atmosphere, relates the disjointed, yet still intriguing and idiosyncratic plot at a hypnotically deliberate pace, brings a take-no-prisoners nihilistic sensibility to the kooky proceedings, and delivers a satisfying sprinkling of grisly gore. Token breakout star Herve Villechaize contributes a stand-out turn as flaky poetry-spouting dwarf Bobo. Moreover, there's sound acting from Janine Carazo as the sweet Vena Norris, Lenny Baker as freaky transvestite fortune teller Sonja, William Preston as deranged groundskeeper Sticker, Chris Thomas as the amiable Kit, and Tom Markus as hook-handed creep Bean. The accomplished cinematography by Norman Gaines offers a wealth of stunning visuals; the shots of the ghouls watching silent movies in a dingy basement theater are especially striking. Best of all, this film radiates a truly off-kilter eerie vibe that's both distinctive and impressive in equal measure. Essential viewing for aficionados of outré underground indie fright fare.

Where IS this movie?

[reptilicus · 20 March 2002]

I have not seen this movie, but I want to! I have wanted to ever since I read that glowing review in an issue of "The Monster Times" so many years ago. I know the film is out there somewhere because I saw a trailer for it on a Seattle, Washington TV station so it does still exist. Where IS it? I want to see it. Heck, I want to own it! Okay people start checking those film vaults. It has to be out there somewhere so start looking for it. And when you find it, drop me a line.