Carnivals and amusement parks are a prime setting for horror stories. We’ve had a handful of prominent, frightening tales take advantage of the unique aesthetic and eerie unreality an amusement park can offer over the years.
What makes a carnival such a fertile place to set your horror tale in? Maybe it’s the thin veneer of joy and cheer that raises our hackles. The bright, multicolored lights, the dizzying swirl of calliope music and cacophonous rattling of the rides, the stench of popcorn, funnel cakes, and oiled machinery all merging and wafting through the air…it’s all artifice. As fun as it may be to take the family or a date out for a fun night at the carnival, you always get the sense it’s not necessarily a wholesome place. The games are rigged and the rides are huge, clanking things of oil and metal. When was the last time those monstrosities were properly serviced, you wonder.
There is an innate sense that the carnival is hiding something. It comes, it goes, and so do the people who operate it. Roving bands of strangers blowing into town naturally raise suspicions among townsfolk, do they not? Whether those prejudices are justified or not, they remain all the same.
This brings me to today’s feature – Malastesta’s Carnival of Blood. This 1973 drive-in gem was directed by one Christopher Speeth and written by Werner Liepolt. It remains to this day, 50 years later, the only feature film the two have worked on.
This DIY grindhouse charmer is a quick, hallucinatory acid trip of a film sporting all of the low budget charm and tenacious craft that horror aficionados love so much about the genre. Shot on location at Pennsylvania’s own long defunct Willow Grove Amusement Park, Malastesta exudes grimy authenticity that lends the film an atmosphere all its own.
The story, such as it is, follows the Norris family as mom (Betsy Henn), dad (Ben Hostetler), and daughter Vena (Janine Carazo) get jobs at a shoddy amusement park. The place is operated by the totally not weird and suspicious Mr. Blood (Jerome Dempsey) and owned by the mysterious Malatesta (Daniel Dietrich). The Norris family secretly plans to find their missing son, whose disappearance they feel has something to do with the park.
The family soon finds out the denizens of the park may be more ghoulish and frightening than they expected…
The story sounds general enough, even typical. Don’t let the familiar set-up fool you. Malastesta’s Carnival of Blood has not a care in the world for traditional plot and narrative structure. Speeth and his crew craft a nitty-gritty nightmare of hallucinatory fun that rides the line between ambitious incompetence and genuine genius throughout its 78 minute runtime.
There isn’t much of a logical progression to the story. Time is jumpy and disjointed, characters disappear and reappear at random, and the set pieces often devolve into extended montages of drugged out psychedelia overlaid with the scuzzy dream dimension that is the amusement park. It’s all quite entertaining if you buy what the film is selling you.
That’s the key to enjoying Malatesta, getting on board with the dream logic the film plays in. Part by design, and part out of necessity, the movie’s atmosphere is that of a waking nightmare. The park feels separate from the world around it – a pocket of hellish torment that the characters are trapped in and doomed to never escape.
The acting is about what you expected from a 70s drive-in feature. It ranges from serviceable to charmingly campy. Mostly comprised of non-actors, the real champ of the film is Janine Carazo as Vena. Tasked with running around the park at night throughout most of the film barefoot and in nothing but a sleeping gown, Carazo puts in a rather impression physical performance.
The details of the actual threat in the film are being kept vague on purpose to keep the viewing experience fresh for the uninitiated. It’s more fun to go in blind with this one.
Make no mistake though, Malastesta’s Carnival of Blood is not for everybody. It’s undeniably cheap with strong notes of cheese and corn. The lack of coherent structure will also turn some people off. But if you like your genre films off the beaten path with an added dose of the weird and wacky, you may find yourself having a great time.
Malastesta’s Carnival of Blood is a great exhibit on the everlasting appeal that obscure drive-in, grindhouse, and exploitation films have with horror fans. The passion to make something unique and interesting is seen in every handcrafted frame of the film.
Buy a ticket to this attraction and enjoy the ride.
Malastesta’s Carnival of Blood is now streaming on Shudder and Tubi.
