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. Part by design, and part out of necessity, the movie’s atmosphere is that of a waking nightmare. That’s the key to enjoying Malatesta, getting on board with the dream logic the film plays in. It’s all quite entertaining if you buy what the film is selling you. 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. There isn’t much of a logical progression to the story. 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. Malastesta’s Carnival of Blood has not a care in the world for traditional plot and narrative structure.
The story sounds general enough, even typical. The family soon finds out the denizens of the park may be more ghoulish and frightening than they expected… The Norris family secretly plans to find their missing son, whose disappearance they feel has something to do with the park. Blood ( Jerome Dempsey) and owned by the mysterious Malatesta ( Daniel Dietrich). The place is operated by the totally not weird and suspicious Mr. 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. 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. 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. It remains to this day, 50 years later, the only feature film the two have worked on. This 1973 drive-in gem was directed by one Christopher Speeth and written by Werner Liepolt. This brings me to today’s feature – Malastesta’s Carnival of Blood. 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. It comes, it goes, and so do the people who operate it.
There is an innate sense that the carnival is hiding something. When was the last time those monstrosities were properly serviced, you wonder. The games are rigged and the rides are huge, clanking things of oil and metal. 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 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. 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. 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.
Carnivals and amusement parks are a prime setting for horror stories.
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