Carnival of Blood is not irredeemable by all means. The Coney Island setting is a good setting with a real sense of fun and atmosphere and Gloria Spivak while overacting to maximum degrees is hilarious. And there is a little entertainment value, though mostly unintentionally. The rest of Carnival of Blood is very schlocky however. The movie is very clumsily edited with lighting that does nothing to enhance the mood and very amateurish-looking effects. The music is repetitive, irritating and out of place more often than not and the killings are not that inventive and further marred by some of the worst gore effects in the history of movies. Carnival of Blood also comes across personally as a classic case of too much talk and not enough horror or suspense. There is a lot of dialogue, and pretty much all of it sounds clunky and improvised, the pauses and constant stumbling over lines being tell-tale signs. The story was a silly one to begin with but for a horror there is nothing here horrifying, tense or suspenseful, everything is far too predictable and pedestrian(often not much happening). The direction is very flat, while the acting is atrocious with only Spivak and the teddy bears(menacing and somewhat cute) showing signs of personality, it just looks unrehearsed and like nobody cares about what's happening to them. And the killer is acted in such a hammy way that they can't be taken seriously. On the whole, occasionally entertaining but in almost all ways there is very little to recommend Carnival of Blood. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Perhaps a single notch above Herschell Gordon Lewis in terms of production value, and that is not saying much at all, Carnival of Blood is one of the few horror films set in a place where I want to see horror, namely, the carnival.Without much in-between, the film has a handful of locations used and re-used to try and make a movie. The balloon stand, the boardwalk, the interior homes of the heroes and the killer(which, given the budget, are probably the same house), and the tunnel of love. Oh, did I forget the gypsy who can never seem to give a decent palm reading? Anyway, yes, it is a slasher film, with a lame motive and a few red herrings, including Burt Young in a terrible role as Gimpy, a crippled guy with facial burns. I was surprised to see some disemboweling here. Oh, and teddy bears filled with guts. It seems a weirdo is on the loose at the carnival(of blood) and he kills people who have the teddy bears won at a certain games booth, where Gimpy works with his friend.There's a stabbing, a beheading, a skull crushed with a rock or brick, followed by eye removal. But none of the effects are any good, though there is a certain sympathy to some of the characters and their distaste for each other seemed surprisingly genuine.You better have nothing better to do if you're going to watch this movie. Like, if there are clothes in the wash, the dog needs to be brushed, or something like that. However, this film is currently available with the ultra horrid Curse of the Headless Horseman which not only doesn't deserve a review, it doesn't deserve a viewing. So, if you find this double bill, stick with Carnival and you'll be, well, sort of OK.

Here's one of those gloriously godawful "you gotta be kiddin' me!"-type of plodding and maladroit low-rent no-budget psycho sicko gore flicks that played on double bills in numerous drive-ins and grindhouses in the splendidly sleazy 70's. Indeed, this delectably dreadful dreck was paired with the equally atrocious, yet somehow oddly endearing dippy hippie terror trip-out "The Curse of the Headless Horseman" on a twice-the-tacky-terror twin feature offering that must have caused anyone who saw them together to either make an immediate beeline for the exit door 15-odd minutes into the first film or slump into their seats in a comatose stupor after the ending credits of the second picture finished rolling.A mother-fixated bargain basement Norman Bates-like oedipal wreck homicidal crazy brutally butchers assorted supremely irritating women at an especially dingy and rundown beachside carnival in upstate New York. That's it for the threadbare plot -- and said skimpy story is related by cinematic blunder wonder triple threat would-be producer/ director/writer auteur Leonard Kitman (who also puked forth "The Curse of the Headless Horseman" and later did a few scuzzy porno movies under the alias Leon Gucci) with a staggering all-out incompetence that's genuinely breathtaking to behold. Techincally, this crud is simply appalling: we've got slack pacing, an often meandering narrative that's overloaded with tedious talk and dreary filler, clumsy red herrings, grainy, ugly, frequently static and immobile cinematography, a grating score, ragged cut'n'paste editing, and cheesy splatter effects that wouldn't even gross out your grandmother. Moreover, the cast overall strikes out somethin' rotten: Willowy blonde lead Judith Resnick is hot, but vapid, Earle Edgerton makes for a singularly bland and uncharismatic hero, Andy Milligan film regular Martin Barolsky nerds it up to an almost unbearably geeky extreme as the balding, middle-aged fruitcake killer, Gloria Spavik hits new heretofore untouched heights in nerve-shredding celluloid obnoxiousness as an insufferably shrill and whiny fat old bag who gets her head bashed in, and Burt Young (Paulie in the "Rocky" series) embarrasses himself royally in his less-than-sterling film debut as a pathetic, irritable, grotesquely misshapen hunchback retard named Gimpy. Plus William Grannell (Jason Varone in the Cheri Caffaro "Ginger" flicks) briefly pops up as the long-suffering husband of a shrewish woman who gets decapitated in the funhouse early in the movie. However, this altogether stunningly ham-fisted honey does possess one exceptionally right-on asset: It's so rich and vivid in seedy local color that it comes across like a fascinatingly lurid and depraved mondo-style documentary on the grimy underbelly of the seriously seamy Coney Island carny scene.

Way back in the early days of home video you had to cough up $59 to own this movie. Now you can find it on DVD for a fraction of that amount; isn't technology wonderful?Okay seriously now. I first got this film because I hoped it might actually be MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD. It wasn't (duh!) but I certainly got my money's worth. Set in a Coney Island carnival most of our attention is focused on Tom (Earle Edgerton) who runs a booth where you throw darts at balloons to win a prize and his fire scarred pal Gimpy (he's billed as John Harris but WE know he's really Burt Young). Tom seems like a nice enough guy but you have to wonder how he gets through the day when the people who come to his booth all seem to be obnoxious, ill-mannered, drunken loudmouths.There is also a mad killer stalking the midway. Whoever it is commits some very brutal, but not entirely convincing, murders. I mean, Andy Milligan had more believable gore in his films and you REALLY have to be at the bottom of the barrel to be less effective than Andy! A knifing on the beach is very bloody but the camera stays on the victim so long we get too close a look at what must be a rubber dummy and Karo-syrup blood. Another victim is killed by a dart . . . oh when will low budget directors learn that you need a mighty good pitching arm to throw a dart through a persons skull, and even so a wound like that would probably not be fatal? Oh well, just keep repeating "It's only a movie . . ."So what did I mean about disturbing in parts? Well near the end when we find out not only who the killer is (no, I am not going to tell you! Sit through this movie and suffer like I did if you want to know!) but why he is doing it (a violent mental shock when he was a child; no wonder psychologists love to analyse these movies!) there is a scene of the heroine (Judith Resnick) finding a teddy bear stuffed with human entrails! That is the scene I remember most over all the previous cheap gore moments, it is unexpectedly effective and emotionally jarring. Tis' a pity the rest of the movie could not keep up.Truly this is one for junk movie completest only. I'll bet once Burt Young hit it big in the ROCKY movies he crossed this title off his resume.PS: Did I ever find MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD? I sure did! Check out my review of that one sometime.