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Almost unknown, this film played a few southern drive-ins when it was originally released by Windmill Films, but it really
gained a reputation and a want-list entry for many when someone wrote a glowing review in The Monster Times. The writer bragged, "It has more ghouls snacking on more red hot human flesh, more blood dripping from more wounds, more monsters than anything ever made."
The story has an unfriendly middle-aged couple (Elizabeth Henn and Paul Hostetler) and their teenage daughter Vena (Janine Carazo) moving into the grounds of a carnival, as they are apparently new investors. The whole show is run by the rarely seen but oft-mentioned Malatesta (Daniel Dietrich). Malatesta's main man is the brilliantly named Mr. Blood (Jerome Dempsey) who deadpans sinister gibberish as he caters to the normal guests/victims and later sports vampire fangs. Most of the workers are pale-faced ghouls with a clear taste for human flesh. Young Vena has it the worst as she enters a bizarre netherworld, from which there seems to be no escape.
Although the film contains no sex, the bloodshed goes so far as to show the ghouls devouring their human meals, as well as a head being severed during a nightly rollercoaster ride. Other weirdo characters include a transvestite fortune teller (Lenny Baker), a pasty lazy-eyed groundskeeper (William Preston), and Hervé Villechaize as an annoying dwarf named Bobo who spurts obnoxious French-accented dialogue. The eccentric characters watch silent Lon Chaney films and eat flesh, and the title character looks sinister with his long hair and black cape.
Considered a lost film for almost thirty years, Malatesta’s Carnival prints had all disappeared following initial distribution in the Southern Drive-In Circuit.
Well, I thought it was amateurish nonsense; here (pic) is the transvestite fortune teller frightening Vena.
HF September 2004
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