CARNIVAL OF BLOOD (1970)
CURSE OF THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN (1973)
Directed by Leonard Kirtman/John Kirkland
Something Weird DVD
Reviewed 05.14.04
Review by Joseph A. Ziemba

THE FILM
An unearthed artsy gem and a monstrous waste of time. Them’s the cards we’ve been dealt with. So what are we going to do with them?

Kicking off this authentic 70s drive-in double bill, Carnival Of Blood turned out to be an excellently strange surprise. In fact, it’s probably one of the weirder films I’ve had the pleasure seeing as of late. Disjointed and surreal, to say the least...

After an opening credit sequence featuring mucho carnival footage and the lopping in half of a mannequin head, things get going. The main plot concerns a killer on the loose at Coney Island in New York. He kills only the most annoying people on the face of the earth with strangely eerie gore shots that cut away in a split second. Simple enough. In the subplot department, Dan and Laura are engaged, but fight a lot over nothing. This bothers Laura’s ultra-creepy friend, Tom, who works as a barker at the “pop a balloon” game. He reminds me a lot of Dr. Gore himself, Pat Patterson, and hangs out with his hunchbacked co-worker, Gimpy (yes, it’s Paulie from Rocky). That all sounds a bit run of the mill and non-plot-like, huh? Guess again.

With the backdrop of Coney Island at its disposal, Carnival utilizes awkward jump cuts, a recurring few seconds of magician music (over...and over), and a conversational acting approach to knock the weirdness factor out of the stratosphere. None of the dialogue sounds very scripted, which only adds to the “real” quality that seems to propel the film. Everything feels genuinely dirty -- the characters’ apartments, the rides, even the smelly old stuffed animals given away as prizes. While you’ll encounter some of the most annoying acting ever (a drunken sailor that acts more mentally disabled and a very scary older woman with a blonde wig and tons of ‘tude) and a few slow spots, I’ve yet to come across such an...artsy gore film? Oh, and I forgot to mention the teddy bear filled with gristly entrails. Yes, you heard me right. Surely one of the greatest unknown jewels in the vast vaults of Something Weird’s library.

Unfortunately, we now flip to the other side of the coin. After the first two minutes, in which a reverbed narrator babbles on about spooky things, Curse Of The Headless Horseman picks you up and drives you around the block for about eighty minutes, never deviating and becoming quite irritating in record time. Swiping its plot from a third tier Hanna Barbera cartoon, the film expertly combines botched lines, tons of hippies, and very bland cinematography into a poor exercise in bad film entertainment.

Dan has inherited his Uncle Callahan’s wild west amusement ranch, but there’s a catch. If the place doesn’t show a profit in six months, ownership is relegated to Solomon, the creepy old caretaker. In order to scope the place out, Dan does what any free lovin' hippy would do: invites all of his annoying friends (and fiancé) to live at the ranch and help out in turning a profit. They walk around and check the place out...A LOT. For a reason that’s never fully explained, a Headless Horseman starts terrorizing and begins throwing blood on the flower children. He doesn’t really kill anyone. A lopped-off mannequin head, a few fake blood squibs, an LSD freak out, and one tame rape scene later, we find out who the H-man really is and the film putters out with a “twist” ending.

Boredom is the name of the game here. The ridiculous looking Horseman barely has five minutes of screentime and he doesn’t do much. There’s lots of talk, even more hippy hijinks filler, and a severe lack of plot movement. Good god, make it stop.

AUDIO AND VIDEO
Both films are full frame and in very rough shape. I can’t decide which one fares worse, but both are saturated with green emulsion lines, scratches, and general noise. Call me crazy, but in this case, the lower than normal quality of the prints doesn’t seem to bother me at all. I mean, I couldn't care less about Horseman, but the dirty look of Carnival seems tailor made for this kind of presentation. The mono sound is on the muffled side for both, with Carnival having the slight upperhand.

EXTRAS
Not as many supplements as other Something Weird double features, but definitely some great stuff. Two TV spots for the features and several similarly-themed trailers are present (you know, juicy 70s horror), all of which made for a super fun watch. My particular favorite was Hunchback Of The Morgue, with a very Belushi-looking Paul Naschy. There’s also a gallery of horror poster and ad art, which I’m pretty sure carries over from several other SWV discs.

Aha, and the short subjects. Included here are The Hunchback Of Massapequa Park and Hands Of Justice, two teenaged Super 8 films from the 70s. This is the kind of stuff I love. Completely unknown and seemingly picked straight from an old attic somewhere, these two wonders flow with youthful good times. Hunchback runs six minutes and follows around a teenaged, fake-mustached hunchback as he terrorizes suburbia. In Hands Of Justice, our hero, Roy, daydreams about various gory (raw butcher insides with little fake blood = pretty gross) revenge scenarios involving the thug that mugged him. If you enjoy this sort of thing, you must see them. For more Something Weird Super 8 fun, take a look here. Rounding out the shorts is an old soundie reel titled “Carnival Show.” It’s in great shape and contains a few singing and dancing bits with a carnival barker. Not too interesting though.

FINAL THOUGHTS
If you’re at all fascinated with strange horror films, Carnival Of Blood should be on your shelf. It’s a real hot one. Just look at Curse as a bad extra, since the other supplements are pretty top notch.

Spookhouse greeter


Laura takes five


Tom & Gimpy


Oh my




Best I could do


The Weird World...