Sadly Over-hyped

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Carnival of Blood (1970) * (out of 4) An amusement park is the setting of this horror movie that has various people being murdered after they visit the location. The local D.A. and his (unwilling) girlfriend decide to set out and try to trap the killer.CARNIVAL OF BLOOD comes from director Leonard Kirtman. This here was his first movie and he would go onto make several porno movies before retiring from the business. For the most part this here is a wannabe slasher film and one that was obviously influenced by the Herschell Gordon Lewis pictures. This one here has very little going for it outside of the gore, which is certainly the highlight in an otherwise slow and dull picture.The biggest problem with this movie is the fact that the screenplay just doesn't have too much happening. The majority of the 88-minute running time has one annoying character sitting around and talking to another annoying characters. More times than not it really does seem as if there isn't any lines and that the actors are just trying to make stuff up on camera. This means that the running time gets dragged out even more and you have to put up with the fact that the majority of the bad performances have actors just rambling non-sense. You do have Burt Young appearing here years before ROCKY.The one thing this film has going for it are some memorable death scenes. There's one sequence where a hag of an old woman is attacked with a brick but before that her tongue and eyes are ripped out! There are other gore scenes including guts being ripped out. It's just too bad there wasn't much more of this because this is obviously what would sell the picture. Not the non-stop dialogue scenes that just go nowhere.

Carnival of Blood's cheap and cheerful gore scenes owe a lot to the splatter films of H.G. Lewis, but the stuff that happens in between the movie's messy murders makes Lewis's efforts look positively professional by comparison. Set on Coney Island, the bulk of writer/director Leonard Kirtman's extremely low budget horror follows a variety of obnoxious characters as they visit the attractions of Coney's famous amusement park, upsetting a killer with mommy issues, who metes out extreme punishment for bad behaviour. Investigating the grisly slayings is assistant district attorney Dan (Martin Barolsky) who drags his fiancée Laura (Judith Resnick) to the carnival to check out the murder site.Sluggish pacing and terrible acting from all involved make the film a real challenge to sit through, but Carnival of Blood's biggest problem is its repetitiveness, Kirtman using the same setup over and over again: introduce a thoroughly loathsome character, have them upset the killer, see them visit a fortune teller (who quickly ushers them out of her stand when she foresees their fate in her Tarot cards) and then bump them off in grisly fashion. All of this is sporadically interspersed by scenes of Dan and Laura as they get engaged, canoodle, argue and make up, and of sideshow barker Tom (Earle Edgerton) chatting to his hunchbacked assistant Gimpy (Burt Young of Rocky fame, in his feature debut).The whole film is a boring mess, but especially crap low-lights include the bizarre opening credits that feature a lousy theme song and a body-less head mouthing wordlessly, some of the worst drunken acting ever committed to film (courtesy of Glen Kimberley, in his one and only movie role), and the most insufferable woman imaginable (bespectacled and bewigged Gloria Spivak, who will have you cheering her character's death). Those who check the film out purely for the gore will be treated to a decapitation with blood spurting from the neck stump, a stabbing/disembowelment, and a woman having her tongue and eyes yanked out.

After having seen the interestingly strange Horror film The Undertaker and His Pals,I felt that it was a good time to pay a visit to the carnival and see the second movie on the disc.The plot:Going to a carnival,a number of various couples visit a fortune teller,who tells each of them to "go home" when she gets a card that she does not want them to know about. Ignoring her advice.each couple go on different rides at the carnival,which ends with them all getting brutally killed by a stranger stomping round the carnival.As the bodies start to pile up,Tom decides to investigating.Tracking down the fortune teller,Tom forces her to read his fortune,in the hope that it will change his fortunes in catching the killer.View on the film:Backed by sweet Folk songs and a scrambled Jazz score,writer/director Leonard Kirtman & cinematographer David Howe soak up the on location Coney Island filming,with wonky camera moves and long wide shots capturing the long lines for the rides,and giving the Slasher killings a raw,grubby atmosphere.Originally appearing to be a Slasher flick, Kirtman takes the title in an anthology direction via focusing on a new couple every 10 minutes.Whilst this stops the movie from hitting a dead end,Kirtman's fails to give the couples any unique features which leads to each of them being rather interchangeable,with the film only starting to heat up as Kirtman reveals the Slasher killer on a surprisingly tragic note,as the carnage at the carnival ends.

This is utter garbage,i just hope the other reviewer was joking but,i think he was dead serious.This is one of those dime a dozen cheapo horror flicks from the 70's that couldn't even be viewed even just for fun,the acting is nothing the scenes are loose and don't make sense and the decapitated head is so fake you feel sorry for the poor joker who made it.He's probably in an insane asylum contemplating his worthless existance and having nightmares about creating such a blemish in cinema history i hope nobody has the misfortune of watching this "thing".