Carnival of Blood (1970)

Easily one of the worst films I've ever seen, Carnival of Blood looks like it was shot on 16mm and blown up for cinema release, so grainy and scratchy does it look.  Poor editing and often barely audible dialogue make watching it something of an ordeal, while the non acting of the largely no name cast is frequently painful to behold.   (Burt Young, billed as 'John Harris', in possibly his first film appearance is about the only recognisable face and he starts as he meant to go on, acting-wise, with a typically mumbling 'method' performance).  None of the characters are remotely likeable, let alone interesting, adding to the casual viewer's misery.  Not even the various killings are particularly well staged, with poor gore effects  and a pedestrian pace.  The best thing about Carnival of Blood is the Coney Island funfair background, with the location-filmed carnival sequences providing the film with ts only real feeling of life.  In a few sequences it does succeed in capturing the seedy, slightly dog eared, atmosphere of a seaside attraction in decline.

While the trailer might name check Hitchcock, the real inspiration behind Carnival of Blood, judging by the gore scenes, were the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis. Large quantities of animal offal are on show - not to mention gallons of fake blood - as victims are dismembered by the mystery killer stalking the funfair, targeting women.  (Actually, there really is no mystery as to their identity, despite some ham-fisted attempts at misdirection).  While the film is clearly aiming to be 'shocking', with stuff like eye gougings, it just comes over as shoddy.  The presence of a scenery chewing old gypsy fortune teller suggests that, apart from Herschell Gordon Lewis, another influence on the film were the classic Universal horrors, as she seems to have wandered in from The Wolfman.  I don't usually write about B-movies just for the sake of tearing them down, but I've seen others actually try to argue a case for Carnival of Blood being some kind of lost classic.  Which it patently isn't.  It's just plain bad, not even so bad it is funny.  Just despairingly bad.