Hooptober... And Then There Were Nine

48th Kill

So, the story goes that after finally completing this labour of love, director Christopher Speeth screened Malatesta's Carnival of Blood only for the audience to react rather strongly.... and not in a good way. Laughter, boos, the throwing of foodstuffs at the screen, that kind of thing. Not as bad as the antics of film critics in Cannes but still pretty negative. Stricken and distressed, Speeth immediately destroyed all the prints of the film at his disposal and retired from film-making indefinitely.

Knowing of this history, I couldn't help but be unsurprised at the reaction in the first half hour of this film. It really is pretty shoddy. Incredibly amateurish acting, rough-as-guts photography, very clunky editing especially in some of the early kill scenes which frankly don't really work. Combined with the film's rather grim atmosphere, you can see why these folks at the screening didn't give it much of a chance.

Obviously, as history would have it, one print of the film was rescued from oblivion and it has since become a cult classic with a very small but pretty devoted fanbase. And as the film moved into its second act (if you can really call it that - now I think about it, I have no idea whether this film follows the three-act structure at all), I started to actually dig it.

For one thing - it's pretty fucking unique. Speeth tries things in this film which just feel different from anything else. This sounds hyperbolic, but at times, the camerawork reminded me of something from a Noe film. I'll caveat that remark by admitting it's not within a million miles of the technical skill of Noe, but Speeth is trying bizarre shots which are exactly what Noe has that skill to pull off. Speeth never fully pulls them off, but he gets close to his own ragged version of success quite frequently, and it makes the film genuinely visually interesting.

Some of what he tries is very simple. We get lots of shots of writhing cannibals in front of a screen projecting a completely unrelated scene. It's such a basic technique, but it's so removed from any kind of visual logic, the resulting image is sometimes incredibly striking.

And then there's just the sequence of events taking place in the narrative. The film is so uninterested in exposition, its tendency to have characters hint at a logical storyline in some of their dialogue only for it to be later ignored by plot incident, and its reliance on just throwing you into situations and new characters and plot developments with no hint as to purpose or motivation or logic becomes weirdly entertaining in its own right. Eventually, one gathers that this incredibly derelict looking carnival (a great location too - this carnival was just about to be torn down and its fatalistic depression feels almost physically apparent) is the lair of a group of cannibals under the sway of the Count Dracula-like Malatesta ("Bad-Head" to his mates - I assume it's some kind of nickname poking fun at his poor cunnilingus skills). This is all a bit random, but then at one point the carnival's public front-man, Blood (Jerome Dempsey in a pretty awesome performance of constant diabolism) suddenly grows fangs and becomes a vampire. I don't know why, but I was delighted at the course of events.

All of this is served up with fairly generous helpings of gore - although it never looks particularly convincing, I still think it is the perfect sauce for this demented dish. I totally get the cult appeal of this movie - I even think it's something I would revisit, because this has to get better once you know what you're in for.

Best Kill (may contain traces of spoiler)

Normally, a scene where a foolhardy jock gets decapitated on a roller coaster would vie for Best Kill, but that one is edited so badly - for some reason his head gets covered in blood and then disappears in a bad jump-cut, so I'm not sure what the thinking was there. There is a rather gnarly scene of a guy getting eaten alive by cannibals - he's basically lying on his back with raw meat all over his midriff while stoned extras crowd around him and stick their heads in it (apparently there was a bit of a health scare during filming because some of the extras ate too much raw meat in these scenes and they had to be treated for stomach aches - ah the glamour of showbiz!)