Wooley's Halfway To Halloween III

What I take away from his TCM review is that he's trying to meet the movie halfway despite his biases. Can't object to that.


Ebert 1
Stu 0

I mean, I know we all know how Ebert felt about horror.

But this is so condescending!

I mean, I know we all know how Ebert felt about horror.

But this is so condescending!

True. But it's also a compliment.

Eh . . . .

"Marie Curie was a lot more intelligent than being a woman requires."

You know?

Eh . . . .

"Marie Curie was a lot more intelligent than being a woman requires."

You know?

I tried this movie out 3 or 4 weeks ago. It looked like, despite The Strangeness (and excluding my beloved Forbidden Zone), it might be the lowest budget movie I might ever intentionally watch. I made it about 8 minutes in before I gave up. It just looked below a threshold I could enjoy.
But I tried again the next day because I have been loving going to the bottom of the barrel, budget-wise, and finding what value I could. This time I made it only 6 minutes and 17 seconds.
This afternoon, I put it on in the background while I did other things, maybe just to be able to claim that I'd watched it. Put it on in the background until I can't take it anymore. And getting a little further in, it put everything else in the background and took me all the way to the end.
For a brief synopsis, the Norris Family applies for jobs at a carnival, where they are given the tour on a bright sunny day by the carnival's co-proprietor, Mr. Blood. Meanwhile, another family gets in the little boats for the tunnel-ride. The boats come out empty. That night, a young man takes a ride on the roller-coaster. He comes back without his head. His friend runs for help but gets a spike through the forehead for his efforts. Meanwhile, Mr. Blood has dinner with the Norrises. He doesn't eat much. Strict diet, apparently. Keeps him alive. After he leaves. The Norrises conversation turns to Johnny, who they will find or take their revenge on Mr. Blood. And so starts a cat and mouse game so absurdly one sided that the mice don't even realize they're mice. While the underground denizens of the carnival feast on the body of the young man, cheered on by Mr. Blood's partner, and Master, Malatesta, who gets to keep young Vena Norris' blood has already become the reward for the winner of the game. And it doesn't look like it's going to be Vena Norris.

(my apologies for the image-quality, best I could find)

Anyway, this movie turned out to be another bizarre treat for me. It's a weird story, with a weird setting, weird direction, and it's made even weirder (as is often the case) by the budget. The movie actually turns its low-budget into a sort of positive by making the most of the carnival setting where everything is fake and cheap anyway and this gives it a very real and very fantasy quality at the same time.


There is, to my utter surprise, an actual vision here, steeped in bizarre Euro-horror, that I did not see coming at all. That, nightmarish, dream-like quality that you see in so many of those films is part of the fabric of this one. There is a great sequence in the middle of the film that appears to be a nightmare, and a wonderful one at that, ...that suddenly turns out to be reality. With no warning. One minute you think you're in Vena's nightmare and the next Vena is running for her life in real-life. It's really nice.
Another thing I really enjoyed here is that part of the menace of the story is the way these fiends act seemingly with zero concern for anything stopping them. Mr. Blood and his monsters are utterly confident that everything is going to happen the way they plan, as it always does. They are going to kill who they want, they are going to eat who they want, they are going to live and devour in their bizarre cult, and there is nothing any victim can possibly do about it. They are not the least bit afraid of anything. They do not give a f*ck. And that’s a little more frightening.
My only gripe would be in casting. And one appreciates that casting can be tricky on this budget. But, while Mr. Blood's performance is very fitting, he's an odd looking man for the part, bald and doughy. And the ultimate villain of the piece, Malatesta himself, is wrong, which is a shame because a scarier Big Bad might really have pushed this film over the top. Especially in his Texas Chainsaw-like final scene. Wrong actor I think. Just wasn’t able to be menacing when he was supposed to be. Maybe it’s the time, the idea that in 1973, you could appear frightening despite a big bushy mustache. You can’t.
The negatives of this film, though, are really all budgetary. The movie has a nice vision, a clear narrative, and some legitimate artistry that elevates it. You wouldn’t believe, in the first five minutes, that this movie was even going to be watchable. But you will. And you'll be glad you let it take you to the end.


PS- This movie loves bubble-wrap. Sorry, that's a non-sequitur, but it's hilariously true. You'll see what I mean if you watch it.

Finally watched this one today and loved it. Why did this guy only make one movie?

Some bullet points:

*I was promised bubble wrap and this film delivered in spades.

*The entire thing feels like a nightmare. Scenes routinely switch from broad daylight to pitch darkness with no warning, and no indication that any time has passed. (As a result I don't know if this story covers the span of one night or one month.) A character will be in one location and in the next shot will be in another, again with no regard for continuity. How did they get there? How long did it take them to get there? We're not told. Mr Blood has the disconcerting habit of showing up in a scene completely out of nowhere, when there's been no prior indication that he was anywhere nearby. A less charitable viewer could attribute all of this to inept filmmaking/editing, but I found it effective whether intentional or not. This is how dreams work, after all.

*I like that the film is completely self-contained within the carnival. There's an occasional phone call or visitor from "outside", but the viewer is never allowed to leave the grounds. The police are called but do not respond. A trailer goes up in flames and firefighters do not arrive. The only patrons this carnival seems to have are the two stoners who show up in the middle of the night, surprised to find the place closed. This place is its own world.

*Wooley sort of mentioned the same thing, but there's not really any motivation for what these "things" are doing. They don't appear to be zombies in the undead sense, so are they just...good old fashioned Ghouls? Doesn't matter. They want to eat you just because that's what they do. While watching silent horror films, apparently.

*The sound design/score is legitimately great. I was on board from the opening shot of the weird policeman accompanied by the screechy soundscape. Not exaggerating when I say I'd buy a soundtrack CD in a heartbeat.

I can't remember the specifics of Carnival of Blood, but if the carnival ghouls remain mostly a mystery in how they function, why they function, where they come from, this is definitely going to play towards it working nightmare magic.

Some of them sort of act like zombies, roaming around aimlessly. But then you've got the custodian guy who can speak and function like a normal person, but he's also eating people. Mr Blood has vampire fangs for one scene and one scene only. And then what the hell is Malatesta supposed to be? Again, if you're the one trapped at this carnival none of this matters. You're getting eaten anyway. As it should be.

And let's not forget Bobo? What was his f*cking deal?

Ha! Yes, he was evidently just a garden variety psycho.

I dunno, man, he was mixed up in ghoul-shit some kinda way.