Probably the closest to an unsettling dream captured on film that I’ve ever seen. ‘Carnival of Blood’ (1972)…(Not to be confused with ‘Carnival of Blood (1973) ) Is a hazy, feverish experience to sit through. And; much like a dream its incoherent, messy, all consuming and woozy.

Theres a loose plot running through this thing about a serial killer who’s picking off victims at a fun fair. But the main…’experience’ from this film is the unpleasently drunk feeling vibe, as we follow a handful of characters as they deleriously rumble through various…happenings for lack of a better word until either they’re picked off by the killer, or end up having some kind of psychopathic breakdown.

highlights include (but arnt limited to) an arguing married couple who go on a date to the fair, where one of them doenst want to be there and the other one painfully tries to drag him onto more and more rides as he visibly gets more and more irritated. A local drunk who hooks up with a young lady at the fair, tries to win her a prize and ends up having an existential, and a recently engaged couple who hear about decapitations occring on the fairs ‘ghost train’ ride, and decide to go undercover to see whats what.

Its a grimey, gritty and deeply unpleasent experience to sit through, the script quite honestly feels like it was written sober and edited drunk, the pacing is consistent, but because the actual story is really more a series of happenings. its less that the films leading you through its 3 acts, and more that the films run you over and is now dragging you from its bumper across the 3 acts whether you like it or not.

The tone is all over the place, with hyper campy weirdness being intercut with genuinely unpleasent performances and heavy gore (with THE fakest blood you’ve ever seen in your life. It makes ‘Hammer blood’ look positively monotone.) The characters all read like they’ve been inhaling carbon monoxide while workshopping them and this is a film that just kind of…Stops. which only adds to the ‘otherworldly’ quality of it.

The direction is totally unprincipled. theres no real emphasis on an intentional style in the direction of this piece. But unintentionally, this film feels like a beast unto itself. A lot of the film appears to have been shot freehand, most shots are balanced or stabalized and the camera is prone to swing around feverishly. It feels INCREDIBLY chaotic as a work, which only adds to the nightmarish dreamy quality of proceedings.

The cine is kind of hard to guage because of how rowdy and unpredictable the direction is. Shots dont seem to have a considered compositional choosing. It largely looks like they were framed for necessity or “because it looked good enough”. It doesnt help either that the print AGFA have scanned for their recent release of it, looks like its been dragged across a multi story carpark several times and left out in the open air for a month. Its horrendous quality with VERY faded colours, scratches, dirt, grime. At times I fully expected to see a ‘Reel Missing’ caption or some kind of snap given just how mangled this thing looks. It absolutley adds to the ambience of the presentation, but It makes it hard to really truely gauge exactly what the film makers were trying to do.

Outside of that, theres a fair bit of B-roll that does help break up the sequences (though they insist on reusing several shots multiple times) the edit here is incredibly fast, loose and almost as chaotic as the direction with cuts that should qualify as ‘Assault’ in some states and a breakneck manic energy that genuinely brought on a sense of delerium.

All the cast are rigid as boards and deliver their lines with the vibe that cue cards are just off screen. They dont utilise the set space well and it only makes the 3rd act even weirder when the killer is revealed and they’re just very plain and dry through their whole performance.

Comparisons to the works of David Lynch or Chris Morris’s ‘Jam’ are probably plentiful when it comes to discussing this work, But I honestly havent seen anything quite so fever dream inducing in a good few years. Im not sure if I enjoyed it or not, nor do I want to revisit it again for a while. But Im certain i’ve seen something here thats very different from the norm, and that appeals to me.

Would almost certainly pair up well as the A-Feature to ‘Blood Shack’…now THAT’S a back handed compliment.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/carnival-of-blood/