Part one here
If that one was a Elven on the strange meter this one goes to twelve. Welcome to...CARNIVAL OF BLOOD (1970)!
This is one hell weird and sleazy ass movie. This one has all kinds of stuff to make one go totally insane. The carnival music that loops over and over. People just talking without any real script. It feels like they made it up as they went. A character named Gimpy (Paulie from Rocky).
There's a killer stalking Coney Island. Killing only the most annoying characters possable. Wait that's everyone in this movie. Thrill to the scene were Gimpy and Tom share a brew and talk shop. Be amazed by a very fat woman with some of the worst and biggest sunglasses known to man. Shudder as a drunk sailor and his girlfriend antic it up. Behold a teddy bear full of guts. Teddy bear full of guts. That would make a hell of a song.
This film looked and felt so grimy I needed a shower afterwards. I also needed something a bit different from the weird ass flick I'd just witnessed.
So I went with David Hasselhoff and Linda Blair in a little gem of Italian trash cinema called Witchery (1988).
"They've got a bunch of legends about this island. Witches and rainbows and shit."
The Hoff and his low talking girlfriend are doing some bullshit book on witchcraft on
secluded island that the locales believe to be haunted by a witch. Meanwhile Jane (Blair) who's pregnant goes with her brother and her parents and a couple of others to the same island. Because They're thinking of buying it. They're none to happy to find Hoff and the low talker on the island. Soon Their all trapped on the island and a strange women in black is seen wandering the island.
This one truly is so bad it's good. The acting? Lacking in every department save for The Hoffster and Blair who try their hardest to act like they give a damn. Almost every one of the characters raves about an approaching storm about to cut the island off. Well this storm is a whole lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. There's some talk of wind and some shots of wave, not very big waves though and that's it.
In the mood for cheese? This baby will deliver. Besides were else can you see David Hasselhoff rapidly ask his virgin girlfriend for sex and get shot down every time. Fun.
The next film Superstition(1982) continues the whole witch/haunted house thing.
An alcoholic minister, his wife, their son Chesty Leggy (I swear that's how he pronounces his name), and their two teenage daughters. The daughters wear the most inappropriate of clothes for minster's daughters. Not that I minded. During a tense argument between the two comes my favorite line in the movie. "Shut your bitchy mouth!" That's greatness. Well these poor souls become the caretakers of an old house owned by the church. Seems the house has a bad reputation for being haunted and for killing off anyone who goes near it. Before you can say "This place has a death curse" people start dying. A head explodes in a microwave. Someone gets drowned in the near by lake. Another guy gets hung. And in the best death scene a buzzsaw blade flies thru a poor dude's chest.
The one has a little of everything. A little bit slasher, a little bit Omen, and whole lot of cheesy fun. Never boring at eighty minutes and lacking any sort of logic. Pure 80's horror movie greatness.
I saved perhaps the best for last. That being The Manitou (1978)...
I've got a real soft spot for this one. Directed by the late William Girdler (GRIZZLY and DAY OF THE ANIMALS) and based on the novel of the same name by Graham Masterton. The story concerns a fetus growing on the back of a woman, Karen Tandy (Susan Strasberg)that turns out to be an 400 year old Indian Spirit (Misquamacas) about to be reborn. The women's former lover (Tony Curtis) a fake mystic and an Indian medicine man named John Singing Rock (Michael Ansara) team up to stop Misquamacas (Or as Curtis calls him The mixmaster) and save Karen.
Wow. when I saw this one as a kid it freaked me the hell out. With it's freaky looking bad guy and gore I was watching this one with a scared awe as a kid. Now days it's a whole lot of fun and nostalgia. Tony Curtis and Michael Ansara seem to be having a lot of fun which helps the movie. And the Star Wars inspired computer vs. Manitou finial battle has to be seen to be believed.
Wrapping up I have to say that this was one of the best weekend long movie marathons I've had. A mix of stuff I'd seen with some new stuff. All strange. I'm looking forward to doing it agian soon I hope.
