Carnival of Blood (1970), by Leonard Kirtman

Let's take a step away from the Great Vorelli's unnecessarily disturbing stage shows, to focus instead on another type of entertainment: the carnival. In the '70s, Coney Island was a gruesome place, where creepy, chipped-paint mannequins laughed at you from the scummy, fingerprint-stained booths. Carnival of Blood is a bit less clean than Devil Doll, but it's also slightly more self-aware in how it portrays its women.

After opening with a song from someone who seems to be trying quite hard to sound like Joni Mitchell, we meet a pair of couples. One of them I'll talk about first simply because they are not long for this movie--or this world. They do not have a good marriage, evidently, and fight bitterly all across the carnival. Eventually, they end up in the tent of the carnival's fortune-teller, who calls Ortega on them I mean foresees something bad for them in her tarot cards. They blow her off, and they next arrive at a dart-and-balloon stall managed by Tom, a mild enough man who nevertheless is willing to give the pair a free prize to make them go away. The dude wants to go home but the girl drags him to the Tunnel of Love, where she is messily parted from her head amidst the Willy Wonka-esque voyage through the dark. Exeunt Couple #1.

Our Main Couple, then, consists of Dan and Laura. The former has made his way to the position of assistant DA, and so he proposes to his longtime girlfriend. Unfortunately, their relationship is fraught with difficulty as Dan relentlessly obsesses over catching the Coney Island killer. When Laura complains about their problems to Tom, he simply tells her that fighting of any kind is awful in a relationship. Note the tone of voice he uses when they discuss this--it will important later.

Before Laura's chat with Tom, however, a drunken sailor and a young woman he's accompanying--presumably a sex worker of some kind--stop by Tom's stand. Tom is accompanied at this locale by his sweeper, "Gimpy," who is mentally disabled and sports a made-up face that looks like it lost a fight with an octopus. (For those of you who care, this is Burt Young's first cinematic appearance.) When the sailor and his girl get too annoying, Tom once more buys them off with a prize. The two wander around the carnival for way too fucking long, a stretch of the film significantly impaired by the sailor actor behaving much more like a man OD'ing on ecstasy and meth than a drunkard. They end up at the fortune-teller's, where she once again sees something awful in the cards and tells them to go home. Instead they choose to keep on wandering pointlessly. The sailor clumsily tries to steal the girl's purse, they start to have makeup sex but then don't for some reason, and the girl is stabbed and relieved of her intestines. We then cut back to Tom, who is wondering where Gimpy went off to. Uh-oh--well, turns out that he went missing because Tom went missing. Gimpy gets upset because Tom isn't supposed to leave him alone, to the mercies of the customers. To make it up to him, Tom asks Gimpy to join him for a beer at his apartment, which is full of creepy googly-eyed teddy bears. Yet despite the eeriness of Tom's accommodations, it's evidence against Gimpy that grows here, because he ends up telling an unnerving tale of how he once had "a good dog" who "went bad, so [he] had to kill him." Gimpy repeatedly crying, "I had to kill him, Tom!" is simultaneously spine-chilling and hilarious.

All this time, our Main Couple is still investigating the park and also fighting each other. We are diverted from them once again by a rando park customer, an extremely rude and noisy middle-aged lady. As with everyone before, she goes to visit the fortune-teller, who again foresees something terrible about to happen via her tarot deck. Then she has a run-in with Tom where she's rude as a Trump supporter to him and Gimpy. Sure enough, further down the boardwalk, the screeching old harpy gets her tongue and eyes torn out, and her head crushed with a brick.

Something finally actually happens with Dan and Laura, which is that Dan decides that it's funny to don a monster mask and rush at a woman who witnessed the aftermath of a gruesome murder. It gets worse. He wants her to go back to the park right away so she can get over her trauma, so that he "doesn't have a hysterical woman on [his] back for the rest of [his] life." Then he calls her self-centered. What a fucking cock. Laura ends up going to cry on Tom's shoulder, but he's aggravated by the unrest in their relationship, and when she says she vandalized the teddy bear Dan won for her, he calls her a slut "like all the rest." No one fucks with teddy bears around Tom. Still, when she runs off, he tracks her down and apologizes. Then, when he has locked in a ride, he starts calling her Mommy, and says he has to kill her. Ohhh, dear...Tom tried to warn Gimpy when he said that his parents used to fight. Now Gimpy is dead, and Laura is about to join him.

And in the end, the villain turns out to be disfigured, too, wearing a somehow-perfect mask. What a trip. Most people cite this movie's value as residing in its vintage footage of a now forever lost Coney Island. However, I found the story and the characters to be pretty damn entertaining too. There's so much unintentional trash humor here that I love returning to this movie whenever I can. And I think it has a message too--one which subverts its surface-level misogyny. In every case save for that of the fortune-teller, misogyny is used to establish the various suspects as possible killers, which extends even to Dan. I can't imagine Dan got better after this movie, even after Laura presumably told him about Tom's backstory as per her ride with him. But ultimately, the same disgust towards women and fear of them having sex proves to be the motivation behind Tom's slayings. There's no doubt that hatred of women is on the side of evil, even though the protagonist also insists on instigating it. There's a lot of sympathy held for Laura in the film, though, and I don't think she's just a piece of meat. Note too that Tom has every reason to want to kill the men in the relationships he targets. The guy from Couple #1 is just as bitchy as his wife, the sailor is literally just babbling drunken nonsense nonstop, and Laura specifically points out that Dan started all the trouble in her relationship. But to Tom that stuff is invisible because he has double standards. A woman abused him as a child, true, but he latched onto the fact that said woman cheated on his father as his motive. It's not the deepest examination of the hypocrisy of patriarchy I've seen, but it's clear that the movie isn't just conforming to tropes either.

Honestly, though, even if you don't care about that thematic stuff, Carnival of Blood is a boatload of fun for people looking for hilariously low-quality films. The gore is some pretty sweet H.G. Lewis-type stuff, and you simply won't believe Burt Young as Gimpy. Give it a shot if you haven't already.

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Continuity Cavalcade #1 - The Master's Timeline

Stories can get complicated, but we're used to complicated here at the A-List. Welcome to the first episode of Continuity Cavalcade, a brand-new show all about examining what continuity is and how it works, as well as the particular idiosyncrasies of individual stories. Look forward to episodes on Star Wars, Star Trek, DC and Marvel Comics, and many more! In our first episode, we'll be untangling the timeline of the Master from Doctor Who!

Image Source: Findagrave

Devil Doll (1964), by Lindsey Shonteff

There may have been a few of you last week who read my review for The Devil-Doll and thought to yourselves--"Hmm, that doesn't sound like the movie I watched on Mystery Science Theater 3000." Wrong Devil Doll! This is, like a few other inhabitants of the A-List, one of the movies that Joel/Mike/Jonah and the Bots introduced me to. This indie British chiller is nothing special, but it has enough trashy weirdness that it makes for a pretty entertaining watch even outside the riffs of the Satellite of Love.

The Great Vorelli is a stage hypnotist who works with a ventriloquist dummy named Hugo. There are many early intimations that Vorelli's shows are more than a little upsetting. First, he hypnotizes a dude into mentally taking the place of a Chinese person who the man saw executed. The trauma isn't permanent--the man forgets everything once Vorelli snaps his fingers--but it's hard to imagine any audience that would want to watch something like this. Then, when Hugo comes out, he and Vorelli prove to have a mutually abusive relationship. Admittedly, the audience still applauds wildly in the wake of his "comedy" routine that's about as funny as a math test. What is truly impressive about Vorelli's act is that he can ventriloquize (sure, we'll call it that) through Hugo without even having to touch him. It's like the doll is really alive.

But our story doesn't truly begin until Vorelli has met Marianne Horne, a wealthy girl who he hypnotizes into an expert dancer. It's clear that Vorelli has some sort of perverse lust for her, and when we meet Vorelli's other assistant, a 30ish woman who only covers half her ass onstage, we start to understand what sort of man Vorelli really is. It's clear that his current assistant has been drained of all hope and life by Vorelli's cruelty, and Marianne is about to be put on the same path. Marianne is scared of Vorelli--she says that much to her reporter boyfriend, an American named Mark English (an American named English...was that someone's idea of a joke?). But he telepathically compels her to come visit him, so she can invite him to her aunt's charity ball. During this time he shows as a wine called "Blood of the Virgin," and he begins to hypnotize her he repeats that the wine is "deep...rich...red...warm..." Ughhh. Nothing happens yet, but after a once-again depressing excuse for a show at the charity ball, where Hugo actually threatens Vorelli with a knife, Vorelli drags Marianne further under his spell and rapes her. Hugo, whatever he is, has had enough. He goes to find Mark, and tells him to look up what he was doing in 1948 Berlin. Mark sends a reporter friend to Berlin to investigate. Meanwhile, Vorelli ends up in some rather confusing soup when Hugo kills his washed-up cheeky assistant, to frame him for murder. Not only is this point basically forgotten, but it paints Hugo, a sympathetic character, as a murderer. It contributes to a surreal noir-like griminess that haunts the movie even outside of Vorelli's shows.

It becomes clear that Hugo was not always a dummy--in the late '40s, in Germany, he was Vorelli's assistant, after the man spent a prolonged period of time studying both medicine and mystical techniques in soul-transference. Eventually, during a show, Vorelli killed Hugo in a way that trapped his soul in the dummy. Now Vorelli intends to do the same to Marianne, apparently so he can get her family's money. What?! I would assume he would want his "bride-to-be" to keep her human body for as long as possible, given what he's done to it so far--and what he has a habit of doing to his female assistants. For a movie with this much sexual grime oozing up from beneath, it's a little jarring for the film to claim that the primary interest of this villain is money.

But anyway, this is all leading up to one of the best fight scenes of all time, pitting man vs. dummy. I can't possibly describe how ludicrously awful this fight is, so I will encourage you only to seek the film out for yourselves. It's a sight to see.

Devil Doll is an ever-welcome combination of cheap sleaze and effective atmosphere. Vorelli's show at the beginning is murky, smoky, and sweaty--there is no music, save for the ominous thumping beat we the audience get to hear. It would be an astonishingly eerie experience to watch a man force another man to believe he's going to be shot in the head in silence, in the dark. This movie seems like the sort of thing that would be decently shocking in early-'60s Britain, if anyone actually saw it. Plus, Hugo is a scary motherfucker--when Vorelli calls him ugly, he unfortunately does have something of a point. I'm not saying that this is horror gold, but the mixture of the sleaze with the oily, claustrophobic atmosphere is interesting to watch. Especially when it all falls out and becomes funny again. Invite Tod Browning over and you'll have yourself a zany double feature.

Oh, and I'll quote it before you know it: "Ham! I love it."

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The Devil-Doll (1936), by Tod Browning

And we're back!

We are switching back to written reviews for 2019, but rest assured there will still be plenty of podcast action at the A-List with a new show, Continuity Cavalcade, where we'll be examining oddities of canon and continuity across a lot of different shows and movies. You'll get to listen to that later this month. For now, however, let's get back on familiarly loopy ground with a return to the world of Tod Browning.

Paul Levond (Lionel Barrymore) is a convict who has been running from prison for weeks in the company of his cellmate Marcel. (Before we go any further, yes, Lionel Barrymore is playing a Frenchman, and no, he does not attempt any sort of accent besides his own.) Levond has been sitting in stir for 17 years now after his cheating bank partners embezzled their institution and framed him for it. While Marcel notes that Levond's heart is full of hate, he insists that he has something worthy to contribute to mankind. The two limp through the feverish swamps to his hidden laboratory, maintained by his disabled wife Malita, who sports a skunk-stripe in her hair and happens to be a mistress of goofy mad-science faces. It turns out she and Marcel had been working on a strange experiment that involves shrinking people's atoms so they become doll-like. Smaller people require less food, and so why not shrink people until there's enough to go around? Certainly beats snapping your fingers to kill half the universe. What's interesting is that the shrinkage's effect on the brain causes them to become even more doll-like, in that they can't move. Can't move, that is, until they are animated by an outside will. Yep--Marcel and his wife have created shrunken telepathy-controlled zombies. That's a pretty convenient thing to have control over when your cellmate dies, and your primary goal in life involves covertly assassinating the jackals who screwed you over. What I'm saying is that Levond and Malita are moving to Paris, where the latter will continue her experiments for the benefit of the former, while giving him a secret weapon to use against the three crooked bankers.

And man oh man do Levond and his newfound assistant show up in style. When we finally see Levond in Paris it's after he's established himself as an elderly, kindly toy shop owner named Madame Mandelip. Yes, it's Lionel Barrymore in drag. This strange angle is an attempt to connect it to the A. Merritt story this is based on, Burn, Witch, Burn, which otherwise has nothing to do with superscientific doll people or even a man escaping from prison and hiding in drag. In the original story, however, there is a menacing old woman, and in order to adapt that part of the tale Browning had to have his criminal lead disguise himself as an aging widow. In any case, Madame Mandelip's toy business is a perfect cover to get the killer "dolls" into the millionaire's houses. Indeed, it's so easy that the movie needs another plot to keep itself as a respectable runtime. Levond also wants to make good for his daughter Lorraine, who hatefully believes him to be a criminal and is trapped in an awful laundry where she earns next to nothing. He is deeply hurt that she hates him so much, and this helps guide him into extracting a confession from the last surviving banker which exonerates his family. He visits her and her grandmother as Madame Mandelip, where we learn the specifics on how deep Lorraine's disgust of her father goes. After obtaining redemption, Levond has one last meeting with his daughter, where he tries to offer her closure. Posing as Marcel, he tells her that her father is dead, but that he loved her very much, and wants her to forget him so she can be happy with her taxi-driver boyfriend. Levond then leaves the Eiffel Tower to step out into an unknown fate.

Tod Browning loved sentimentalism when he wasn't being crass. Much of the emotion is overdone, especially with Barrymore chewing every bit of scenery he can get his jaws around--though nothing quite makes it to Mark of the Vampire's "He used it to--to cup the blood." In any case, the theme here is nakedly meant to be one of love vs. hate. Characters talk about the hate Levond holds in his heart, Lorraine talks about how much she hates her father, and both of them turn out to be wrong. By giving in to their love for each other, they share one last beautiful moment as father and daughter, even though the latter isn't aware of that the man speaking to her is her father. It's compassion rather than pure vengeance or disgust that fixes things. Hey, I'll take it. I love love.

But then you remember that this is welded onto a movie about shrunken people who can be telepathically controlled. And how we're supposed to buy that toy horses and dogs are acceptable stand-ins for such. When the matte effects do show up, they're startlingly effective for the time, but are still a little Bert I. Gordon-ish. What makes the mad science great is Malita. It is clear by film's end that she is totally unhinged, even if her madness is linked to a beneficial goal. Admittedly, however, Levond has a point when he calls her work "monstrous." How much would you want to be shrunken down, in the interest of saving resources? Especially if the process was notably flawed? Good mad science is something helpful gone wrong--because who would genuinely go out of their way to make monsters? I love Malita's character and she helps make everything work.

The skunk-stripe in her hair, though, points out something interesting, which I only just noticed on this watch-through: this movie is totally ripping off the previous year's Bride of Frankenstein. Malita resembles the bride herself. At one point, she makes the shrunken people dance for her, just like Pretorious' dancing homunculi. And part of the climax even involves someone yelling something about "blowing yourself to atoms"! The ripoff is frankly kind of obvious now that I think about it, and I really can't help but wonder if this was meant as Browning's middle finger to Universal. "You want to make a crazy-ass mad science movie that makes you a ton of money? Fine, I'll just go on to the same thing for MGM!" Of course, it could have been a studio mandate, too. But I want to give Browning some credit.

Sakes. This was nuts. But it's so good to be back.

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