Wednesdays get weird when Late Shift at the Grindhouse hosts Ross Meyer, Joe Derderian, and Aaron Holmgren dig up low-budget b-movies, horror and gore-fests, and camp classics for your viewing pleasure. Buy your ticket and take a ride in our Time Machine! Punch in and earn a bonus! $3 Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboys and $3 small popcorn! PLUS -- special custom trash trailer reel curated by Ross with cheap swag and prize giveaways!

Malatesta's Carnival of Blood (1973)

Directed by Christopher Speeth

Late Shift at the Grindhouse joins The Bijou Film Board in celebrating their 50th anniversary with a series of favorites from the year 1973.  

Free admission for University of Iowa students.

You'll shriek with horror as you watch his victims take a diabolical roller-coaster ride to bloody death!

"The ghouls were paid $5.00/day plus doughnuts." - Christopher Speeth, director

"The soundtrack was designed to produce terror psychologically!" - Michael J. Weldon, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia

"Beautifully photographed, imaginatively designed, far-out in conception and successfully bonkers at least half the time, Malatesta's Carnival of Blood is unlike anything you've seen before." - Stephen Thrower, Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents

On the surface, Malatesta's Carnival of Blood gives off the appearance of a throwaway bargain-bin horror curio -- but once you dig below the surface, an ecosystem of abstract influences, thrift store props in the style of Pee-Wee's Playhouse, and avant-garde techniques come into view. 

An evil carnival impresario lures young people to work at his fun fair, so that he can feed them to the ravenous cannibals who live in a cave beneath the carnival. They also watch silent horror film classics projected on the wall while they feast. Set entirely in a rotting amusement park (which was bulldozed not long after the film was completed) and starring little person superstar Herve Villechaize from Fantasy Island, Malatesta is a hallucinogenic voyage that stands tall with Messiah of Evil as a masterpiece of 1970s outsider horror.

Restoration courtesy of Arrow Films and the American Genre Film Archive