This film definitely has more of a 60's HG Lewis splatter film-feel to it than a typical 70's horror flick. Some of the clunky gore highlights include a decapitation, a tongue and some eyes being gouged out and some guts ripped right out of a lady's belly. There's also an amazingly hardcore New York-feel to everything thanks to the thick accents everyone employs. Shot in Coney Island for what looks to have been about $5 for the fake red blood this is basically a slasher movie set on the boardwalk. This was about a decade before slasher movies really got going so I guess they weren't too sure how to make that very entertaining. The thing that does make this one watchable, to me anyway, is the bizarre characters that show up, the fact that pretty much everyone in the movie is totally and completely unlikeable so you can't wait for them to get killed. As a bonus you get to see Paulie(Burt Young, for some reason credited here as John Harris) in his first role as a hunchback appropriately named Gimpy. Worth a look if you dig trashy gore or just Coney Island-flavored oddities. AKA DEATH RIDES A CAROUSEL. Director Leonard Kirtman's other horror feature CURSE OF THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN played on double-bills with this.
There is another movie with the very similar title of MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD from 1974 but that one features Herve Villechaize and looks insane so I need to check that out soon.
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