"Malatesta's Carnival of Blood" is an ultra low budget fave from the early 70s that isn't often discussed. Receiving only a very limited theatrical release (the earliest I could document is 1974), it vanished until its director, Christopher Speeth, resurrected it for a DVD release in 2003, and its later inclusion on the "American Horror Project: Volume 1" from Arrow finally brought the 1973 film out of the shadows in stunning quality. Here are five reasons I love it:

5: Carnivals are awesome.
I wish everybody had the chance to go to a real rundown traveling carnival back in the carefree days of yesteryear, where drifters, con artists and possible convicted felons assembled carnival rides that you gladly paid to climb into, possibly to be hurled to your screaming death. "Malatesta's Carnival of Blood" teaches us that any reservations we may have had were completely justified. The carnival is run by a skeezy creep named Mr. Blood, who turns out to be a real live (?) vampire. It seems to be staffed by a few normals, several of whom are an undercover family searching for their missing son/brother, whose last known whereabouts were the carnival grounds. These scenes in the rundown amusement park are pure vintage carny pleasure, including a rickety old wooden rollercoaster, a ferris wheel, a few midway style games of skill, and an indoor boat ride "tunnel of love".

4: It's a camper movie.
Some movies I love for the furniture and vintage decor (I'm looking at you, "Eegah!" and "Track of the Moon Beast"), and "Malatesta's Carnival of Blood" falls into a similar category for me: the camper/RV movie. "Race with the Devil" and "Just Before Dawn" are two more examples, but this movie actually positions the family inside their camper quite frequently, including a great scene where they're shown cooking a delicious-looking fried chicken dinner on their tiny RV stove. Their sleeping arrangements are equally compact, sleeping three adults comfortably. It's the tiny house obsession before there was HGTV.

3: Hervé Villechaize is in it.
His role on "Fantasy Island" cemented him for a time as a cultural meme ("Ze plaaaane! Ze plaaaaane!"), and this usually overshadows the fact that he had an actual career as an actor, and not only in "The Man with the Golden Gun". His early role in "Malatesta's Carnival of Blood" is absolutely demented as evil carnival barker Bobo, who speaks in rhymes and uses the perceptions of his victims against them. He gets a lot of the film's best scenes, including one where he attacks a victim, loses the upper hand, and then disarms him again by comically pleading for his own life. The victim is murdered.

2: It's got zombies.
Aside from the film's willingness to go a little over the top with its gore, the "Night of the Living Dead" vibes are strong with this one. Underneath the carnival is a subterranean netherworld (total "Us" territory) full of tunnels lined with bubble wrap, inverted Volkswagens transformed into swinging hammocks, and a lagoon. The inhabitants of this secret underground space are a horde of zombies who shuffle around fighting with each other while watching silent horror movies projected on the wall. Dr. Blood and his employer, Malatesta, arrange for these zombies to have fresh victims to devour, preferably alive. One victim is somehow still moving after being skewered with a sharp implement by the park's evil custodian; dragged into the underground lair, he's still twitching when the zombies start eating him. Along with "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things", this movie is one of the earliest to be directly influenced by Romero's movie.

1: It loves the old Universal monster movies.
Even though it's a small, independent production, this movie's roots are in the classic Universal monster movies. The freaked out zombies are seen watching Lon Chaney in "Phantom of the Opera" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" in their underground theater, posters are glimpsed for the original Universal "Frankenstein" and "Dracula" movies, and the whole film is really a monster rally like "House of Frankenstein". We get a vampire, zombies, some mad scientist elements, and the devil himself. The last segment of the movie really reminds me of Rob Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses", except on a bubble wrap budget.

The movie is currently streaming for free on Tubi.

Bill Van Ryn is the editor of fanzine Drive-In Asylum and writer of film blog/Facebook page Groovy Doom. Buy the new issue of Drive-In Asylum HERE, or visit Forbidden Planet in NYC.

Hello wonderful, awesome people of Kindertrauma!

I'm Matt. Like many people here, I grew up on scary movie video rentals, along with USA's Up All Night and Saturday Nightmares, and have a special place in my heart for those films to this day. In the hopes that my other 728 favorite horror films will forgive me for not picking them, 1981's underrated slasher classic My Bloody Valentine deserves some love. It never reached the mass audience or popularity that the movies of my pals Jason, Freddy, Michael, and Leatherface did, but it's a terrific, fun, creepy film that's worth your time. Why should we believe you, internet stranger? you may ask. Well, I rocked hats and vests every day in high school like my teen hero Debbie Gibson. If that doesn't prove that I'm trustworthy, nothing does. Major plot and characters spoilers ahead!

1: The setting. The movie takes place in a small-town mining community. Director George Mihalka does an excellent job of showing the geography of the town. Everyone knows everybody. The people who live there have lived there forever.

But the real star is the dark, spooky, claustrophobic mine where the horror takes place. It's gloomy, sparsely lit, and easy to get lost in. The walls feel as if they could close in on you at any second. You never know who it is coming down the tracks at any moment, hidden amongst the shadows. You're trapped beneath the earth above you, with no cell phone or fancy electronics to call for help. (Ah, the 80s, when scary movies were much scarier because no characters had to pointedly say that there is no cell phone reception where they are.)

In the film's creepiest scene, Harry Warden methodically smashes the mine's only sources of light, far enough away from our protagonists so as not to be seen, but close enough for them to hear the shattering glass and realize something is off. The only person scarier to be stuck in a mine with would be Jon Gosselin or the Jersey Shore kids (shudder).

2: Harry Warden. Like a way crazier, scarier, more violent version of Scooby-Doo, Where are You!'s Miner 49er, Harry Warden is a rage-filled, intimidating psychopathic killer dressed in mining gear, complete with a gas mask and pick-axe. Harry warned the townspeople not to hold another Valentine's Day dance after what happened last time, but apparently everyone in Valentine Bluffs just loves Valentine's Day so much that they had to have one.

It's not that Harry hates disco music or Moosehead Beer. (It was filmed in Canada after all.) Twenty years ago, on the night of the Valentine's dance, there was a methane gas explosion in the mines that trapped several miners beneath the ground. By the time the rescue squad came to save the miners, only Harry was left – and he survived by eating his coworkers then killed the supervisors who were responsible for the accident.

It's easy to see why he went crazy. I was stuck in an elevator for 45 minutes once and I started sizing up who I would eat first if no help came. I get you, Harry, even though you're terrifying and I hope we never meet.

3: The characters (and actors). The characters feel like friends who have known each other forever. They're likable and relatable. They care about each other even before the blood starts flowing and have to save themselves.

The performances all feel genuine and authentic. Sarah, T.J., Axel, Hollis, Howard, Patty, John, Sylvia, Mike, Harriet, queen laundress Mabel, the whole gang – I love them all. They're real people with their own backstories, quirks, and feelings. Hollis looks like he'd be a great hugger. T.J. unironically sports an amazing bandana and makes it look good, something today's manly men should try more often.  

In a move that 90210's Kelly Taylor would make famous years later, Sarah chooses herself over her love triangle with T.J. and Axel. Kelly owes a debt to Sarah's second-wave feminism. Sarah isn't afraid to fight back either; in the grand tradition of slasher movie final girls, she isn't going to put up with Harry's deadly shenanigans. Kelly had a scary psycho that she had to confront as well, the waify loony Tara. Is there some cosmic link between Kelly Taylor and Sarah Mercer? You heard it here first.

Side note: Years ago, I contacted Paul Kelman (T.J.) and Thomas Kovacs (Mike) on Facebook, and they could not have been nicer or more willing to discuss the movie.

4: The nine minutes of cut gore. This movie's gorier scenes had been excised prior to release by the Puritans over at the MPAA. Thanks to the modern era of restoration and appreciation for this movie, nine minutes of grisly footage was added back into the film. The practical special effects for this film are nothing short of amazing and a testament to the hard work by the make-up effects artists, who made FX magic for little money before movie bloodshed was created by computers.

The death set-pieces are scary and inventive. The murders are graphic, unsettling, and nothing is played for laughs. I've seen Showgirls and Howard the Duck multiple times; I know terror.

5: The end credits song. "The Ballad of Harry Warden" is a sad, spine-chilling folk song that plays over the ending credits of the movie. Harry Warden has his own song! How many movie villains get their own ditty? Bughuul doesn't have one. Neither does The Babadook. Nor Ted Cruz. Paul Zaza's score and the song he wrote for Harry are memorable and haunting. The song caps off the movie perfectly.

Are you still with me? There are many more things I could say about this fantastic flick. Kindertrauma, I visit your site daily and always look forward to whatever magical words you will write about so many of my favorite movies. Thank you for reading!

For those unfamiliar, Alice, Sweet Alice is the story of a young girl named Alice (Paula Sheppard) who everyone thinks killed her little sister, Karen (a very young Brooke Shields), at her first communion because she was jealous of her getting more attention than her. As the story unfolds and becomes even more twisted and bizarre than we'd initially expected, the audience is constantly being thrown for a loop which brings me to my 1st favorite thing about the film…

The Unpredictability – Ask a newbie to watch the first 15 minutes of Alice, Sweet Alice and then ask them to predict how the movie is going to end. They're not going to get it right. Like many films from the 70's, there's a distinct aura of "anything goes" throughout Alice, Sweet Alice. Any film that has to guts to make its first victim a child isn't playing around and it's not interested in being nice. It wants to disturb you and rattle you to your core. You're never sure who's going to live and who's going to die and when the killer is going to leap out. The best horror movies make you feel like you're in the hands of a filmmaker who's a little bit dangerous and this one definitely does that.

The colorful cast – Alice, Sweet Alice is stuffed with unique and odd character actors who all seem like they might feel more at home than on stage which gives the whole film a vibe it wouldn't have if every performance was perfectly modulated and subdued. It appears as if everyone in the film is 4 seconds away from having a hair-pulling, face-scratching nervous breakdown and it puts you further on edge. Where else would you see a character like the wicked Aunt Annie who hates her niece to a disturbing degree or the odious morbidly obese pedophile landlord Mr. Alfonso who lives in squalor with his cats and his sweat and food-stained tank top and pants that look like he just urinated in them?

The cinematography – Alice, Sweet Alice drips with mood in every shot and, while its look owes a great deal to the Italian horror films of the 60's and 70's and Don't Look Now, it still doesn't emulate them exactly. Alice, Sweet Alice doesn't really look like any other movie and no other movie looks like Alice, Sweet Alice either. It makes great use of the Patterson, New Jersey locations and milks all the production value out of every set up it can. That's just smart low budget filmmaking.

The music score – Composer Stephen Lawrence created one of the most haunting scores in all of horror history that's a far cry from his child-friendly favorites such as "Free To Be You And Me." Spooky female voices sing and wail throughout as creepy pianos tinkle and it's another part of the film that knows how to put the viewer on edge. He even said the score was supposed to act as a black cloud that had descended on the entire town and you can hear and feel that throughout.

The ambiguous ending – What does the ending of Alice, Sweet Alice mean? Even though it's a movie that's over 40 years old, I still don't want to spoil it, but let's just say that things aren't tied up as neatly as some might have liked. What does the future have in store for Alice after everything she's been through? There are many theories and that's what makes it fascinating, because everyone will have a different interpretation.

Alice, Sweet Alice was never a movie that was hard to find considering there were seemingly dozens of releases from lousy budget VHS companies. It was, however, very hard to find with a cleaned up, decent looking print. Arrow Video just recently gave the film the royal treatment it deserves on Blu-Ray and seeing it looking like a million bucks is something I never thought I'd see in my lifetime. If you've never seen it, pick up that release and, even if you have seen it, this release will make you think you're seeing it for the first time.

Note: Chris Moore's excellent film TRIGGERED is free to view on Tubi HERE!

The Legacy (1978) has been one of my favorite films since I first saw it almost 20 years ago. It's of a particular era and style that I really like. The Legacy is a combination satanic thriller and creepy old house film of the same vein as The Sentinel (1977) and Superstition (1982), two other personal favorites. The plot concerns Maggie and Pete, played by Katharine Ross and Sam Elliott, a couple visiting England on a working vacation, when a road accident leaves them stranded at the estate of the mysterious Jason Mountolive (John Standing, The Psychopath). Other guests (including Roger Daltry as Clive, a music manager, and Charles Gray as Karl, a former Nazi) soon arrive, but just as quickly start dying, and the American couple begin to expect that black magic is at work.

Here are my five favorite things about the movie:

1: The setting. Mountolive's estate, where most of the action takes place, is as sinister as it is elegant, as claustrophobic as it is sprawling. It's a haunted house without a haunting. Pools freeze over, fireplaces erupt with balls of fire, etc. These don't occur at the house's will, but at its master's. The filming location, Loseley Park in Surrey, England, exudes gothic atmosphere and is completely believable as a home to nefarious deeds and deaths.

2:Nurse Adams. I love cats. My partner and I share our home with several feline companions, and they're like children to me. And the next cat I get, I'm naming Nurse Adams. Nurse Adams spends part of the movie as Mountolive's caregiver and head of household and part of the film as his familiar, a pretty white cat with one yellow eye and one blue. (Side note: Growing up I had a cat that looked just like this one, right down to the differently colored eyes.) Nurse Adams acts as both protector of Mountolive's legacy and as a harbinger of doom to those fated to die before the weekend is out. She is the most interesting character in a film full of interesting characters.

3: The deaths. Specifically the death of Maria Gabrieli (Marianne Broome), an accomplished swimmer who drowns when the top of the swimming pool turns to glass, and she is trapped underneath the water. This is a visually stunning sequence, with shots from both outside the glass as Maria desperately bangs her fists on it and shots from within the pool as she runs out of breath and sinks to the bottom. Clive's death is also impressive, with Daltry really giving the scene is all as he chokes on a chicken bone, even though, as Karl reminds Maggie later, he'd been eating ham.

4:Maggie and Pete. I just discovered that Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross are married in real life. They met on the set of this film and fell in love. And you know what, I can see it. Elliott and Ross have excellent chemistry, and when watching the movie, you can easily tell how deeply the characters care for each other. Sure, Elliott's Pete is grumpy and spends the whole film being very, well, somewhat stereotypically American, and Ross's Maggie occasionally descends into nervous panic. But at the end of the day, these characters have each other's backs. Pete fights for Maggie when he believes she's in danger, but when she accepts her fate as the inheritor of Mountolive's satanic legacy, he's willing to share her happiness with her. Which brings to me to my final favorite thing:

5: The happy ending. I don't think I've ever seen a Satanic horror film end on such a positive note. Upon first watching this film, you really fear for Maggie and Pete's safety. You cheer for them as they try to escape the sinister Mountolive estate and worry for their lives as the other guests begin dying. But once you've seen the film once and know its ending, upon rewatching it, it seems like a different kind of movie. It almost seems like a fairytale, a Cinderella story even. Maggie, knowing nothing of her family's heritage, comes to England where she discovers herself and her history and inherits wealth and power beyond her wildest imagining. In the closing lines of the film, Pete asks Maggie what she's going to do with all her newfound power, to which Maggie replies, "Anything I want," as they stroll arm in arm across her new estate. It's an empowering ending unlike any other film of its kind. Satanism here is not Cinderella's wicked stepmother, but her fairy godmother, enabling her to actually live happily ever after.

Note: Visit Kathryngrace at Final Women for more of her perspective!

1: Norman & Mary's Relationship

Anthony Perkins and Meg Tilly apparently did not get along with each other on the set of PSYCHO II but something really clicks with them on screen and both are impeccable in their roles. Norman Bates and Mary Loomis share a generally platonic, almost familial bond, meshing together as two wayward souls both shackled to their toxic mothers. Mary is not being completely honest with Norman so there's guilt involved but the two clearly want to help each other up and out of their own personal swamps. It's complicated for sure but all in all, it's a rather touching, nurturing relationship that bypasses love interest clichés and hits the bigger target of basic human empathy. It's illegal in every state to say that PSYCHO II surpasses the Hitchcock classic that spawned it but I truly prefer it due to this central relationship that gives the film a cozy, comforting warmth that its predecessor actively avoids. You get the feeling that you're almost living with them in the house throughout the film, getting to know its rooms and layout and you can almost smell the toasted cheese sandwiches Norman speaks of. It's hard not to root for these two to somehow find a happy ending, which makes the outcome of the film even more tragic.

2: It's Beautiful

The rolling hills behind the Bates Motel are eerily postcard perfect. PSYCHO II utilizes the most beautiful background matte paintings from the legendary Albert Whitlock to wonderful effect and Dean (HALLOWEEN) Cundey's cinematography is absolutely stunning. There's an incredible God's eye view from the top of the house that takes my breath away but something as simple as a shot of a winding country road to the side of the motel can be equally striking. In the film's final moments, when we see a silhouette of an old woman approaching the Bates house framed by an almost biblical looking sky, it's a pitch-perfect visual crescendo.

3: The Slasher Effect

I'll never forget Leonard Maltin reviewing PSYCHO II on Entertainment Tonight back in the day. I think I can even quote him as saying the film "really had him" until a particularly savage gore scene ruined the movie for him. Well, I'm of another school of thought. I LOVE how this movie weaves then current slasher aesthetics throughout and think it does an excellent job blending past and contemporary tastes. Anonymous teens breaking into the Bates house to fool around, only to be attacked by a faceless killer? Yep, I've got plenty of time for that! That knife through the head kill that disappointed Len? I'll never forget how the audience roared in terror at that very moment when I saw it in the theater. It was glorious.

4: The Score.

PSYCHO II's haunting melancholy score by Jerry Goldsmith was the very first movie soundtrack I ever bought on vinyl. Goldsmith (like all in involved) had some mighty big shoes to fill. It's truly impressive how well he salutes Bernard Herrmann's original PSYCHO score while creating a distinctly more intimate mood of his own.

5: Hitchcock's Cameo

Hitchcock was known for making a brief appearance in his films so it's no big surprise that his ghostly profile should appear in PSYCHO II. These days it's no big deal when a film winks or subtly references another and you'd almost have to expect a nod from a sequel to such a classic. Still, I'll always love this subtle tip of the hat because it may be one of my earliest memories of appreciating a cinematic Easter egg and wondering if others had caught it too. I always look forward to this particular moment when I watch the film and it never fails to give me a shot of nerdy glee. Director Richard Franklin and writer Tom Holland couldn't have done a better job respecting and saluting Hitchcock's masterpiece so I'd say the inclusion of Hitch here is very well earned. It's just one of the many reasons watching PSYCHO II will always feel like coming home to me.

Note: Michael can also be found at The Retro Movie Love Podcast & The Last American Video Store Podcast

DEATH WISH CLUB (1984) 

AKA: THE DARK SIDE OF LOVE 

AKA: GRETTA 

AKA: CARNIVAL OF FOOLS

DEATH WISH CLUB has many titles, but I've always gone by the title I discovered it as a kid with a Video Store card and a dream way back in the ‘80s. The clamshell VHS cover led it on to be a James Bond-ish karate Film with some gambling, and boy oh boy is this Movie not that. It's the kind of Movie that I like to show people just to gauge what kind of reactions they have. Some have told me it was the weirdest Movie they have ever seen. Others have dismissed it as low budget trash. Either way I'm fairly sure they won't be forgetting it anytime soon. Nor should they!  I've always championed this Film but its cult seems to be pretty small. Some will remember scenes from it in the compilation film NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR (1985) but that doesn't do this Movie justice. You need to experience the entire Film from beginning to end. You need to meet Gretta. 

5:This crazy and unpredictable Movie was written by the same person who scripted EL-CID, KING OF KINGS and JOHNNY GUITAR. Look up Philip Yordan's credits and you'll see a lot of great genre Films of the 40s, 50s and early 60s. I love that some old dude in the ‘80s decided it was finally time to write a Movie about a young man who falls head over heels about a woman who does porn, has a split personality and is involved with an older rich man who is part of a club where people play elaborate games of russian roulette. I wouldn't even begin to crack the plot of this. My friend Amanda Reyes (of Made for TV Mayhem) mentioned to me after I had her watch it that it reminded her of David Lynch. I would say that is a fair assessment. I think Mr. Lynch would enjoy this Film. 

4:Merideth Haze. The performance of Merideth Haze has to be seen to be believed. This is go for broke. This is what actors need to be studying in class. Merideth sadly only starred in this one Film and then disappeared into the ether. You'll never meet a character like Gretta/Charlie White in Film. I would love to, though. I want to know why she thinks she's a fish when she takes a bath. I want to know why she is glad Chopin is dead. I have so many questions for her. 

3: The lead character Glen is a college student who has an aunt who visits him at his job at the morgue and likes to check out dead corpses' junk. Glen is played stiffly by Rick Barnes (who only showed up in one other Movie – MARILYN ALIVE AND BEHIND BARS (1992) by the same director, John Carr). I don't know why the writer and the director felt this was necessary but it's a touch that only makes any kind of sense in the framework of this crazy pants Movie. I also love that Glen, when pining for his lost love Gretta, goes to the Movies and you see him staring sadly at a poster for John Carpenter's THE THING (1982). This is a Movie that has it all. Naturally Carpenter's THE THING makes some sort of appearance. 

2: The unexpected dive into the world of porn, sex shops and jazz clubs. There's something about the worlds these characters inhabit. I haven't even mentioned the actual Death Wish Club itself. There's so much other stuff happening in this. There's a Tanzanian winged beetle in this Movie. But yeah, when you do see Gretta on the set of an adult Movie it's like, what the hell is going on. Something about a mad doctor who is switching brains? Sure, why not. Let's go with it. Glen's visit to a sex shop where he gets the hard sell for lube, toys and more pleasurable items is pretty hysterical. Did I say this Movie is pretty funny? I find it funny at least. Maybe it's just my warped brain. And yes, Gretta is a jazz pianist at the "Club Manhattan". This is where Glen first lays eyes on her. The poor guy will never be the same again. 

1: The mysterious case of Gretta/Charlie White. Since JUST ONE OF THE GUYS (1985) is practically my all-time favorite Movie, it's natural that I love the left field idea of Gretta turning into Charlie White. The Movie poses many wacky and out there ideas, but none greater than an apparently dead Gretta who then resurfaces as a man named Charlie White. And not just a guy named Charlie White. A guy named Charlie White who most of the time sounds like he's in a ‘30s gangster picture. He's even chomping on a cigar in a scene. Why? Why not! Ultimately Glen needs to stop Charlie White, THE GRADUATE style, from getting married. He does this with his expert use of karate. Now you'll finally learn why there is martial arts on the VHS cover. Will we get to see Glen and Gretta unite? Will Charlie White stick around to the end or will he be exorcised by the sheer power of Glen's penis? Will Glenn & Gretta survive the DEATH WISH CLUB? Will you?

Now imagine seeing all of this as a kid in the 80s. Hey, i'm fine. How are you doing.