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1984 - USA Directed By: Andy Milligan. Starring: Leslie Den Dooven, Michael Chiodo, John Garitt, Deeann Veeder, Chris Baker, Jack Poggi, Albert Alfano, Che Moody, Rosemary Egan, Ellen Orchid and Bill Grant.
Current Availability
Unavailable at present on DVD. Those wishing to see this film are advised to track down the old US NTSC VHS tape on the Media label. While long OOP this is not especially hard to find. Carnage was also released on VHS here in the UK by Vipco back in the mid-80's but unfortunately this version suffered 41 seconds of cuts courtesy of the BBFC who had it in for all horror flicks at the time thanks to the then recent tabloid storm over so-called "Video Nasties".
Recommended?
If you have a high tolerance for trashy movies or wish to see Andy Milligan do a no-budget take-off of Poltergeist with a clueless amatuer cast, some household objects on strings and a gore effect or two then you're in for a cheesy, hilariously dreadful treat. Anyone expecting a conventional haunted house movie however is in for a nasty shock and should probably steer well clear.
Review
Arriving at the tail end of the early eighties horror boom, Carnage marked a belated return to the horror genre for its director, the infamous Staten Island trash cinema auteur Andy Milligan - a closet homosexual deviant who made a bizarre ascension from New York City dressmaker, to theatre director and then onto filmmaking . Throughout the late sixties and into the mid seventies Andy Milligan had carved out a niche for himself as a director of mainly dreadful and amateurish but invariably eccentric and amusing horror/exploitation films, his credits including “gems” such as The Ghastly Ones (1968), Torture Dungeon (1970) and the bizarrely entitled The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! (1972) to name but a few.
While his films were appreciated by trash movie aficionados, Milligan was forever fighting losing battles with the unscrupulous producer’s and distributors who would distribute Andy’s films and then often try to deny him his cut of the profits. In particular Milligan was worn down by his long and productive yet turbulent relationship with producer William Mishkin. By 1978 Milligan had lost all interest in the film industry and after tossing off the woeful Legacy Of Blood (a flaccid, pointless remake of his 1968 film The Ghastly Ones) he finally threw in the towel, seemingly disheartened.
For the next five years Milligan would return to directing local theatre productions and formulating half-baked ideas for television pilots that never got off the ground. Eventually Milligan discovered that his horror films still enjoyed a small but dedicated following amongst both those who had caught them on their initial Grindhouse runs and also a new audience who were discovering Milligan’s back catalogue through the then new medium of home video. This heartened Milligan and led to his decision to return to the horror genre with Carnage - an OTT spook house shocker which was produced by Lew Mishkin who despite being the son of his old cohort William Mishkin would soon become loathed by Andy with the feeling being completely mutual on Lew’s part.
Carnage begins with a flashback sequence in which a young couple are shown together in full wedding garb professing their love for one another. Their happiness however, proves to be short-lived as the groom shoots his bride in the head before turning the gun on himself in a grim suicide pact.
Fast-forward to three years later and the house which played host to the couple’s death has just become the home of the newly and happily married Carol and Jonathan Henderson (Den Dooven and Chiodo). Predictably upon moving into the house the Henderson’s are besieged by a series of bizarre and frightening phenomena as the ghosts of the deceased couple cause objects to move around of their own accord and both visitors and trespassers alike suffer grisly, supernaturally orchestrated fates whilst in the house.
In fairness Carnage could have possibly been something of a triumphant return for Andy Milligan if anyone had taken any notice. Unfortunately however, the industry had changed a great deal by the dawn of the eighties, the Grindhouse and drive-in circuits were almost dead meaning that the one prolific Milligan struggled to register much more than a blip on the radar. Despite being shot in May and June of 1983, Carnage would sit on the shelf in Milligan’s native United States until 1986 when it finally appeared minimally going direct to home video. From this point on Milligan directed only intermittently up until his eventual AIDS-related death in 1991.
Taken purely in itself Carnage qualifies as a fairly obvious attempt to cash in on the popularity of the haunted house cycle which was at the time of its making en vogue thanks to the runaway success of The Amityville Horror (1979), The Changeling and Poltergeist (1982). Carnage unabashedly casts any worries concerning the charge of plagiarism to the wind and piles on the clichés of its subgenre as cups of tea move by themselves, the oven turns itself on and windows and doors open as if by the agency of an unseen hand.
Despite having been made on a paupers budget of reportedly just a little over $30,000, Carnage looks far more lush, professional and film like than the initiated would probably expect for one of Milligan’s usual anti-cinematic abominations. It soon becomes apparent however, that this is only thanks to the film having been shot in 35mm as Milligan cheerfully daubs his mucky fingerprints all over Carnage in the shape of glaring continuity errors and hilariously inept “special effects”.
There is absolutely no attempt at fashioning either atmosphere or suspense, instead the film is riddled with endless goofy-looking padding shots of inanimate household objects moving of their own accord whilst protagonists aren’t looking. This age old trick is repeated so frequently that the effect becomes farcical as it becomes seemingly impossible for anyone to look away for just a second without the candelabras doing the hokey kokey on the sideboard. The movement of inanimate objects is blatantly achieved by the cheapskate method of attaching a length of string to the item in question and having it pulled away by an offscreen crew member. Hilariously the strings are plainly visible in more than one scene. Elsewhere Milligan’s idea of a fright is having specters pop up out of nowhere like ghost train exhibits and shuffle theatrically towards the less than terrified protagonists. The effects work is risibly dreadful that one can only assume that we are supposed to be laughing at it.
To give Carnage its due it must be said that Milligan certainly doesn’t skimp on the gore front, indeed once he has blundered his way through the exposition the Staten Island misanthrope delivers the good old red stuff in generous amounts. The first set piece death in particular of the Henderson’s short-lived cleaner Mrs Novak is particularly juicy. Having slashed her own throat with a straight razor the viewer is then treated to a satisfying protracted shot of her resultant neck wound spurting out generous gouts of blood. From this point Milligan ups the ante as floating axes, pitchforks and haywire household appliances wreak mayhem resulting in hacked off hands, brutal impalements and a painful looking scene in which one unfortunate woman’s arm becomes embedded with shards of broken glass. In other cases however, any impact is nullified by rubbish effects and a lack of continuity. In particular one disembowelment results in a spillage of spaghetti which I assume was meant to represent the victim’s intestines? In another a well-meaning minister is eliminated by a flying meat cleaver but unfortunately this admittedly impressive gore effect is totally offset by the fact we clearly see the cleaver strike the victim in the shoulder blade but in the next shot he’s falling to the ground with the offending implement imbedded in the back of his skull. Even your average goldfish would have little trouble spotting this particular balls-up.
As is normally the case for a Milligan film the performances of the amateur cast vary from the merely bland to clumsily hammy. Unfortunately neither the wooden, dull as dishwater Michael Chiodo as Jonathan or the dowdy, presence devoid Leslie Den Dooven as his wife Carol make for an even slightly engaging central protagonist. Happily however Milligan’s trademark eccentric, offbeat characterisation rears its head in the shape of domineering mother-in-law’s, dysfunctional married couples (a regular reflection of Milligan’s own wry view of heterosexual relationships) and dotty, superstitious housekeepers. I’m sure it will not come as much a surprise when I tell you that the entire cast of Carnage have barely a handful of other screen credits between them.
For what it’s worth – which really isn’t very much at all – Carnage is possibly the most readily watchable of all the latter-day (post-1984) Milligan features. All the same anyone unfamiliar with Milligan’s celluloid crimes who happens to pick up Carnage on a blind buy is liable to be seriously miffed by the total lack of suspense, bad acting and brazen technical ineptitude. By contrast however, for both Milligan veterans who will have an idea what to expect and those with a high tolerance for cheap trash Carnage will more likely than not make for an easy and often amusing hour and a half of viewing. With its stilted performances, woeful effects, eccentric characterisation and seemingly random insertion of misanthropic and gratuitously gory deaths Carnage if nothing else at least signified Milligan’s return to “form” (for want of a better term) following his extended hiatus from the horror genre.
Also Try… Beyond Evil / Massacre Mansion / The Boogeyman (1980, Uli Lommel) / Poltergeist / The Amityville Horror (1979, Stuart Rosenberg) / Amityville 3-D / The Ghastly Ones / Torture Dungeon.
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