Dark Carnival (1993)

User Rating:

1.8/10   

Director:

Eric Worthington

Writer:

Kathleen Anne Byrnes (writer)

Release Date:

1 October 1993 (USA)

Genre:

Horror

Plot:

A group of students open up a "haunted house" for Halloween to try to raise some money. They soon discover that someone, or something, is in the house with them, and begins killing them off one by one. |

Cast

Miki Welling	...	Julie
Lynnie M. Horrigan	...	Karla
Micail Buse	...	Georgie
Michael Murdock	...	David Seth
Eric Worthington	...	Hal
Larry Crist	...	Chester
Shane Wahlund	...	Hans
Tammy Bjorkland	...	Abigail
Tiffany St. Claire	...	Sarah
Zachory Smith	...	Ben

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:Unrated

Company:

Dark Carnival Productions

There's No Carnival Involved Here......

I had the distinct misfortune of renting 'Dark Carnival' recently. Now, being a lover of bad movies, I have a pretty high tolerance for B-horror movies. If a movie can make me laugh unintentionally, then it's a winner with me. Well, 'Dark Carnival' is neither a good movie, or a good bad movie.

First of all, the title is misleading. There's no carnival in this movie, despite the title and cover art. I'm assuming the title is Artisan's doing, as they probably needed to muster every creative juice to sucker people into renting this garbage. The basic premise is that a group of unappealing, pasty-white, late-twenties, early 30's aged people buy an old house, and set it up as a haunted house for Halloween. For no reasons given, a homeless man is added into the mix. I guess this is supposed to appeal to the homeless movie watching demographic. On Halloween night, the house turns everyone "evil" for a brief moment, and they take the horror of the house too far. Then, everyone disappears except for 4 or 5 main characters. They cannot escape the house, and the plot line blatantly ignores how their other co-workers managed to escape, about 10 minutes before. Oh, and then there's an evil building inspector running around trying to kill them off, to stop the evil of the house. I think his identity is supposed to be a surprise, but you'd have to be braindead not to figure it out. Then there's a lame finale, which I think is supposed to be epic, but it just looks like someone is standing off to the side with an electric fan while the actors crawl around on the floor.

Every aspect of this movie is just plain awful. The script is bad, with plot holes you could drive a bus through. These people must be all friends, or come from the same community college, because these are probably the least charismatic actors ever recorded. You cannot tell one person from another, so when one of them gets killed, you can't even tell who it is supposed to be. One woman's affectation is that she keeps on her sunglasses throughout the entire movie. Brilliant. And let me tell you, there's nothing quite so fun as sitting for a half-hour, watching people walk through the haunted house. I hope the extras walking through the house got paid good to act scared, because that is the best acting in the entire movie. The budget looks like it was comprised of pop bottle return money. The entire movie has a feel of a group of people that decided to make a movie because their softball beer league season was over. Do yourself a favor and skip this one.