By Erik Luchsinger
en.wikipedia.org
Netflix. Oh, lord, Netflix. It has so many options, which is (like elephantiasis of the balls) a blessing and a curse. Sure, it allows you to watch 30 Rock until your eyes bleed and your liver fails, but it also occasionally bequeaths upon you a movie that is so horrendous, so confusing, so utterly and dumbfoundingly stupid that you will both love it an be thoroughly embarrassed to watch it. The movie I speak of is The Devil's Carnival.
The Devil's Carnival is the "trhilling" story of three... sinners who die and go to Hell. Hell, in this case, is a carnival inhabited by such terrifying creatures as The Hobo Clown, a midget whose sole purpose in life is kicking people in their shins, and a fake Fonzi wearing a plastic, hair shaped hat.
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The plot revolves around the "sinners," one of whom is Sean Patrick Flannery, an actor you may recognize from the actually watchable movie The Boondock Saints. He commits suicide for ambiguous reasons, presumably because he realized how far his career has fallen in recent years. Another of the sinners is a lady in a ridiculous roaring twenties dress who stole some... stuff, or something, and gets shot by the cops. As we all know, theft and suicide are looked down upon by God (who is a fat dude who paints dolls, apparently), which is why Sean Patrick Failure and the other chick end up in Hell. The third sinner, though, is clearly in an abusive relationship and gets shot by her boyfriend. She ends up in Hell for this, which is utterly confusing.
Now there are a lot of hilariously bad things about The Devil's Carnival, but the best/worst of them is the fact that it's a musical. Yeah, you heard me right: it's a fucking musical. What's more is that nobody can sing well and all the "songs" were apparently written by aliens who have no concept of what music is. You see, during the "musical numbers" there are a number of horns and pianos making noise, as well as actors using their vocal chords to make sounds, but none of it combines to make what is popularly known as "music."
I wont ruin all the half-baked carnival antics by spelling them out for you. There are a lot of confusing themes at play, though. Considering the movie is about Hell there is a considerable amount of punishing people for their sins (even though being in an abusive relationship isn't a sin, but just ignore that part), including one scene that borders on softcore torture porn. The Devil is also apparently a fan of Aesop's Fables as he spends a lot of time reading them to his midget friends and trying desperately to make them relevant to the things happening in the movie.
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No matter what your Halloween movie lineup is I guarantee there is some room for comedy, even if that comedy is unintentional. The Devil's Carnival is deliciously terrible, so much so that you might want to ease yourself into the mood with a beer or two. And probably an entire fifth of whiskey. Netflix is full of hidden "gems," and The Devil's Carnival is among the "best." 4/5, using the "so bad it's good but still also really bad" scale.
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