MILLIGAN MARCH: CARNAGE (1984) **

Here’s my original review of Carnage as it first appeared on November 12th, 2008, followed by some additional notes I made as I watched the film as part of Milligan March:  

CARNAGE  (1984)  **

A couple commits suicide while dressed in their wedding clothes in their new house.  Years later another pair of newlyweds moves in and almost right away, the house starts exhibiting some peculiarities.  Doors don’t stay closed, teacups move around by themselves, and the phonograph ominously plays “Here Comes the Bride”.  Eventually we learn that the deceased couple is haunting the place and they want the latest tenants to die so they can become ghostified and live with them forever.

Low budget horror director Andy (The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here) Milligan was actually working with something of a budget on this film and the results really aren’t too bad at all.  The biggest gripe I had was with the sluggish pacing and the fact that the actors were all amateurish and extremely unphotogenic.  That’s okay though because Carnage had enough (unintentional) laughs to keep me semi-entertained for 90 minutes.

The funniest part comes when the spirits toss a radio into the bathtub on some poor unsuspecting dope.  The fact that he is clearly wearing underwear during this scene is funny enough but the fact that the radio is playing an all-accordion version of Elvis’ “Now or Never” makes it that much more bizarre.  I also highly enjoyed the scene where the cleaning woman gets pelted with a whole bunch of supernatural Silly String for no good reason whatsoever.  

The main “scary” thing the ghosts do is make things move around by themselves.  It looks as stupid as it sounds, but at least when the ghosts starts levitating axes, pitchforks and meat cleavers, people end up losing body parts left and right.  (The decapitation scene is particularly shitdiculous).  There’s also a juicy self-induced throat slashing in there too for good measure as well.

Yeah the effects are terrible (the ghosts appear via jump cuts and the levitating objects are obviously being held up by strings), but that doesn’t make the flick altogether unwatchable.  While parts of the film WERE a chore to sit through, it did feature enough gore to justify its title.  It’s far from the worst Milligan movie I’ve seen, that’s damn skippy.  

MILLIGAN MARCH NOTES:  

1) The opening murder/suicide scene is semi-effective and feels much more like a “real” movie than many of Milligan’s homegrown productions.

2) The scenes where the everyday household objects move around on the new homeowners to mildly inconvenience them are kind of funny.  I feel like this is the kind of shit real ghosts would do.  You know, like hide the new tenant’s car keys just long enough to make them late for the dentist and force them to reschedule.  Got to love petty poltergeists.  

3) The scene where the bloody bride randomly appears and sprays the housekeeper in the face with cobwebs (it looks like Silly String) are semi-amusing, but not quite laugh-out-loud funny.

4) The gore is decent, but the transfer on the Blu-ray is so good that you can see the seams of the make-up during the throat slashing and the visible wires when the guy’s guts are being ripped out by the “invisible” ghost.  

5) While the stuff that takes place inside the house is semi-entertaining, whenever it cuts away to other family members squabbling about their own problems, the pace slows down to a crawl.

6) So far, I’ve referred to Carnage as “semi-effective”, “semi-amusing”, and “semi-entertaining”.  That about sums it up.  Close, but no cigar.  However, when Andy Milligan is making horror movies, close, but no cigar is about nearest he can get to a bull’s eye.  

Milligan Motifs:  Carnage is yet another Andy Milligan production that was filmed in Staten Island that's filled with library music on the soundtrack.  The gore is consistent with other Milligan films as it features all the pitchforking, hacked off hands, and meat cleavers to the skull you’ve come to expect from the man.  The concept of three married couples staying in a spooky old house is a theme that constantly recycles throughout Milligan’s work and the death in the bathtub owes a debt to the one in Seeds.

Milligan Stock Players:  Leslie Den Dooven was later in Milligan’s short, Adventures of Red Rooster.