Carnival Magic at Cinefamily

Bait me with promises of ventriloquy and you’ll ensure my attendance to any event. That was the strategy employed by Mya, my trusty Mastodon Mesa co-curator, to lure me to the screening of cuckoo 1981 Z-movie Carnival Magic this weekend. The film is about a magician, his talking chimp, and their friends in a travelling carnival– but the only problem is that everyone in the movie is beyond creepy, especially the chimpanzee, who repeatedly requests (in gravely, growling tones) to be scratched by teenage girls.

The film was hilarious and mind-blowing, but the icing on the cake was the presence of magician Dave Markham, warming up the crowd in front of Cinefamily with his wisecracking sidekick Squeaker, a psychic wisenheimer who bears an eerie resemblance to Davy Jones. I had my new camera with me, so I captured the wary movie buffs as they responded to Squeaker’s sassy inquiries.

Don’t miss the rest of Cinefamily’s “Fucked Up Kids’ Movies” series, running each Saturday in May. Coming up: a night of E.T. rip-offs featuring Mac and Me, the sadistic South African kids movie Lost in the Desert, and misguided Bugsy Malone wannabe Hawk Jones.