My attention was drawn to this DVD because the heretofore difficult to find, "Undertaker and His Pals," is immortalized in the seminal "Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film" with a large photo of its movie poster making it required viewing. This movie is a mildly entertaining HG Lewisesque 60s gore film about the title characters killing beautiful women to drum up business for the undertakers and provide meat for the restaurant run by the pals. There is lots of black humor (after killing Mary Lamb, the menu lists "leg of lamb" as the special), but it's not that funny, and even clocking in at 60 minutes, the movie still seems about twice, no make that three times as long as it should be. The one saving grace is the women in the movie really are quite beautiful given the financial constraints the filmmakers obviously had (no nudity). If you don't know HG Lewis, then you probably don't need to worry about seeing this movie.
The second film, "Carnival of Blood," is much better. It's a throw-away story about a killer at Coney Island in NY, and it was filmed on location in 1970. It was really fascinating to see the amusement park at this time, and the characters in the movie, although they were generally complaining and bickering (it's NY for cryin' out loud), were a pretty interesting group of people. This one was around 1:30 and I was entertained from beginning to end. Also, a sound clip from this film is contained in the 1985 7" EP by punk sensations, The Blood Farmers, and I was glad to have found its source.
There is also a bonus feature, "Coney Island USA," which is a roughly 0:15 sparsely narrated documentary on the park, and there are about 0:30 of trailers including "The Corpse Grinders," "Blood Orgy of the She Devils," and "The Doll Squad," which should be of interest to 70s grindhouse fans.
All entries in this DVD are full screen, but the image itself did not feel particularly confined. The colors were washed out for "Undertaker and His Pals," and the image was grainy for "Carnival of Blood," but neither of these flaws was big enough of a problem to hamper viewer enjoyment.
I regard this DVD as a bargain for grindhouse connoisseurs.
