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Having survived a car accident that should have claimed her life, Mary begins a new job as a church organist. Plagued by evil visions of a ghoulish figure, she is drawn to an abandoned amusement park.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Forgotten Classic,
This review is from: Carnival Of Souls [1962] [DVD] (DVD)
I saw this years ago when BBC 2 ran a late night art house movie strand on Sundays and it has stayed with me ever since. The plot concerns a young woman who has survived a car accident taking up her new job in a small Midwestern town. It is genuinely chilling, creates an otherworldy, unsettling mood with the use of silence, the spiky organ score, a supporting cast of predatory grotesques and bleached black and white cinematography. It also bears comparison with Polanski's 'Repulsion' as a study in isolation and a vulnerable innocent's fast slipping grip on reality; or what she thinks is reality. The climax in the abandoned fairground is deeply spooky, sad and satisfying in equal measure. And on top of all this it has a classic 'jump out of your seat' shock as the heroine drives through a rainy night and looks twice at her reflection in the car's windscreen...
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The cult classic horror film by director Herk Harvey,
By Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)
This review is from: Carnival of Souls [VHS] (VHS Tape)
"Carnival of Souls," the only theatrical film every directed by Herk Harvey, is a cult classic with a most deserved reputation that puts it on a par with dead George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" in terms of shoestring productions. Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) accepts a car ride from a group of other young girls, only to end up in a drag race that sees the car go over a bridge with only Mary surviving. Having taken a job as a church organist in Salt Lake City, Mary heads for her new home, passing a deserted pavilion on the outskirts of town. Mary is drawn to the ruined bathing center/carnival, but has bigger problems since she keeps seeing a leering, corpse-like man (played by Harvey) watching her. Again and again Mary has the eerie of experience of suddenly finding herself in a silent world where no one seems to notice her. Eventually she returns to the pavilions to understand her final fate. "Carnvial of Souls" came about because Herk Harvey drove by Saltair, the deserted 1940s tourist resort outside Salt Lake City, and decided it would make a powerful location for a horror film. Harvey recruited John Clifford to come up with a screenplay that would involve Harvey's image of dead bodies rising from the lake to pursue their victim. The finished product certainly evokes a nightmarish quality that makes you ignore the technical problems with overdubbing, campy performances by the supporting cast, and such. Hilligloss, trained in the Method by Strassberg but denied any hint of her character's motivation by the director, only made one other film, "Curse of the Living Corpse" (1964), but this film is enough to secure her reputation in the field. Sidney Berger (the all too friendly guy down the hall at her boarding house) does a cameo as a cop in the 1998 "Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls" debacle, which does not compare on any level to this evocative horror classic.
21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The film that inspired NOTLD,
This review is from: Carnival Of Souls [1962] [DVD] (DVD)
This film was rediscovered in the 80's and featured on the BBC series "Videodrome". Without wanting to spoil the plot I'll just say that it's a genuinely creepy story that directly inspired George Romero's 1968 Night of the Living Dead. The plot focuses on Candace Hillgoss as a beautiful but cold church organist (Who is actually non-religious and just plays for money).In the opening scenes we see that she is the only girl to survive when a car filled with her and some friends careers off a bridge. She makes it to shore. From then on she is disturbed by stange nightmares and visions centering on a long abandoned funfair and it's pale inhabitants. That's all the plot I'm going to give away. If you love strange films then I cannot urge you enough to buy this one. As in the original Night of the Living Dead (and for that matter Psycho) the black and white photography only adds to the surrealism and detracts nothing from the plot or the genuine sense of unease that unfolds as the film plays.
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