Carnival of Souls (1. Full Movie Review! While I'll freely admit to being an amateur reviewer, I do watch crappy b- movies for fun (and by "fun" I mean, "mindless hobby to keep the soul- raping internal demons spawned by 2. Wal- mart at bay..") and I know a "standard b- movie title" when I see one. Carnival of Souls" just screams shitty low- budget stinker horror flick, and the sensationalist, gaudy marquee posters that pop up on google searches do little to give you hope that this is anything other than the cinematic equivalent of a urine- soaked homeless man on fire. But, much to my surprise, Carnival of Souls turned out to be pretty darned good in almost every respect. Overview of Carnival of Souls, 1962, directed by Herk Harvey, with Candace Hilligoss, Herk Harvey, Frances Feist, at Turner Classic Movies. Carnival of Souls (1962) While I'll freely admit to being an amateur reviewer, I do watch crappy b-movies for fun (and by 'fun' I mean, 'mindless hobby to keep the. Carnival of Souls Données clés Réalisation Herk Harvey Acteurs principaux Candace Hilligoss Pays d’origine France Durée 84 min Sortie 1962 Pour plus de détails. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Sure, the budget was paltry, but whoever scripted this one knew how to write good dialogue and the director definitely had an understanding of quality camera work and shot selection. I've said this a million times before, but the difference between a great movie and a lousy movie is often a matter of how good your post- production editing is (or lack thereof). Carnival of Souls was cut extremely well, with a- movie results on a b- movie budget, and it makes the film a surprising pleasure to watch. All that said, we here at MMT can always find something to complain about, am I right? I mean, I once threw eggs at an elementary school fall festival play, and Pam, if the police reports are to be believed, once stabbed an elderly Buddhist monk over his wholly inadequate butterfly collection. So, clearly, we are completely impossible to please and can find fault in nearly everything if we put our devious minds to it. Carnival of Souls is a 1962 American independent horror film starring Candace Hilligoss. The film was produced and directed by Herk Harvey for an estimated $33,000. At times it feels like a Twilight Zone episode, wooden acting and everything, but when Carnival of Souls gets the mood right it never lets you go. Contains cast, credits, and other information about the original film. Carnival Of Souls 1962 OnlineAnyway, our movie opens in sleepy cowpoke Lawrence, Kansas in 1. Full disclosure: I lived in Lawrence from '9. Yellow Sub sandwiches. However, there were a lot of douchey frat boys there during my time, and, judging from this movie, there were just as many slumming around in 1. We see a roadster- load of them challenge a trio of sorority girls to a drag race across a rickety wooden bridge, just because frat boys suck. You can guess where this is going, as the girls' car goes careening into the muddy river below. Rock Chalk Jayhawk, baby! This will not end well. The lone survivor is a frazzled, overwhelmed co- ed named Mary, who stumbles out of the river three hours after the accident with no memory of what happened or how she survived (dumdumdum!). Mary, who will be our movie's lead, is played by no one you have ever heard of or seen before, but the actress does a very impressive job of portraying a woman who is both terrified of life and of death and unsure why she can't be enjoying either one. To this movie's credit, Mary is on- screen for a vast majority of the running time, allowing us time to get to know her well enough that we actually care what happens to her as the show goes along. This is a common problem in movies of all budgets and stripes, that the director demands we care about characters who we are not given any chance to get to know before they are murdered or married or abducted by Reptilian Gray Aliens. Bonus points for Mary being pretty cute (if scrawny). This experience will change anyone. She cleans up nice. Mary is an organist by profession. And, no, that doesn't mean she's a porn star, that means she plays one of those monstrous multi- piped beasts that lurk in the corners of every Lutheran church ever built. Throughout this movie somber organ music plays on the soundtrack, and while it gets a tad annoying at times, it does fit the overall spooky and mysterious nature of the plot. Negative points for the actress not really being able to play the organ more than "pound the keys at random" (saved by post- pro editing again). That's a lot of pipes. Carnival of Souls (also billed as Wes Craven Presents 'Carnival of Souls') is a 1998 horror film, a remake of Herk Harvey's 1962 horror film of the same name. (mouse over image after page fully loads to see colorized version) (aka 'Corridors of Evil') directed by Herk Harvey USA 1962. DVDs of Carnival of Souls compared to. Mary takes a job playing organ in a small church in rural Utah, as far away culturally from Lawrence, Kansas as it is geographically. We get the hint, however, that Mary is looking for a fresh start after the accident that killed her friends, and frontier Utah fills that bill nicely. So she gets in her car and drives across the country. Along the way, one dark and stormy night, she is visited by the spectral apparition of a pale- faced zombie ghoul man, whose mute visage appears fleetingly in window reflections and murky headlight shadows. Mary, showing more fortitude that you'd expect, shakes all this off as tricks of light and weariness and keeps driving. Check out that monsterhuge 1. Chevy steering wheel, it's like three feet across. AAAHHH!!!! Now she knows how Shatner felt on that late night plane flight.. She arrives in her new town and settles into her boarding house room. The landlady is an absent- minded spinster, but she's kind to Mary and likes to make her coffee. Mary meets her boss (the pastor) at the church and they hit it off. All seems to be going well for Mary in her new life, but the ghostly face still haunts her from time to time, leaving her on edge and nervous. This is effectively shown, often without the need for dialogue, and it's hard not to really get into the mystery here, which is already giving us a moody, twisty David Lynch sort of vibe. She's like Aunt Bea from Mayberry. With a face like that, he's has to be a priest! The pastor also takes her out to a local amusement park, long since closed and fenced off. This abandoned ruin, with its overgrown lots and ramshackle boardwalk leading to a colossal cathedral- type big tent pavilion, is tailor made for horror movies. It's been said that this film's director saw this place while driving cross- country and just knew he had to film a movie here. Mary wants to investigate the ruins, but the Pastor talks her out of it. Burned down in 1. Panic! at the Disco played there in 2. Because this is a b- movie at heart, despite all the positive words I've written about it already, it's no surprise that we get an insert scene with Mary naked in the bathtub. It's censor- friendly, of course, but it still bugs me that they felt the need to have Mary strip down for no other reason than she's pretty and that's what pretty girls do in b- movies. As she towels herself off, there's a knock at her door, but it's not her landlady, it's someone else. Who is it? I'll let Pam tell you.. Keep your boobs out of frame! Nobody most women would want to see, Nate. It's her slimy little jerk of a neighbor, John Linden. John also rents a room at the boarding house, and he's decided it's time for him to drop by and introduce himself to Mary. Mary was expecting her landlady, so she answers the door in nothing but a towel, and she has a hard time shoving him away from the door so she can put on a housecoat. Oddly, though, she doesn't shut the door completely, and John leers at her as he watches her through the gap between the hinged side of the door and the doorframe. Mary might just have been too flustered to shut the door, because she seems very prim and bashful as she firmly declines John's invitation to dinner. See the door? That's fantastic shot framing, illustrates the divide between these two better than any spoken words. Once John has been pushed out the door, Mary seems to have remembered something she forgot, and she goes out into the hall and starts down the steps (still in her housecoat and slippers). Whatever she was going to do is interrupted by the sight of the ghostly face she's seen before, only now it's an entire ghostly man. He walks off as she runs back to her room and locks the door. When questioned, her landlady firmly denies that there's anybody in the house but herself, Mary, and John. However, when Mary continues to insist she saw another man, the landlady starts acting nervous. Is there really somebody else living in the house, or is the landlady just afraid of burglars? Or could it be poor acting, as that's always a possibility in B- movies? The ghoulish man (he freaks me out). Mary is very shaken up, and that night she has trouble sleeping. She gets up in the middle of the night and looks out of her bedroom window, and we see she is staring at the silhouette of the abandoned amusement park. However, with the dawn comes a new day and a new Mary - - and John, who knocks at her door with a pot of coffee and a couple of mugs in hand, and a bottle of something stronger in his pocket. Mary's attitude toward John has done a complete 1. When she answers the door, she's friendly, rather flirtatious in fact, and she invites John in and accepts a mug of coffee, although she does decline the booze. John, who is rather a dim bulb, doesn't seem to notice the change in her attitude. Could it just be that she's a morning person? Mary makes a point of telling John that even though she's a church organist, she regards it as just a job, and she herself is not religious. John finds this a little odd, but he's more interested in thinking up things he and Mary can do together after hours. He finally gets a little too suggestive, and Mary escorts him out the door, but she still acts flirtatious enough to leave him with some hope, and she's smiling as she locks the door. He's creepy and she's psycho, but they do have some chemistry (even if it's corrosive to them both in the end). Mary has the day off, and she decides to spend it shopping for some new clothes. Her fun is somewhat spoiled when she goes into the dressing room and spooky music begins to play. We just know something scary is going to happen, and we think we know what it is when she can't get the dressing room door open. No, after a few pushes, it opens. So where's the scary stuff? We find out when she goes back into the dress department and nobody seems to see or hear her. She can't seem to hear anything, either. We see people's lips move but can't hear them say anything, and when she leaves the store, somebody is using a jackhammer on the sidewalk, but there's no sound. Finally we hear the sound of birds chirping as she walks through a park. Mary seems relieved, but her bad day isn't over yet, for when she stoops to get a drink of water from a drinking fountain she looks up and sees the ghostly man.
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