Carnival of Souls

Director - Herk Harvey (Reading Rainbow)
Starring - Candace Hilligoss (The Curse of the Living Corpse), Frances Feist (A Life to Save), and Sidney Berger (Wes Craven Presents: Carnival of Souls)
Release Date - 1962
Genre - Horror
Tagline(s) - "She Was A Stranger Among The Living" "She Escaped Death. Now It Wants Her Back" and "Is there death after life?"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection) (15 Horror Movies Volume 1)

Rating (out of 5):

     Gotta love those five dollar horror box sets you can pick up at almost any store.  I'll buy those, regardless of how many movies are on them, just to get one movie I do not own.  By doing this I have ended up with a slew of box sets and a majority of them have the same movies on them with the exception of a few.  It is because of that this that I have numerous copies of the same movie.  I watched this movie years ago for the first time while I was drinking so I do not remember much about it.  While I was rearranging my DVDs I realized that I have this same movie on 13 other sets.  I figured that if I own that many copies and don't remember a lot about it then I should throw it in and give it a write up.  I went ahead and watched the version on the same 15 Horror Movie set that I watched House on Haunted Hill from.

     A group of guys challenge a group of girls to a drag race.  The girls accept, however, they crash and roll their car off a bridge.  The authorities and rescue crews comb the river bottom in search of the car.  As everyone gives up hope on finding the young ladies, Mary (Hilligoss) walks out of the water completely unharmed.  she refuses to let the accident stop her from living her life and continues on.  She moves to another town where she is hired to play the organ in a church.  However, she finds herself being stalked by ghastly figures.  The figures are there for one moment and then gone the next.  These visions start to leave their mark on Mary.  She is often unsettled and on edge.  One day while practicing in church she loses her concentration and begins to play dark and brooding music.  The minister does not like the tone of the music and fires her because he feels that it does not belong in church.  She starts to see the figures more often and believes she will find answers at a pavilion.  When she visits the pavilion she finds a group of the ghastly figures dancing.  She tries to run away but they follow until she collapses on the beach.  The minister and police are now at the scene of the car crash.  They pull the wreckage from the water and find all three girls, including Mary, dead inside.

     I wish a fraction of the films released today had as much depth and details as the movies from the 50's and 60's had.  I am not going to make the mistake and say movies now are not as original as movies from this period because that is an utter lie.  It does make it more difficult to be original, however, a great deal of filmmakers have done the job.  Anyway, I love the detail this movie was given.  Thought was given to each scene to make sure the story unfolds correctly making it flow with ease for the viewer.  The acting is decent for a 60's b-movie but I have seen a lot better.  I have multiple "Drive -in" movie packs with other b-movies from this time period and all have pretty shitty acting making this movie above average for what it is.  The story, at the time, was extremely original, however, now it has played it's course.  So many other ghost tales have played on this same premise making most of them predictable.  Finally, this film has no real special effects, instead, the film relies heavily on timing and atmosphere.  The shadowy figures do not look that great but the dark and brooding atmosphere provides them with the perfect combination to make them look creepy as hell.  Overall, this is a classic film that typically goes unnoticed by many horror fans and traces of the film can be seen in later classics.  I recommend this one.