Skip to main content

31 Days of Horror Movies: Carnival of Souls


I had a conversation t'other night with a friend who seemed to make a distinction between horror movies and ghost stories. I tend to lump them together (although one could argue that 1981's classic Ghost Story isn't really a horror film). At any rate, today's pick could definitely fall into the ghost story realm for some, but I still consider it to be horror. With that said, let's take a look at....

Carnival of Souls


This cheaply-made movie has a lot going for it. Director Herk Harvey (who also plays the creepy man following our heroine) manages to create the plausible world of a woman, Mary Henry (played to good, doe-eyed effect by Candace Hilligoss), who appears to be the lone survivor of an accident that sees a car filled with her and some friends tumble-off a bridge and into the river below.

Mary eventually ends up in a small town where she attempts to start a new life for herself, taking-up the job of organist at the local church. Unfortunately, it is not to be a happy time period for Mary, as she begins to hear organ music in the most unusual places, a desolate-looking pavilion on the edge of a lake seems to beckon to her, she keeps having moments when the sound changes and then no one can see or hear her and, as if all that wasn't bad enough, a ghoulish man keeps appearing to torment her.

I won't go into how Carnival of Souls resolves itself. It's good, although it does raise a few "Yes, but..." questions. It's an odd film, a quirky film. It (unfairly in my opinion) has ended up on Michael Nelson's rather unfunny RiffTrax series, wherein he uses a running audio commentary to poke fun at films (not unlike what he did on MST3K). Yes, the movie has some stiff acting and low-budget issues, but I think it's one of those occasions where that sort of stuff serves to enhance the unsettling vibe.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yesterday's Restaurants

The local newspaper has a feature from one of Champaign-Urbana's most legendary restaurateur's, John Katsinas, on what his favorite area restaurants were that have now since closed (or will soon be closing).  It's a nice little read, and has made me stop and think about the restaurants that have come and gone that have left an indelible (and edible) impression on me throughout the years. Here we go....
Post a Comment
Read more

Watching The Hours

A Twitter friend named Paula has asked for folks to submit ideas for a blog-a-thon about what we think will be the classic films of the future. In other words, what relatively recent movies (namely, from the 21st century), do we think will be considered classics in the decades to come, possibly airing on such venerable stations as Turner Classic Movies ? While a number of films come to mind for such a category, one in particular stood out from the rest, and thus is my entry for Paula's blog-a-thon.
5 comments
Read more

She's Madonna

Today we're going to talk about something very important. We're going to talk about Madonna. "Madge," as she's affectionately known around the gay scene, has been making music for over thirty years. I grew up with her songs, many of them pop classics. In recent years, it can be arguably said that her popularity has waned a bit. During the past decade, Madonna has put out seventeen singles. Of those, three have charted in the US Top 40. Ten Failed to chart at all on the Billboard Hot 100. We now have at least one possibility offered as to why Madge's chart power is waning: Ageism. At least, that's what Diplo (just, Diplo), a producer of some of the tracks off her latest album, thinks . I know it's difficult to be objective about something you've worked on -- whether you were the producer or the artist -- but, as a listener/fan, I have to say that Madonna's most recent work has simply not been that good. Still, we'll hear what
Post a Comment
Read more