Rent Carnival of Souls (1962)

Genuinely unnerving - mild spoilers. - Carnival of Souls review by NP

This is a modestly budgeted, black-and-white film directed, produced, written by and starring Herk Harvey. Often, when an entire production is placed in the hands of one person, the results can be questionable, with no-one available to advise the auteur that his ambition may need fine-tuning. Happily, this is far from the case here. 'Carnival of Souls' has gained a huge cult following over the years, and quite rightly: it is excellent.

The direction is first-rate. Not only is a seaside town given a genuinely unnerving atmosphere, but the finale, filled with stuttering, staggering undead figures emerging from the abandoned carnival stays in the mind long after the credits have rolled.

If you have an interest in horror, you owe it to yourself to see this.

Toccata and Refuge - Carnival of Souls review by CH

“These old houses creak as much as my knees.” So a landlady tells a young and fetching church organist (Candace Hilligoss) who has rented a room in a small town after, apparently, surviving a crowded automobile's plunge from a bridge into a river at the beginning of Carnival of Souls (1962).

Created and directed by Herk Harvey, who appears throughout as a ghostly figure, this film, rendered in effective black and white, does not succumb to gore but is continually unnerving, not least with the man (Sidney Berger) across the landing, a warehouse functionary creepily set upon deflowering her: he arrives at breakfast time with a jug of coffee laced with spirits (as it were): for which she supplies the wonderful term of “germkiller” (all this,after a classic bathtub scene).

Within and without, the film is stark, scantly populated. How many people know of it? How did it come to be made? Little funding was available, and yet it echoes across six decades, partly driven by music which riffs upon that modest church organ to summon the stuff of nightmare.

Fantasy Horror. - Carnival of Souls review by Steve

This only cost $30000 and was shot guerrilla style in the street with hand-held cameras by a five person crew. Maybe the audio and overdubs aren't professionally recorded, but their strange resonance just makes the film more detached and dreamlike. If the director had spent his budget processing the sound to give this effect, it would have been money well spent.

A car drives off a bridge and emergency services can't recover the passengers in the muddy river. Hours later, a girl (Candace Hillgoss) pulls herself from the water. She starts work as a church organist, but her reality is distorted. Some people don't see her. At dusk she is attracted to a deserted amusement park where ghostly apparitions congregate and freakishly waltz.

This looks like German expressionism. There are distorted close ups and long shots of eerie stillness. Figures appear and move unnaturally. One of its great merits is an amazingly gloomy and oppressive organ score. Hilligoss is ethereal as the living ghost who has cheated death- the only professional actor in the film.

The only strand which doesn't really work is the uncomfortable attention of a predatory man towards the girl. He is rather too effectively repellant. But this is one of the great horror films. Herk Harvey was an industrial documentary film maker. This was his only feature film, and it wasn't even released. It found an audience on tv. Its existence feels like a small miracle