Carnival of Souls and Horror Hotel

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An ultra-cheap B-horror movie, filmed in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1962, with a really creepy Twilight Zone-style premise and some great shoestring atmosphere. Wandering into a small town after an auto accident, to begin her new job as a church organist, young Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) begins to pick up strange vibes: none of the normal people in town seem to be able to see her, and she keeps being accosted by freakish pasty-faced types who seem to be dead on their feet. The nightmarish finale benefits from its one-of-a-kind "found" setting, an empty amusement park rising like a ghostly castle from the prairie landscape. This is much less aggressive and violent film than George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead, but for sheer skin- crawling spookiness, it's in the same class. --David Chute --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews:

Unbelievably Overrated!.......2007-09-13

Here's another "cult favorite" that I was really, really anxious to view after reading a bunch of favorable comments about in review books. What a disappointment! Of the positive things I had read, "eerily filmed" and "fascinating" appealed to me most. I found neither. Did I expect too much?

How a film this slow moving could be a cult favorite with today's audiences is beyond me. I don't believe it's true. I did appreciate some of the photography but the story dragged in so many spots that it took any enjoyment away from any good visuals.

What's to like in this film? I'm sorry, but this is way overrated.

3.75 Stars. Spoilers at the bottom/trying to analyze the ending. .......2007-08-27

Carnival of Souls did not feel like an older movie, it felt like a movie from today that was made in black and white trying to look old, like the beginning of Night of the Creeps, but nothing in this movie is at it seems.

At the beginning there is a tragic car accident that you don't really see coming and it grabs you, one of the girls from the car Mary Henry suddenly appears on the shore of the lake where the car went into. We don't know what Mary was like before the accident but after it she leaves town to play organ for a church in Utah, which is just a job to her and business only. On her way late at night a freaky face of a man appears out her passenger side window, freaky at first but after you've seen him a bunch of times it becomes repetitive. She also notices a n abandoned carnival that looks like architecture from Moscow.

Mary moves into a rooming house with a landlady and a slimy pushy idiot of guy who is constantly trying to get with her. Mary mostly wants no part of him nor any man at all for that matter.

Throughout the 83mins of the directors cut Mary sees hallucinations and has episodes when nobody can see or hear her, is she dreaming? Is she going crazy? At times Mary reminded me of Catherine Deneuve's character in Roman Polanski's Repulsion although Catherine Deneuve was more effective, that is if she is in fact going crazy.

So, to recap, the beginning grabs you with a shocking accident you don't see coming, then quickly after we get some good atmosphere and creepy apparitions or hallucinations that lose there effectiveness as the movie goes on, and at 83mins I kept finding myself looking at how much time was left. I'm not impatient I was into every minute of Lawrence of Arabia's 5 hours this just didn't keep me personally into it.

**Spoiler alert**

At the end we see the car from the beginning being towed out of the lake with her and her friends still in it and there dead. So then the movie couldn't have been her dream or her going crazy. My far fetched guess that I was thinking maybe Mary is trapped between Heaven and Hell. The zombies at the carnival and her being drawn to it could be some kind of devils trying to take her to hell and the Priest where she plays the organ could be trying to help her as he encourages her to have faith, or I'm totally wrong.

A low-rent horror masterpiece........2007-08-24

Like Edgar G. Ulmer's "Detour" and the original "Night of the Living Dead," Herk Harvey's "Carnival of Souls" manages to be much better than the sum of its parts. Much of the camerawork looks cheesy, much of the acting is amateurish, and the basic logic of what's happening to church organist Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) makes no more sense than in most B-grade, on-the-cheap horror flicks. Nevertheless, Harvey (an educational and industrial filmmaker whose only theatrical film this was) shows a flair bordering on genius for poetically creepy cinematic imagery, and Hilligoss (who bears more than a passing resemblance both to "Living Dead's" Judith O'Dea and "Young Frankenstein's" Teri Garr) is extremely effective as Mary, an uptight and neurotic soul who suddenly finds herself beset by white-faced zombies no one else can see. So what if Hilligoss does a lousy job of faking her organ-playing? The image of the ghouls waltzing at double-speed to the wheezing, stinging organ music is one worthy of Murnau or James Whale. A word of caution: I saw the Rhino Video DVD of "Carnival of Souls," and it is execrable--the print is scratched and pitted, with massive skips and gaps. If you care enough about this movie to buy the DVD, I'm certain the Criterion Collection version is the one to buy, no matter that it costs several times more than the other available versions.

Atmospheric Gem.......2007-07-16

Everything about this film suggests "el-cheapo drive-in flick": pretty woman, cheap thrills, low-budget, cheesy effects. But somehow it adds up to more than the sum of its parts. The directorial touches are actually well-conceived and artistic. The acting is above-average. And, the soundtrack score is fantastic. It and the Salt Lake pavilion provide a wonderfully eerie and dreamlike backdrop that keeps the viewer entranced.

The Criterion package is, as usual, a bang-up job. There are several entertaining extras. My favorite is a news/documentary piece on the Salt Lake pavilion. It provides a history of a very interesting piece of Mormon/Utah history.

CRITERION! SUPERB! ... quality difference noted, though........2007-04-27

What can I say about this CRITERION release that hasn't already been posted here. I did want to mention a difference in print quality between the "Theatrical Version" and the "Extended Director's Cut". I watch my movies with a front projection setup, on a 10' wide DaLite HCCV screen, so image quality is important.

Don't get me wrong, both versions are EXCELLENT quality, though the "Extended Director's Cut" is a little soft & fuzzy in comparison. It is also somewhat darker and "muddy" with less contrast than the "Theatrical Version" which is bright and crisp. This is apparent if you just compare the opening scene. They are drag racing on a bright, sunny day but in the "Director's Cut" it looks more like a cloudy "about to rain" day, and it's difficult to see anything inside the girls' car. When they pass the CONSTRUCTION sign on the road, in the "Director's Cut" it is quite dark and soft (still totally legible) while in the "Theatrical Version" the words on the sign are bright, perfectly sharp and crisp.

Of course, the first thing I did was to watch the "Extended Director's Cut" and found a *few* of the restored scenes to be integral to the story. I still watch this film from time to time, and it's always CRITERION'S "Theatrical Version" I pop in the 'ole DVD player.

Anyone else noticed this difference in print quality?

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