Rating: 
Summary: One of the Dead Girls Blinks in the Final Scene!
Review: Movie Summary: Mary Henry crawls from the muddy river after a car accident. Her two girl friends aren't so lucky. She seems to be in shock, but moves on with her life immediately. She leaves town for her new job as a church organist. She becomes increasingly haunted by a creepy figure that no one else can see as well as a smooth operator who lives across the hall in her boarding house. Mary's visions increase as she is drawn to an abandoned carnival outside of town where the dark figure is waiting for her.My Opinion: One of the dead girls in the car at the end of the movie blinks in the final scene. It's not hard to see. This basically sums up the quality and feel of Carnival of Souls. What's all the fuss about? Well as far as I can tell it's a case of the emperor's new clothes. No one wants to admit that they don't like it, or that they find it stupid. Or they like it for the very fact that it is so bad. But more than not, a bad movie is just bad. Carnival of Souls is not scary now that you are all grown up, and not all that impressive unless you go into all the details about the budget and who made it. But that's not what you are here for. This is supposed to be entertainment. The comparison to a Twilight Zone episode with poor acting is right on. The pace is dreadfully slow as well. The base ideas for the story are intriguing for the time it was made, but Herk just didn't have the resources to pull it off then and the ideas are nothing new now. DVD Quality: A very overblown criterion release for this title. Check out the Carnival of Souls/Horror Hotel double feature release instead. What You Should Do: Rent it if you are a B (B for Bad) movie buff or are intrigued by all the hype. Do not be fooled by all the reviews touting how scary and great this film is. The "no refunds" policy that they had on this movie in the theaters in the 1960's was because it was so bad, not because it was so scary. Don't fall for the hype and buy it before you've seen it. You will be disappointed. Related Movies To Check Out: The Brain the Wouldn't Die, The Sixth Sense, Fright Night
Rating: 
Summary: The Movie The 6th Sense Wanted To Be
Review: This is a classic story--almost like csomething told around a campfire late at night. The 6th Sense tried to be like this movie and failed miserably. This movie doesn't rely on gore or special effects to tell its tale. Aside from the zombies there is nothing even remotely like a gross-out shot in the movie. And the organ music layers it on thick and creepy. A terrific movie.
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Summary: Herk Havery's restored cult classic and much, much more
Review: "Carnival of Souls," the only theatrical film every directed by Herk Harvey, is a cult classic with a most deserved reputation that puts it on a par with dead George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" in terms of shoestring productions. Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) accepts a car ride from a group of other young girls, only to end up in a drag race that sees the car go over a bridge with only Mary surviving. Having taken a job as a church organist in Salt Lake City, Mary heads for her new home, passing a deserted pavilion on the outskirts of town. Mary is drawn to the ruined bathing center/carnival, but has bigger problems since she keeps seeing a leering, corpse-like man (played by Harvey) watching her. Again and again Mary has the eerie of experience of suddenly finding herself in a silent world where no one seems to notice her. Eventually she returns to the pavilions to understand her final fate. "Carnvial of Souls" came about because Herk Harvey drove by Saltair, the deserted 1940s tourist resort outside Salt Lake City, and decided it would make a powerful location for a horror film. Harvey recruited John Clifford to come up with a screenplay that would involve Harvey's image of dead bodies rising from the lake to pursue their victim. The finished product certainly evokes a nightmarish quality that makes you ignore the technical problems with overdubbing, campy performances by the supporting cast, and such. Hilligloss, trained in the Method by Strassberg but denied any hint of her character's motivation by the director, only made one other film, "Curse of the Living Corpse" (1964), but this film is enough to secure her reputation in the field. Sidney Berger (the all too friendly guy down the hall at her boarding house) does a cameo as a cop in the 1998 "Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls" debacle, which does not compare on any level to this evocative horror classic. This DVD collection is another outstanding member of the Criterion Collection. Disc One has the original theatrical version (missing 7 minutes due to cuts by the producer), "The Movie That Wouldn't Die! The Story of 'Carnival of Soul'" documentary from the 1989 cast reunion, 45 minutes of outtakes with Gene Moore's organ score, the theatrical trailer, an illustrated history of the Saltair resort, and "The Carnival Tour" video update on the film's locations. Disc Two has Harvey's original cut of the film and excerpts from industrial films made by Harvey, along with various essays, interviews, vintage photographs and memorabilia. The commentary track is pieced together from interviews with Harvey and Clifford. This is how it should be done.
Rating: 
Summary: May not be the best or most famous horror film but...
Review: "Carnival of Souls" (the 1962 original, not the 1998 direct to video piece of crap called "Carnival of Souls"), although maybe not the best or most well known horror film ever made, is certainly one of the most creepy and unsettling movies I have ever seen. The film is about a young, pretty woman who, after having "died" in a car accident, finds herself being stalked by a pale, ghost-like figure who comes to her in nightmarish otherworldly visions of desperation and despair. "Carnival of Souls" is a cinematic wonder that just goes to show that you don't need a big name score composer, a big time director and cast, or a huge budget to make a good movie. This is a true-to-form 1960's, black and white, B grade horror film that sets out to do one thing and one thing only, shock the living daylights out of the person viewing it. It may not be the best movie ever made, and at times it can be quite corny and over-acted, but those factors only add to the nostalgic quality of the film. To sum it all up, "Carnival of Souls" is a true horror movie gem that should not be missed by die hard fans of the genre (or anybody for that matter). By the way, just in case your reading this review and wondering exactly how chilling this movie could actually possibly be, George Romero once said that "Carnival of Souls" was constantly on his mind while directing the original 1968 horror classic "Night of the Living Dead".
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Summary: The Best Independent Horror Film
Review: I hesitate to use the word "horror" because as Boris Karloff pointed out, there is a distinction between "horror" and "terror" and this film definitely involves such distinctions. This is a "terror" film - a masterpiece of low-budget suggestion and fear, as opposed to the more disgusting gory motion pictures common today - an essential possession for anyone who cares anything about the genre that creates an eerie atmosphere and a sense of pure "fear." Perhaps the reason for this is that the director, Herk Harvey, found a truly poetic inspiration in the source of his story - the haunting Saltair resort, which has been cursed by fires and floodings since it was first constructed at the turn of the twentieth century. This DVD features marvelous additional material, including a segment of postcards from the era, which, seen from the vantage point of the 21st century, are so strangely evocative of the later "dead" atmosphere that Harvey capitalized on. Candace Hilligoss is excellent in evoking sympathy for the heroine trapped in a frightening nether-world, and the scenes where she visits "The Pavilion" are among the eeriest ever filmed in creating a vivid sense of the supernatural.
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Summary: Creepiest film ever
Review: This film scared me to death when I was 12 years old and saw it for the first time, and is, to date, my all-time favorite B-horror movie (the only exception being the funniest B-movie ever released and the worst film of all time--"The Creeping Terror". Everything from the camera angles to the background score was dark and eerie and the final scenes replayed themselves in my nightmares for years. Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: THE NIGHT OF THE DYING DEAD
Review: I had never heard of Herk Harvey's CARNIVAL OF SOULS before playing this Criterion DVD. I was a little bit reluctant because a lot of movies have been recently released in the DVD standard claiming a cult status they don't deserve. But CARNIVAL OF SOULS undoubtedly has a place in this collection and should regain a new popularity among movie lovers. Of course, the movie at times could be confused with a TWILIGHT ZONE episode but Herk Harvey's camera is a lot more creative and innovative than the television cameras of Rod Serling. Our new horror movies screenwriters and directors are after all not sheer geniuses, they steal a lot of their ideas from such movies as THE CARNIVAL OF SOULS. Even the so praised SIXTH SENSE doesn't seem so original after a screening of Herk Harvey's movie. An excellent musical score, good actors and the stunning visual ideas of Herk Harvey are going to convince you that CARNIVAL OF SOULS deserves a place of choice in Movie History. An anti-BLOB DVD.
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Summary: The movie that should have died
Review: Just because a movie is made for 35,000 dollars and is independent does not make it good. This is a truly dire film, proceeding at a snail's pace with acting so wooden I was looking for termites. On the mini documentary the cast seem as bemused at the renewed interest in the film as anyone else, and even one of the reviewers was quoted as saying "uh, very slow, not one of my favourite films". I did a film degree and, trust me, this film has almsot no redemming features. Save your money.
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Summary: Fear in the Ordinary
Review: I first saw "Carnival of Souls" on television in 1966. I have been "hooked" ever since. This film really stays with you-maybe it is the "ordinariness" of the locales and situations (with the exception of "Saltair", the Salt-Lake soul-ridden pavilion), the beautiful, art-film photography, and Gene Moore's creepy, get-under-your-skin organ score, who knows? My parents, who were not big horror-film fans, adored this film-(my mother mistook it for a foreign film on first viewing). "Carnival of Souls" is a film that either one has never heard of it, or, if they have seen it, never forgot it, and loved it. I always had that creepy sense that I had been to these places in my dreams, as I'm sure that's why this film has so many fans! Yes, the acting leaves something to be desired. Yes, the editing is choppy. But hey, the film was produced for $30,000! I definitely prefer films like this to over-budgetd, over-produced, noisy dreck like "Armageddon"! The DVD Collector's Edition of "Carnival of Souls" is a Valentine to this dark gem. The picture and sound quality are clean, crisp, and downright remarkable. And then there are the extra features! The history of Saltair, replete with photos, is fascinating. The "Carnival of Souls" reunion in 1989 is fun-like seeing old friends after many years. The extras go on and on. If you are a horror/cult movie fan, this is a must-own. If you are a "Carnival of Souls" junkie, then this is the big one! Hats off to Criterion-those folks DEFINITELY "Get it"!
Rating:
Summary: This film will stick with you for days.
Review: This film would feel right at home as a "lost" episode of Twilight Zone. Actually, the budget was probably less than your average Zone episode. A young woman survives a car wreck off a bridge into a river. Later, she moves to a small town to take a job as a church organist (despite being not terribly religious). She's haunted by a cadaverous looking figure that no one else can see and strangely drawn to the abandoned amusement park outside of town. This film is long on atmosphere and not well suited for anyone with a short attention span. There is something, though, about an empty carnival in the middle of the Kansas prairie that is spooky all by itself. This movie exploits its spookiness for maximum effect. Note: this was the first and last feature film by director Herk Harvey, who also plays the aforementioned cadaverious figure.
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