Back With A B-Movie

Carnival of Souls is the story of some broad with big crazy eyes who, after an automobile accident, suffers visions of some terrifying, ghoulish looking guy. It has its campy moments, but in the end, it only makes this Twilight Zone-esque movie a real cult-horror classic.

At the very beginning I was almost mad at myself for putting this movie in. The audio was pretty horrible, and overall it just looked like it was gonna be a real piece of garbage. You get past that though. Luckily, it's actually pretty good for being made in 1962 and with no budget. It's definitely of the likes of Roger Corman's movies, it's a B-movie. But Goddamn, I have a place in my heart reserved for B-movies.

The movie could easily be bashed, but honestly it's really creepy. There's a lot of unease to the picture. As far as acting goes the movie doesn't excel anything more than what you would expect for the time and genre, but it's good enough. The main character, Mary Henry, is always either highly stressed and anxious, or completely subdued. That, for some reason, builds up the eeriness.

Now, let's talk villain. Mary continuously sees this water-soaked man with dark rings around his eyes coming after her. He's freaky. Really, he's what makes it more than just a stupid movie. There's a shot in the movie where you see him underwater and then he opens his eyes, and it made me think about how many times that shot has been copied. Even in Peter Jackson's Return of the King. So, it did have some good ideas. Also, the carnival/pavilion where Mary always sees the creepy dude was captured in a frightening and eye-catching way, especially when she sees all the dead people dancing there!

Another thing I took away from the movie was its soundtrack. There's nothing more stereotypical than putting the sounds of a pipe organ on a horror soundtrack, but who are we kidding, the pipe organ is a scary sound. I found it to be agreeable with the subject.

The camera work was better than my expectations... for the most part. Besides the anti-climactic very end, I enjoyed my first viewing of Carnival of Souls. It's a good one to watch as a double-feature, teamed up with another B-movie of the time. If you really love movies you can cherish it for what it is, but if you're just interested in having a movie to make jokes at with friends, well, it can be good for that too.