Review of Carnival of Souls (1962) by Tim H — 03 Jul 2008

Apparently, everyone's seen this movie but me and knows everything about it. I don't know when you all got together to have a Carnival of Souls party, but I'm pissed that I wasn't invited. The movie wasn't even that great so I don't know why I'm so offended.

I bought the Mike Nelson edition of this movie. Frankly, I loved his commentary on Night of the Living Dead and I was shocked by the fact that his commentary of Carnival of Souls had gone out of print. Luckily, I found a seller who sold it online for $4.88 and I couldn't turn that down. It was defintely worth the buy for the commenary alone. I'm also glad that I saw the movie just so I could be in the club knowing that Herk Harvey was the main ghoul in this film.

Which apparently everyone knows. *glare*.

The story of this movie is pretty generic. It said on the back to the box that this movie was the predecessor to The Shining. In the fact that they both had ghosts in them, yeah, I guess that might be somewhat accurate. MAJOR SPOILER ALERT FOR THE FIVE PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T GET INVITED TO THE PARTY: She was dead the whole time. Yeah, I know that it is 1962 and that seems shocking but I'm just getting bored with that ending. M. Night Shyamalan, I take back all that praise I gave you (except for Lady in the Water. I effing love that movie. Maybe that's why I wasn't invited to the party. Ooh...and Unbreakable.) But the story just follows her haunting. The only problem is the fact that the main character is kind of a b*tch so you don't care what happens to her. In fact, I hoped throughout the movie that she would be horribly mutilated by those zombies or ghouls or whatever they were. But she wasn't. Or was she? Who knows? All I know is that what was meant to be creepy only kind of succeeded twice. And one of those times wasn't even that creepy.

The two moments that I actually enjoyed is the first time that Herk Harvey came out of the water with that malicious smile and when all the ghouls ran at her in fast motion. I don't know if Herk knew how creepy he was when he got out of the water because he never succeeded in looking that creepy again, even the second time he got out of the water. The fast motion run wasn't super-creepy, but it was a little cool looking. But that's all that really impressed me about this film. I got a lot more pleasure out of the commentary than I did out of the actual film.

I really just don't dig this genre. I know Greg will go to town about this kind of stuff, but it does little to nothing for me. The worst part is that not only is this a low-budget horror thriller (that is slightly better than most, but not by much), but it is directed by a guy who only made Centron educational shorts and PSA's. The entire cast are people from educational shorts and what does that do for a movie? I know that this literally had to be a shoestring budget, but why make these kinds of movies unless you really have something to say. People still make horror movies on shoestring budgets because they're fans of the genre, but I always hoped that my first foray into filmmaking (which I have really no drive of bieng involved with) would be something really personal and good. Herk Harvey went on to do...nothing. He was just the guy who did some sh*tty Centron educational shorts and Carnival of Souls. Now the movie has a cult following, but I have no real understanding why. I mean, this movie is one line reading away from being a Roger Corman joint.

Here's the long and short of it. The best part of this movie are some of the visuals. While repetetitve at times, there are some cool effects that Harvey pulls off with the over use of pancake makeup and speeding up the film. You've seen it before. He does it better than some. The bad part is that it is really a low budget horror movie that just has a lot of filler and annoying moments. For example, why have the entire sleazy neighbor? Just to show she can't relate to humanity? Why not make him a strong male lead? That would have added character and been more disturbing. When she goes crazy with that guy, it's no shock. You could argue with me and say that she was so desperate to cling to humanity that she tolerated him. But if that's the case, make the character much more real than an almost comic addition to an already annoying movie. I'm sorry to all the Carnival of Souls fans, but I can only say that this movie is "okay." Yes, that will disappoint a good deal of my readers, but I just don't like this entire genre of film.