I've just finished watching 'Carnvial of Souls' for the very first time and I've already made up my mind that it's an absolute masterpiece. This movie manages to be incredibly atmospheric on a shoestring budget of just a couple thousand dollars and achieves something that most of today's movies don't even manage on a multi-million dollar budget: To completely draw the viewer in and mesmerize them.

This movie proves that you don't necessarily need tons of practical and special effects, big action sequences or an overly complex plot to make a good movie, but merely a group of dedicated people with a vision and the expertise to realize it. Herk Harvey, John Clifford, Candace Hilligoss and their colleagues probably didn't realize what exactly they were creating at the time, but they all had lots of talent and expertise as is evident in the final movie. It's a piece of art.

The cinematography and direction of 'Carnival of Souls' are phenomenal, Gene Moore's organ score is haunting, and the acting is surprisingly captivating, especially Candace Hilligoss in the lead role. Her facial expressions in the scene where she's playing the organ as if possessed are chilling. The grand finale at Saltair is something that is burnt into my mind now. Such beautiful and haunting images. A brilliant movie!

'Carnival of Souls' is an exceptionally moody motion picture that absolutely deserves its cult following.

When the first title images appear after the car crash with the music all I can think of is David Lynch. Then the creepy music over bland day to day activity. Lynch.
The weaknesses in the movie are that I didn't find it particualry scary and the horror unfolds in a predictable linear path of increasing the horror visually until a saturation point. Maybe it's dated but so it should be. But the weaknesses do reveal strengths as everything you do feel isn't because of an effect, shock or plot twist (accept the very end) but by pure film making. How many film makers today are this brave?
The movie is easily a better psychological character journey than a lot of modern horrors. It really succeeds in atmosphere too. Its not an overpowering atmosphere nor a pretensious one, but the organ sound and visual combinations never become unaffective in portraying a darkness and paranoia. It makes you want to get out an organ yourself and play some dark random chords and think of images. It's inspirational. The movie is like a lesson in no frills horror. Only a 6 because I just didn't feel like I needed collect this movie and it was too predictable for me to fully enjoy. I'm sure many will like it more than myself.
At the end of the movie I concluded she did in fact die in the crash but emerged an unaware lost soul. She was eventually guided to her death to escape her torture.

When two groups of teenagers are racing their cars over a narrow bridge, an accident occurs and the car carrying the girls goes a-tumbling into the deep and muddy river below. It's during the extensive search process (a man with a bit of string with a weight tied to it) that "Mary" (Candice Hilligoss) emerges from the river, the sole survivor. Gradually, though, things start to become ambiguous - she is obsessed with a run down carnival nearby, is soon seeing apparitions and after a short while we all start to wonder if she is actually real or not! The acting from Hilligoss and from Art Ellison as the savvy preacher is quite compelling to watch (the dialogue much less so) and as the plot thickens, the drama builds nicely into quite a tense little horror story with an effective organ-based score to help raise the tension too. Watch it on a dark, wintery, night and it is a remarkably effective B-feature.

**Even bad movies deserve to have a place in history.**

After seeing this movie, I'm left with the feeling that it's a bit overrated, even though it's undoubtedly a remarkable classic of psychological horror. It's more rudimentary than one would expect, and the lack of means and resources is evident. On a very tight budget, director Herk Harvey deserves praise for the way he made the most of what he had and made an authentic labor of love. After reading a little, I realized that this was the only feature film of him and actress Candace Hilligoss. Their careers took an unhappy course towards obscurity, largely because of the critical and box office failure of this film which, only years later, and at the expense of TV and VHS, would become worthy of some notoriety.

The film begins with a clash between two cars where one of them, with three girls, falls into a river. After three hours of searching, Mary Henry, one of the occupants of this car, appears miraculously alive. She is a musical performer and, after a while, moves to Salt Lake City to work as an organist in a small church. However, she is a person without faith, for whom it is just a job. Shortly after arriving, she begins to have frightening visions and trances involving a man and an abandoned building, on the shores of Salt Lake, where an amusement park once existed.

The film is happy at building a mysterious and intriguing environment, but it never crosses the border into genuine horror. The sound and an organ soundtrack contribute enormously to this atmosphere (the organ, a very erudite instrument, gradually became umbilically linked to horror). The cinematography is raw and disagreeable, and the most interesting set is the Saltair Pavilion, which still exists, very modified and different from what it was in this film. The film cleverly uses local extras and actors to save money. However, the amateurism, the bad dialogues, the poverty of the script and the lack of a capable director completely compromise the effort of the cast. Even Candace Hilligoss looks bad. As we watch the film, we understand well the reasons that dictated its failure. As a film, it's a mediocre job, it's not even disturbing. So why on earth has it become so prestigious nowadays?

I believe that the key to understanding this lies in the “cult” phenomenon itself. The essence of this cultural movement lies in the search and recapturing of original material, somewhat forgotten or poorly appreciated in its time. And this film, as it turns out, is precisely within the genre of stuff sought after by “cult” followers. It is because of their action that this film won over its audience after a long time.

_**Haunting early 60's movie, like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone**_

A young woman (Candace Hilligoss) survives a vehicle accident in Lawrence, Kansas, and then is troubled by a specter (director Herk Harvey) and other strange occurrences as she moves to the Great Salt Lake region for a gig as a church organist.

"Carnival of Souls" (1962) is an eerie, moody cult flick shot in B&W, but not scary at all. It's similar in vibe to "Night Tide" (1961) with Dennis Hopper. The creepiest part is the girl's lecherous neighbor in Utah (Sidney Berger).

Besides the haunting ambiance, what I like best about it is the portrayal of two intersecting dimensions: Someone in the spiritual dimension can't be seen or (for the most part) heard in the physical realm. While it's overrated and predictable, it's still an interesting ghostly period piece.

The movie runs 1 hour, 24 minutes, and was shot in Lawrence, Kansas, and Magna, Great Salt Lake & Salt Lake City, Utah.

GRADE: B-/B