Let's discuss the classic midnight movie "Carnival of Souls" (1962)

It is one of the most beautiful horror movies ever made. Every frame is stunning.

The Director should have had a very successful career ala David Lynch or George Romero. With little money he was able to make a very effective and memorable film.

It's an odd film. I don't think the whole thing works entirely, but it has some great eerie moments, and the sudden appearance of the face in the window while the woman is driving is one of the greatest jump scares of all time.

She's dead, right?

R3 is spot on.

Candace Hilligoss's performance in this is so bizarre, but it somehow manages to contribute greatly to the overall weirdness of the film. The whole thing plays like a bad dream, and it's effective and functions nicely given the nature of the story. She is existing in a sort of in-between state after the car crash at the beginning, between the living and the dead, and the uncanny atmosphere serves the narrative perfectly. I cannot think of another film quite like it. It is nightmarish for sure, but I also find it weirdly calming to watch.

Been there, done that--Inger Stevens

Very well-directed.

I love this movie! The church organ plot point, the gorgeous cinematography, all of it.

The flatness of the early scenes adds to the overall weirdness.

Filming in an abandoned amusement park (and in fantastic black and white) added nicely to the surreal spookiness.

A friend of mine aquired the rights to this to do it as an opera. And then he died.

Really.

This is a really good example of something that should never be remade.

Too late, r13

Loosely remade by Christian Petzold as YELLA (2007). With the phenomenal German actress Nina Hoss.

The 1998 remake is sleazy and ridiculous (and quite different from the original) but it does have some entertainment value as bargain-bin direct-to-video trash. Shawnee Smith has a supporting role in it.

I always thought the neighbor in this, who hits on her, was kind of hot.

Carousel Waltz

Reunion

Carnival of Souls had a moment in the late 90s when it was rediscovered, so it makes since they did a remake in 1998. I hadn’t heard about it.

The department store sequence was shot at in Utah at ZCMI, which stood for Zion’s Co-Operative Mercantile Institution, a store which was founded by Brigham Young himself.

R20 Criterion put out their DVD edition in 2000, which coincides with that timeline for sure. People were aware of the film through the ‘80s and ‘90s as it often screened on TV, but it did get a pretty significant critical reappraisal in the ‘90s. The Criterion DVD is one of the earliest DVDs I bought. I still own it, though I did upgrade when they put out a Blu-ray.

My friend had a cheaper DVD copy than the Criterion version and right when it’s about to display the title, it switches to a black screen with the title “Corridor of Evil”. lol. That happened a lot with older movies.. Tarantino does that in “Death Proof”’s opening credits.

Yeah I think the first time Id seen it was in the 1990s but I had read about it years before. Maybe in that non-fiction book about horror movies by Stephen King.

Great movie it’s terrifying

Fantastic movie and a great double bill with the lesser-known but just as eerie DAUGHTER OF HORROR, aka DEMENTIA. I think both had a great influence on David Lynch.

[quote]Dementia is a 1955 American black-and-white experimental horror film produced, written, and directed by John Parker, and starring Adrienne Barrett and Bruno Ve Sota. The film, which contains no dialogue, follows a young woman's nightmarish experiences during a single night in Los Angeles's skid row. Stylistically, it incorporates elements of horror, film noir, and expressionist film.

It's so bizarre and unsettling, and it never really answers any of the questions you have while watching.

With "Dementia" you also get DL icon Marni Nixon wailing away as a bonus.

Her sense of isolation is palpable throughout the movie.

[quote]With "Dementia" you also get DL icon Marni Nixon wailing away as a bonus.

Yes. And there are two versions of the movie — a truly silent one with music and Marni's singing, and a shorter version where the producers had the brilliant idea of adding narration by Ed Fucking McMahon to try and explain the surreality. The silent version is, of course, much better.

Dementia is a great flick with an interesting backstory. I think Carnival of Souls is a better movie, but there are parallels and it indeed would make for a great double feature.

Parfum

I watched this with a roommate several years ago now and at one point he says of Hilligoss, “Her hair looks terrible!!!”

RiffTrax’s takedown of the film is hilarious.