CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962) review
I found CARNIVAL OF SOULS around 20 years ago when it was playing on the once cool A&E network’s Halloween marathon. I think it was made for $33K in the early ’60s, it’s impact was pretty wide, inspiring George Romero’s original zombie opus and being a unique piece in the “limbo” genre (JACOB’S LADDER, OCCURRENCE AT OWL BRIDGE, the abysmal SOUL SURVIVORS).
It’s an unnerving piece. It’s a reflection on loneliness and emotional distance. The main set-piece is a grand but long abandoned pavilion — someone’s dream project at one point, now a hollow wreck where only the dead gather to dance. The best sequences are where the heroine (an atheist church organist) is struck with the inability to hear or be heard by anyone (a cheap but extremely effective film technique).
My only advice is to watch it alone. Older movies are ripe to be torn down when you watch with an audience used to certain tropes and styles (I was watching THE TERMINATOR one time with a group of assholes who thought the hairstyles and endo-skeleton scene was particularly hilarious — a moment where I could understand the NRA’s position in carrying firearms at all times). CARNIVAL OF SOULS may be dated in pace and filmmaking texture, but it has a lingering spirit in it; ideas and unnerving undertones that speak to our personal paranoias and fears. It traps me in those every time.