Carnival of Souls 1962Director: Herk Harvey (Cool Name) Starring: Mary survives a watery car crash that kills several other people. Soon she is persued by some creepy ghost or ghoul guy that obviously wants to get her on his side of the life/death fence. I guess she was supposed to croak in the accident. Mary takes a job as a church organist but soon loses it for playing satanic music. She rents a room in a house and has a real cheesy loser for a neighbor. This guy's got creep written all over him. Not only is he always trying to put the make on her but he peeks through the door as she dresses. A couple of times Mary goes through some kind of thing where nobody can see or hear her nor can she hear them. All we hear are her footsteps as she wanders around. For some strange reason she is drawn to an old abandoned amusement park. This is where we all end up for the Grande Finale. Despite it's rather goofy name, and it's $30,000 dollar budget, it's a pretty good flick. It's in black and white and this probably adds to the suspense factor. There's no special effects and it's not particularly scary. But somehow it does keep you interested in this poor Mary's predicament. It kind of reminds me of George A. Romero's much more scary "Night of the Living Dead" which was filmed six years later. And was more or less ripped off for 1982's SOLE SURVIVOR It certainly won't be to everyone's taste, but we enjoyed it.
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