Friday, January 18, 2008

Carnival Of The Souls

"A Weird Tale Of The Unnatural"

Best. Tagline. Ever.

I'm talking the 1962 flick directed by Herk Harvey here. Not the 1998 film presented by Wes Craven in which a clown rapes a woman... apparently... I've never seen that one or even heard of it until I was searching for the tagline for the 1962 which I did see.
Have you seen it?
I don't care!
This review is for the classic Carnival Of The Souls which the newer film clearly tried to cash in on by naming their film the same thing! Those rat-bastards...

It's clear why this film is a classic horror film and none of the other films we find in the $1 bin at Wal-mart and the Dollar Store are! This one's almost worth $2! And it came with another filmon the disc that I'm not sure I watched yet... anyway!
This film follows the story of a crazy bug-eyed lady who narrowly escapes death only to be haunted by some creepy "I like turtles" looking guy, who seems to be both angered and terribly excited to be stalking this woman without much explanation on his part, though this is clearly terrifying as we see the bug-eyed lady run around gasping and placing the back of her hand on her forehead in an "Oh my God, I'm a helpless pre-equal rights movement sort of gal" way.
The film is gripping enough to keep you interested though some of the concepts, the acting and the filming style are somewhat dated. The acting is fine, though there's some slightly over the top drunken wiseguy type in the film who I'm not sure had a purpose... I think it's possible he was meant to be some sort of "comic element", but I'm almost certain the film had absolutely no need for a comic element and all it did was take away from the thriller aspect of the movie, in my opinion...
Anyway, point is, though this film was extremely well made it did lag a little, and only because of the age of the movie I think and I couldn't help but think that dreaded word while watching it...

Remake!


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