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Post by geode on Jul 26, 2017 14:33:40 GMT
Quite low budget, taking advantage of abandoned buildings at the edge of the Great Salt Lake. Quite atmospheric, and very similar to a Twilight Zone episode, "The Hitchhiker" in my opinion. I am always a sucker for low-budget flicks that actually deliver. Candace Hilligoss plays a compelling waif. WikipediaTrailer Whole flick |
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Post by mszanadu on Jul 26, 2017 20:49:00 GMT
Quite low budget, taking advantage of abandoned buildings at the edge of the Great Salt Lake. Quite atmospheric, and very similar to a Twilight Zone episode, "The Hitchhiker" in my opinion. I am always a sucker for low-budget flicks that actually deliver. Candace Hilligoss plays a compelling waif. WikipediaTrailer Whole flickI so agree geode on all your points here this film is quite an eerie yet very memorable classic film too   . Also watched this one just last month on the channel TCM ( Turner Classic Movies ) and for me it never loses it's uniqueness or interest in it as well   . IMPO - It also has a hint in certain scenes as a future inspiration to the work of David Lynch too ( this movie seems to set the stage for that type of eerie surrealistic formula as well )  . One example - The ghost people dancing in pairs in the old ball room of the abandoned building in a strange nightmarish dream-like fashion  . Another scene in the beginning of the film where our main character is playing the church organ and the scene is larger in view from up high so we could see the entire instrument while she is playing . Thanks so much geode for your subject post  . |
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Post by Fox in the Snow on Aug 16, 2017 13:14:51 GMT
Been a long time, but I remember really enjoying this, charmingly creepy.
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Post by geode on Aug 17, 2017 17:57:12 GMT
Been a long time, but I remember really enjoying this, charmingly creepy. It works on its own strange level...to be sure. |
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Post by BATouttaheck on Aug 17, 2017 18:22:35 GMT
I watched it. Didn't like it. Read positive reviews of it. Re-watched it and still didn't like it. It just seems too "homemade" and full of "goofs" that even I notice. It makes zero sense to me. Wrote a review of it on the old Classic Film Board "what did you watch this week" thread and was violently attacked by someone who was not even a regular poster on that thread.  |
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Post by geode on Aug 18, 2017 10:59:35 GMT
I watched it. Didn't like it. Read positive reviews of it. Re-watched it and still didn't like it. It just seems too "homemade" and full of "goofs" that even I notice. It makes zero sense to me. Wrote a review of it on the old Classic Film Board "what did you watch this week" thread and was violently attacked by someone who was not even a regular poster on that thread. It is low budget, so does not have a slick "Hollywood" look which is part of the appeal. It also does not pander to a need to explain everything that happens as is felt necessary by people who want movies to be as engaging in terms of plot as an episode of "Gilligan's Island"... |
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Post by mszanadu on Aug 18, 2017 17:48:22 GMT
IMPO - This unique film is not for everyone's taste either but it definitely did appeal to me ( I usually like what is abstract or surrealistic ) . |
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Post by fangirl1975 on Aug 18, 2017 18:58:25 GMT
I saw it on TCM during the Halloween season a few years ago. After watching it I was thinking, "What in Sam Hill have I just seen?."
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Post by mszanadu on Aug 18, 2017 19:48:00 GMT
I saw it on TCM during the Halloween season a few years ago. After watching it I was thinking, "What in Sam Hill have I just seen?." "What in Sam Hill have I just seen?" One answer would be of course a young woman's worst nightmares coming to life for her   . I agree on a first viewing this film can seem very overwhelming but IMPO it's still a good one . |
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Post by BATouttaheck on Aug 18, 2017 20:18:46 GMT
I saw it on TCM during the Halloween season a few years ago. After watching it I was thinking, "What in Sam Hill have I just seen?." for me that plus why have I wasted my time watching this dreck not once but twice? |
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Post by koskiewicz on Aug 18, 2017 20:54:23 GMT
...like Plan 9 From Outer Space, it is so bad it is good !!!
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Post by BATouttaheck on Aug 18, 2017 21:04:22 GMT
...like Plan 9 From Outer Space, it is so bad it is good !!! compared to this one. Plan 9 should have gotten an Oscar. CoS was just plain bad ! just one opinion but mine own ! |
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Post by geode on Aug 22, 2017 7:09:33 GMT
...like Plan 9 From Outer Space, it is so bad it is good !!! The main difference between them is that "Carnival of Souls" is competent filmmaking and has good acting. |
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Post by marianne48 on Aug 23, 2017 1:11:56 GMT
Just because a movie is low-budget, it's often labeled as bad or even schlock. The only thing this movie has in common with
Plan 9 is its having been made on the cheap. It's very well done and atmospheric. The grainy, austere look to it only adds
to its eeriness--big-budget, color horror movies never seem to be as good as low-budget "cheapies" such as this, Night of the Living
Dead, and other inspired horror films. The fact that the actors aren't well-known stars is another asset. Candace Hilligoss
is appropriately otherworldly, and Sidney Berger as the creepy neighbor is THE definitive sleazeball desperation date. This was
one of the few horror movies that I found genuinely scary, as a kid and as an adult.
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Post by geode on Aug 23, 2017 6:13:51 GMT
Just because a movie is low-budget, it's often labeled as bad or even schlock. The only thing this movie has in common with Plan 9 is its having been made on the cheap. It's very well done and atmospheric. The grainy, austere look to it only adds to its eeriness--big-budget, color horror movies never seem to be as good as low-budget "cheapies" such as this, Night of the Living
Dead, and other inspired horror films. The fact that the actors aren't well-known stars is another asset. Candace Hilligoss is appropriately otherworldly, and Sidney Berger as the creepy neighbor is THE definitive sleazeball desperation date. This was one of the few horror movies that I found generally scary, as a kid and as an adult. Correct. |
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geralmar
Sophomore
@geralmar
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Post by geralmar on Aug 26, 2017 4:25:07 GMT
I read that director Herk Harvey said that he was trying to emulate Ingmar Bergman.
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Post by geode on Aug 26, 2017 5:54:19 GMT
I read that director Herk Harvey said that he was trying to emulate Ingmar Bergman. Harvey’s love of world cinema is on display constantly throughout the film. In fact, the movie’s reliance on funereal atmosphere, its sudden bursts of shocking imagery, and its occasional inventiveness with low-budget special effects to surprise and disquiet the audience are all the tools which made Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 classic Vampyr so innovative. Even the film’s opening drag race scene seems cut from the same cloth as parts of the French New Wave, with its rapid-fire jump cuts and Americana cool influenced by, or at least developed almost in parallel to, the same sensibilities Jean-Luc Godard famously experimented with in Breathless (1960) and, later, in Band of Outsiders (1964). In a commentary track, Harvey referred to wanting his film to have “the look of a Bergman and the feel of a Cocteau” (a quote so revealing it’s included on the back cover of the Criterion edition). Few major Hollywood directors working within the studio system at the time could have claimed to be inspired by so many groundbreaking artists from around the world, and even fewer would have shown this influence in their work itself. |
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Post by Stammerhead on Aug 28, 2017 20:48:32 GMT
I wasn't taken by the film when I first watched it (the organ soundtrack is annoying) but it has grown on me over the years and it does have an excellent use of location.
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Post by geode on Aug 28, 2017 21:57:21 GMT
I wasn't taken by the film when I first watched it (the organ soundtrack is annoying) but it has grown on me over the years and it does have an excellent use of location. I agree about the organ music....and the location work. |
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Post by BATouttaheck on Aug 28, 2017 22:23:01 GMT
...like Plan 9 From Outer Space, it is so bad it is good !!! The main difference between them is that "Carnival of Souls" is competent filmmaking and has good acting. You must have seen a different movie that the one I watched. Total muddle without the 'fun of getting to make a film' which is evident in Plan 9. |
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