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over 1 year ago

Carnival of Souls

a review by CinemaSerf

When two groups of teenagers are racing their cars over a narrow bridge, an accident occurs and the car carrying the girls goes a-tumbling into the deep and muddy river below. It's during the extensive search process (a man with a bit of string with a weight tied to it) that "Mary" (Candice Hilligoss) emerges from the river, the sole survivor. Gradually, though, things start to become ambiguous - she is obsessed with a run down carnival nearby, is soon seeing apparitions and after a short while we all start to wonder if she is actually real or not! The acting from Hilligoss and from Art Ellison as the savvy preacher is quite compelling to watch (the dialogue much less so) and as the plot thickens, the drama builds nicely into quite a tense little horror story with an effective organ-based score to help raise the tension too. Watch it on a dark, wintery, night and it is a remarkably effective B-feature.