Carnival of Souls (1962)

"After a traumatic accident, a woman becomes drawn to a mysterious abandoned carnival."

I don't own any Criterion DVDs because I find them overpriced and don't really have much interest in their selection. If I were to buy one, however, it would be "Carnival of Souls" even though it's in the public domain and I have at least six copies of it in budget multi-packs already.

The reason I would buy "Carnival of Souls" again is the transfer. All the public domain versions are pretty horrible including the one on my YouTube channel which I've embedded above. If Criterion are to be respected for anything, it's that they nearly always find the best print available. There have been exceptions to the rule, but that's another story.

Make no mistake about it, "Carnival of Souls" is hardly the usual pretentious "arthouse" weirdness that Criterion are best known for. Apart from the innovative titles and a few surreal scenes which might indicate otherwise, "Carnival of Souls" is little more than a feature length version of a Twilight Zone episode called "The Hitch Hiker" (which in turn was based on an Orson Welles radio play from 1946). Allegedly, Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge" may have also been an inspiration for the story, but I've never read it and don't know.

Despite the unoriginality which most people wouldn't notice anyway, "Carnival of Souls" has a lot going for it especially in terms of atmosphere, a funereal organ music soundtrack, and, obviously, one of the most beautiful women to ever appear in a horror movie - Candace Hilligoss.

If the picture of her above isn't enough to get you to endure some old black and white nonsense then there's no hope for you. As Mary Henry, Candace Hilligoss may play one of the most frigid 1960s' horror heroines you ever encounter, but you can't deny that she's gorgeous.

The pushy John Linden (played by Sidney Berger) is certainly enamoured by Mary Henry. At first, Mary does precious little to encourage John's bad chat-up lines, and his drunken, predatory advances become increasingly loaded with menace and potential rapeyness.

These scenes are quite complex in some ways and very uncomfortable to watch. As they develop, there's actually only one way of describing Mary Henry, and it consists of two words ending in "tease". Although there's more to her actions than that, the whole relationship between Mary and John highlights a couple of very damaged individuals indeed, and that's the point. Even if everything was right in the world, they would hardly be a match made in heaven.

For 90% of the film, "Carnival of Souls" bumbles along quite nicely as what appears to be the psychological study of a schizoid personality disorder. It's suggested that because Mary is strong-willed and solitary by nature, her symptoms of depersonalisation and derealisation are the inevitable result. As things get progressively worse, there's a twist which I'm not going to spoil for you.

If you've never seen "Carnival of Souls" before, now is your chance. It's a creepy enough movie at any time of year, but it's especially good at Hallowe'en given what Hallowe'en is really supposed to be about.

Chernaya Molniya (2009)

(AKA Black Lightning)



Well, it's not a horror film (and only vaguely borders on sci-fi) but since there's nothing else to write about at the moment, I decided to watch and review "Black Lightning" for you instead.

If you are a fan of "Night Watch" and "Day Watch" (as I am) then you were probably really looking forward to seeing this Timur Bekmambetov produced Russian superhero film. It has all the elements in place to fit right into that weird fantasy sub-genre along with "Wanted" and anything else that Timur gets involved with. Well, you'd think that until you realise whoever directed this (Dmitriy Kiselev and Aleksandr Voytinskiy) are certainly not in the same class at all.

To be honest, I was underwhelmed. On the the plus side, it had three actors in it from "Night Watch" (Viktor Verzhbitskiy, Valeriy Zolotukhin, Sergey Legostaev), one from "Wanted" (Dato Bakhtadze) and a lot of pretty Russian TV stars. On the negative side, only Viktor "Zavulon" Verzhbitskiy had much of a role and he was typecast anyway. Everything was unevenly paced and there was just a complete lack of consistency about the leads, Grigoriy Dobrygin and Ekaterina Vilkova (who, of course, you've never heard of), that it was hard to tell if this was a serious film or simply a plagiarised parody of 2008's American batch of superheroes.

If you've ever watched a "Spider-man", "Iron Man" or "Batman" movie then you've seen all this before. In fact, the most memorable scenes of each are used in such a glaringly obvious way that this could be something made by the Asylum people rather than a big name like Universal.

To be really derogatory about "Black Lightning", it could be described as "Spider-man" without a radioactive spider bite mixed with "Iron Man" with a car instead of a suit mixed with "Batman" set in Moscow rather than Gotham. I think there was at least one scene lifted straight out of "Superman" too and the villain's car looks ridiculously like the DeLorean from "Back to the Future".

The funny thing is that if you've never seen any other superhero film then you will probably enjoy it. I liked it for the first half hour or so but the whole thing with the flying car was too silly especially as it was all done better in "Day Watch". All the product placement with the Apple iPhones soon got old as well especially as the same thing happened with the Nokia 7650 in "Night Watch".

The special effects were good enough for this kind of thing. I'm not sure how low-budget this film actually was because there was obviously a lot of work put into the effects even if they weren't all that convincing. I've got a suspicion that "Black Lightning" is really a kids' film anyway (and by "kids" I do mean really little kids) and they probably wouldn't notice all the flaws that adults do. When I was little I thought that "Star Wars" was really good but I can't even bear to watch it now so just envision a generation of Russian children adding this to their future nostalgia collection.

Having seen a few films meant for children over the years both as a child and as an adult, I won't say that this is the worst I've ever seen. I reserve that particular honour for "Stormbreaker" (2006) which I advise you all to watch just before viewing "Black Lightning" if you want to double your disappointment.

Timur Bekmambetov is supposedly going to direct the American remake of "Black Lightning". I don't know if that will improve things or whether it will turn out to be just a bigger budget version of all this childish silliness for the Summer but I'm sure we'll all find out.

Phantom Racer (2009)

Now I know that I'm going to drop myself right in it with the other horror aficionados out there but I actually enjoyed this SyFy TV movie.

Yes, I do realise that it's just a really low-budget mix of "The Car", "Christine" and "The Wraith" but none of those movies had Greg Evigan or Nicole Eggert in them as far as I know. It's pretty much their performances that carry this silliness and make it one of the most entertaining things that I've seen for weeks.

For those of us of a certain generation, the in-joke of Greg Evigan playing a truck driver again with only one letter changed in the name of his character, not B.J. but J.J., might make some people think that you shouldn't take any of this too seriously. The way his onscreen daughter chides him with, "You killed my two dads!" confirms it. The teenagers that this movie is really designed for wouldn't even notice though because everybody plays their parts as straight as the script allows them to. I'll have to watch it again to see if there were any less obvious Baywatch jokes for Nicole Eggert.

Obviously every horror fan will compare "Phantom Racer" unfavourably with the other possessed car movies and I'd be foolish not to join them. It really isn't in the same class at all but some of the gore certainly is. Not to spoil it for you too much but there really are some quite visceral kills which, although over far too quickly, really crank this up a few notches from the usual kiddie-safe SyFy fodder. I particularly enjoyed the windscreen wiper scene but, in all fairness, it was really far fetched. Yes, as far fetched as an evil ghostly driver coming back for revenge in his old racing car, I suppose.

Anyway, I'm not going to get into all the bad parts such as the uber clichéd car chases or anything like that because this is a pretty fast paced movie and there's nothing in it which will bore anybody for too long. A couple of the performances were a little bit weak but you'll hardly notice them. If it had had a bigger budget then it could have been a lot gorier for my tastes but it would still have been the same ridiculous story so it doesn't really matter.

"Phantom Racer" is just an amusing time-filler for a wet afternoon or an early morning when there's nothing else to watch. I would even go so far as recommending it for purchase as well if you really like the subgenre. For others, I think this is only worth a rental unless you manage to catch it on TV for free.