For those who haven't had a chance to experience all that is Herk Harvey's 1962 masterpiece Carnival Of Souls, the film begins when a car full of male teenagers prepares to race a car full of female teenagers. As the cars approach a bridge, the girls accidently lose control and drive into the river. The authorities show up to try and get the car and the bodies out of the water and they're surprised when a lone female, Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss), emerges, seemingly the only survivor of the crash.

In a rather strange movie, Mary decides to move to Salt Lake City, Utah where the takes a job as a church organist and rents a room from an old woman named Mrs. Thomas (Frances Feist). On her way there, she passes by a strange old carnival pavilion and, after driving past it a few times, eventually spies a strange man (Herk Harvey) shambling around looking much worse for wear than your average derelict. As Mary finds she can't get the man or the pavilion out of her mind, she finds herself increasingly drawn to it and when she finally heads over there to explore it herself, Mary unwittingly finds out the truth about the mysterious man she sees and about herself…

Light on dialogue but rich with thick, eerie atmosphere and an otherworldly sense of dread, Carnival Of Souls might not move at a lightning quick pace but it doesn't need to. The story builds slowly but pays off quite nicely resulting in a last half that manages to unnerve and get under your skin without having to rely on gore or effects, rather, it succeeds by putting the emphasis on subtle chills and tone. The barren locations used to shoot the film lend the whole thing the perfect atmosphere for a horror film, providing a stark and appropriately dead looking backdrop for the characters to play off of.

The film may have been made on a fairly modest budget, but Harvey manages to hide that most of the time. The locations used for the film do a lot to mask this, letting something found stand in place of something made. The boardwalk area and the merry-go-round featured in the film have gone on to become pretty iconic in their own right, and for good reason. These scenes stand out, their emptiness speaking volumes as to what is really happening to poor Mary Henry.

Performance wise, Candace Hilligoss does a pretty decent job of playing the increasingly distraught Mary. As her mind starts to unravel, her performance becomes increasingly panicked which is in keeping with what her character is going through. Director Herk Harvey does an equally impressive job as the mysterious man who seems to be haunting her. He's able to say more with just some simple facial expressions than a script could purvey, making his completely silent performance a memorable and very effective one. The atmosphere and the performances coupled with the 'unique' organ heavy soundtrack from composer Gary Moore make this one stand out from the countless other black and white b-movies that were made around the same time and helped to make it a mainstay of late night TV where it found a much larger audience than it probably ever did theatrically. The film's public domain status has also ensured that, like Night Of The Living Dead, it's been included in countless bargain pack releases and low budget releases on VHS and DVD over the years. This is mentioned really just to give you an idea of how easy it has been to see this film over the years, it's everywhere, but at the same time it's one of those pictures that you won't be able to walk away from once you've started watching it. The film has an almost hypnotic quality to it, you get pulled in pretty much right from the start.

Video:

Criterion's AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer presents Carnival Of Souls framed at 1.37.1 fullframe aspect ratio in a transfer taken from a new 4k scan of the original 35mm negative. This is, for the most part, a beautiful image. The black and white image shows nice, natural looking film grain that never feels intrusive or distracting, rather, it just makes the picture look like film as it should. Black levels are strong and deep while fine detail is impressive throughout and frequently outstanding. The transfer is free of any obvious noise reduction or edge enhancement and compression artifacts are never once a problem. The old DVD release from years back looked great for its time but this one bests it with superior depth, delineation and contrast. Detail is consistently impressive and texture very strong as well. Contrast is spot on and really, there's nothing to complain about here at all, this picture is gorgeous.