This Herk Harvey film comes to us as a little-known relic of 1960s American cinema, a true fetish capable of passing on a horror story with a delicacy and originality that is truly the merit of very few.
The story kicks off with an accident that takes Mary and her friend off the road after they engage in a car race with some friendly village bullies.
Their car plunges into the river, and Mary emerges miraculously unharmed in body, but severely traumatized in her psyche.
After a few days of "daze," the protagonist brings out her character strength, which leads her to make the abrupt decision to leave her home in her beloved city to move out and take a job as an organist in a church.
Right from the start, this Low Budget film titled "Carnival of souls" is remembered for a strong surreal and visionary component that, almost allows itself to be glimpsed even when events portray nothing abnormal.
This is thanks to a sparse, often bleak and desolate set design permeated by an evanescent atmosphere incredibly embellished by a particular 1960s aesthetic.
Adding merit to the stunning settings of this film is also excellent cinematography capable of rendering both locations and protagonists truly vacuous and phantom-like.
The slightly maligned and spirited Black and White component is as apt and concordant as ever, not only with the atmosphere of this stupendous gem directed by Herk Harvey but also with a Make up that makes the living dead not only well done but also original.
Candance Hilligos's bravura skill is in the fascinating lightness of Mary's performance, no less so is director Herk Harvey, who lends his hallucinated face to the specter that recurs in her visions.
The film also emerges in its most dreamlike force throughout the flow of Mary's sequences, which under her The Church Organ is lost in this nuanced and ghostly gallery.
As already mentioned this 1962 film by Herk Harvey is to be considered a true and very underrated sampler of the most visionary horror, undoubtedly one of the best American episodes of this genre in the 1960s ,capable of influencing even directors of the caliber of Lynch... Not to be missed!
Review of Dark Boiler
