‘Carnival of Souls’ an eerie classic

In 1962, they made this low-budget horror film, and it did what independent films normally did in 1962.

In retrospect, it makes sense that “Carnival of Souls” reached its public in this way.

Many and perhaps most horror films benefit from the community experience, of sitting in a room full of people who are on edge and jittery.

[...] “Carnival of Souls” is more like a private conversation, and it’s best experienced one on one, just you and the TV set.

It’s just a low-budget horror movie, with some flat and amateurish performances, but even that aids the experience, lending it a sense of the distant and the artificial.

The movie’s ideas are subject to a variety of metaphysical interpretations.

[...] in its broad outlines, it’s about a young woman (Candace Hilligoss) who gets into a car accident on the way to assuming a new job as a church organist.

Among other things, “Carnival of Souls” is about the mind’s ability to keep the unconscious at bay — and about how terrifying it would be to have the unconscious set loose.