Originally published at: Watch Carnival of Souls a haunting 1962 independent horror film | Boing Boing
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I saw this ages ago at an art house theater. Its a slow eerie movie, comparble to Eraserhead without the obvious surrealism.
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A classic. Also available from Criterion on disc and streaming with lots of neato extra content, and a higher quality image:
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Oh wow just yesterday I was listening to a podcast about organ music that was talking about this movie! Had intended to look it up and before I did, voila, Boing Boing found it for me!
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This is a legit scary film. I got to see it at an event called the Silver Scream Spookshow, where they have this funny live show and then a classic film, usually a horror film. This was easily the scariest movie they ever showed… The next one they are doing is Bride of Frankenstein…
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Great movie. Awesome soundtrack. Perfect for playing the background for the Trick-Or-Treaters on Halloween night.
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Rifftrax (Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy from MST3K) did it as a riffed and simulcast live show a few years back.
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Don’t forget, the live riff has the classic followup short “Masks of Grass”. Oh ACI, will you ever uncover the mystery…is corn a grass?
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Star Hillgoss (85 years old, still alive) has told in interviews how she’d made the movie strictly for the cash and quickly moved on, and then years later happening to hear someone or other talking about this “classic cult horror movie” and belatedly realizing with stunned amazement that it was “her” film they were talking about.
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Lots of scenes where shot at Utah’s cursed Saltair amusement park that caught on fire (a few times), flooded and was abandoned by a receding lake over its life. Saltair (Utah) - Wikipedia
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Bet it’s not a scary as Shanty Tramp!
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Hard to believe this film made it to The Criterion Collection. It was a staple of the 99 cent DVD bin.
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They’ve lowered their criteria.
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Being in the 99 cent DVD bin merely means that it was in the public domain and in a popular genre. Nothing to do with quality of the original film.
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Like so much of the Criterion Collection, this is also available on HBO Max.
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It seems like Carnival of Souls was a big influence on that movie and that other movie
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It used to be on Tubi as well but not any more (at least to an .au domain). The RiffTrax version is though. 
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I had a really, really bad copy of “Carnival of Souls” that came in one of those 30 Movies for $5 compilations (a good place to find forgotten gems like “Dementia 13”). The audio of CoS was barely comprehensible and the picture quality was potato-camera like, but the spirit was there. The behind-the-scenes story is almost as fascinating as the movie itself.
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I didn’t know it was filmed in Lawrence! I was born and raised there. Now I gotta watch it!
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I don’t see how this film continues to be labeled “obscure.” It’s one of the most streamed and available “cult” movies around and has been for like 20 years. I think I first saw it when Netflix would still send you a DVD in the mail!
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