I've always loved this movie. I think its still very eerie and suspenseful. There are some bits that have gotten corny with age, especially the guy whose her neighbor, but aside from that its brilliant.

i watched this movie a while ago. IT IS THE WORST MOVIE EVER MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL!!!

Movie was boring and very, very predictable. Can't believe some reviewers would waste so much time writing paragraphs on this thing.....get a life.

I really enjoyed the campiness of this, though I do recognize the fact that it did not, in any decade, deserving any sort of award recognition. I use the word "Enjoy" because I enjoy seeing idiots fall off bridges in their cars. I enjoy seeing freakishly frail looking women survive the currents of a river and simply walking out of the water. If that ever happened to anyone I know, I wouldn't talk to them becasue I'd be freaked out. I enjoyed being totally impressed by the pipe organs themselves, but the utter creepiness of the music. I'm not even going to talk about the creepy ghoul make-up guy aside from acknowledging his part in the movie. I enjoyed finding humor in the transition into you-can't-see-me-mode and her increasing psychotic behavior. I would recommend this only to those who enjoy movies like sleepaway camp or child's play. This is the grand daddy of cheese-horror.

When she drives off the car lift at about 1 hour and 15 minutes, I realized the downtown buildings are my hometown of Lawrence, Kansas! Of course being a university town (KU), this has to be someone's drama project, or something of the sort. What a hoot! The drag race at the beginning of the movie starts at the intersection of 23rd and Iowa St., heading west. You can see the old Holiday Inn and DX gas station in the background as they pass through the intersection.
Of all the movies to watch tonight, we picked this one because it looked kinda' campy. Boy were we right. The second movie I watch on Hulu and it's partially filmed in my hometown. Go figure...

....reminds me of "The Sixth Sense"

Girl spends 90 of the slowest minutes of YOUR life discovering, or not discovering, she's a ghost.
I wondered, watching this, if the director had ever seen a horror film before. Then I wondered if he'd ever seen a film - any film - before. It's literally made like a film by someone who has never seen movies.
Generally speaking there are two styles or approaches in horror - there's the mood/ atmosphere/ vibe type horror, and there's the shock/ scare type horror. Every horror film uses both, and it's the ratio and the quality of the work that determines what's good, and what's Carnival of Souls.
For its 'shock/ scare' stuff, CoS uses one thing over and over - a guy in ghoul make up randomly appearing, not looking very scary at all. Then the girl screams, and I'm thinking, "Really? That merited a scream?" Of course at the end we get a bunch of people in bad ghoul make up. Which - well you know how when you multiply 0 by any number, it's still 0? This is in that tradition. I will say, tho, that a late scene in the doctor's office features the most telegraphed, obvious, 'oh just get it over with already you morons' scare of all time. It's so hilariously obvious, and there's such a long build up to it, it's like - it almost achieves art.
Carnival of Souls seems to mostly rely on 'atmosphere'. It wants to create a scary, eerie mood. It does this almost exclusively by its use of organ music. Yes, organ music. No matter what, no matter if it's inappropriate, or actually drowns out more appropriate, scarier music (see the dancing scene, where the music they're dancing to is still somewhat audible), we get organ music. Sometimes, too, if the organ music just - isn't - enough, the woman suddenly can't hear, or be heard, by others. WOAH. Pretty spooky!
So the film is inept as horror. It's not even a horror film, to my mind. There's just not even a recognizable enough attempt to be scary here. Did a filmmaker in the 60s honestly think those silent-movie ghouls chasing a girl around an amusement park was frightening? Maybe in theory. Here it plays like a Rocky Horror version of the fast-speed park scenes in A Hard Day's Night.
I won't pick on the acting, because I don't ask much of the acting in my old b-movies. I really don't. But I do require a bit of sense. Just a bit. So if the girl died, what? She was alive in some scenes, then sometimes she was dead? Or she was alive all the time, but had been meant to die, so the dead people dragged her back? There's no answer that makes sense and is wholly consistent with what we're shown. And I have to take this film on a literal level - it's simply too stupid and bad to earn one's giving it the benefit of the doubt and taking it all as symbolism. Symbolism is luxury. First, be a good movie. Or be competent. Then we'll discuss your symbolism.
Another scene worth remembering - the woman has been brought in from out of state to work as a church organist. The priest hears her playing horror movie music on the organ, and immediately fires her and tells her she's a horrible person. This entire scene, like much of the picture, makes no literal sense. Yet it is a literal scene. The priest is a real life character. So what the hell was that about? You can't create a 'real world' and a 'dream/ symbolic world', then have your literal world characters doing things that only make sense in the dream/ symbolic sense.
But this review is already much more interesting than the film itself. I'll leave you with this - this is one of the dullest movies ever made. I had to watch it in installments. Watch anything else. "Cult classic" it may be, but that's a cult you don't want to be a part of. If you must watch a horror film on here, try one of the Vincent Price pictures.

One of the creepiest movies i've ever seen. Cult classic.