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Giancarlo (Giancarlo)
Username: Giancarlo
Registered: 11-2008
Posted From: 85.116.228.5
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 01, 2011 - 08:01 am: | |
I have chanced upon this US movie trio: "Carnival of Souls", "Messiah of Evil" (aka "Dead People) and "2000 Maniacs", order of preference. As to "Carnival", I've fallen in love with Candace Hilligoss being cast as the estranged revenant haunted by the laconic phantoms in pre-goth accoutrement and lure, their faces painted black and white as if reflecting the ambience steeped in terse shadow/light contrast. I was deeply moved by the sequence of her total disappearing from surrounding people's attention. The ending is not meant as a surprise, it comes round as a mandatory completion of the story.
As to "Messiah", it's a little gem on the wake of Romero's living dead, but precurring the running zombies theme of later times. The movie theatre sequence is just simple as it's great, really disturbing (to my taste, at least) and not without a little welcome pinch of humour. I did not understand why the female hero was spared by the Stranger as she was offered to Him in sacrifice. The heroine's voice-over states He let her go because nobody would ever believe her account of events in Pandum (was that the city's name?). As the monsters were indiscriminate in their flesh-eating choices, I don't see why she should be spared her fate. Maybe the Stranger could not allow His sacrificial Lamb to be eaten and He seems to have been a God, after all.
The "2000 Maniacs" partakes the "Centennial" theme with the previous movie. Otherwise, it's nasty campiness paired with clownish southern humour. The nail-studded barrel execution is overtly taken from a real episode in ancient history whereby Roman consul Actilius Regulus underwent the same treatment by the Carthaginians and, after the roll, left to die face to the sun not before having his eyelids scissored away. |
Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec
Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 92.232.199.129
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 01, 2011 - 01:10 pm: | |
I've not seen the others you mention, Giancarlo, but Carnival of Souls is one of my all-time favourite films (I assume you mean the original as there was another later film of the same name, I think?). Considering, especially, that this film was done on a very low budget with the director using his friends and family as actors (apart from the lead actress), it's quite incredible. |
Giancarlo (Giancarlo)
Username: Giancarlo
Registered: 11-2008
Posted From: 85.116.228.5
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 01, 2011 - 01:55 pm: | |
Yes, Caroline, it was the original "Carnival".
I heard the remake was garbage. |
Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec
Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 92.232.199.129
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 01, 2011 - 09:26 pm: | |
Yep, I heard that too!
It's about time I rewatched Carnival as I haven't seen it in a while. I managed to find a DVD of it in a charity shop for a couple of pounds a year or so ago, but I haven't rewatched it yet. |
Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.180.105
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 02, 2011 - 12:23 pm: | |
Caroline - it's a favourite of mine, too. Sad thing is the dvds are pretty poor quality.
The woman in the film wanted to do a sequel you know, years later. She wrote it and tried getting it produced but then Wes Craven snapped it up and cut her out of it and took it in his own direction. It's a pretty scuzzy story (I mean what happened to it, not the woman's screenplay.). From what she said she wanted to pursue the same sense of mystery and strangeness. She sounded nice, thoughtful. |
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