Carnival of Souls (1962)

Talk about spooky! This low-budget black-and-white movie from 1962 is just that. It's not really a horror film, but more of a good old-fashioned 'scary' movie. Candace Hilligoss plays Mary Henry, a church organist that is riding with two women in a car and they accept a challenge to race across an old wooden bridge. They crash over the bridge into the water below, and three hours later (think about it) Mary Henry comes up from the water. She continues on to a new town to start her new organist job, but keeps feeling as if she is being stalked by a Ghoul Man (played by Herk Harvey, the writer and director of this great cult movie). Mary seems to have no friends, no family and just seems cut off from the rest of the world. My kind of gal! She moves into a boarding house, run by an old lady with bad nerves. Too bad Xanax wasn't around then. Her lecherous neighbor (Sidney Berger) has the hots for her, but Mary is too caught up in being stalked by the Ghoul Man to give him a tumble. Mary's condition worsens, and a few times she senses that other people can't see or hear her. She is drawn to an abandoned pavilion, and can't seem to understand why. I so want to reveal the ending, but I won't. I will say you probably won't see it coming, although there are clues to it throughout the movie. This was filmed in Kansas for a reported budget of about $30,000 and made millions on the drive-in circuit over the years. It's become one of my favorite cult movies, watch it and it just might become one of yours.