‘Carnival of Souls’ still creepy

“Carnival of Souls” represented, until just recently, another of the few holes in my movie-watching experience.

Between late-night and weekend afternoon TV airings in my youth (hello, “Francis the Talking Mule”) and rampant cable and home video watching in the 1980s and 90s, I had caught up on many movies that came out before my time, movies that played in theaters in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s.

But I hadn’t seen “Carnival of Souls” until just the other day, when I watched it on one of those multi-movie, public domain collections of horror films.

And I thought it was pretty good. It’s effective and creepy and fairly innovative for its time.

The movie, which is in the public domain and thus shows up on many home video collections of horror films, was released in 1962 and reportedly made by director Herk Harvey for $33,000.

The movie shows its bigger-than-it-has-any-right-to-be budget in its first scene. Two carloads of teenagers (?) drag race and one goes over the side of a bridge … and you actually see the car go off the bridge and into the water, not just impressions of movement and shocked expressions on faces.

Church organist Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) is the only survivor of the car that went into the river. Understandably rattled, Henry begins seeing a white-faced man peering at her through windows and in darkened corners.

When she’s introduced to an abandoned amusement park, she is drawn to the haunted place, a gathering place for ghosts.

The movie plays out like an episode of “The Twilight Zone,” but that’s okay. As plots go – no spoilers here, even after a half-century – the story for “Carnival of Souls” is spooky and effective.

Hilligoss, who made only one other film – “The Curse of the Living Corpse,” in 1964 – is pretty good in the movie. She’s sharp-edged and not particularly likable yet still manages to evoke our feelings of sympathy and curiosity. And she’s striking.

Speaking of striking: The movie’s visually quite stark and eye-catching. The black and white cinematography helps, but Harvey found great locations and let them well.

Random observations::

Raza Badiyi is listed as assistant director. He is really Reza Badiyi, who worked for another 40 years or so and directed the “Out of Mind, Out of Sight” episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in 1997, featuring an invisible girl. According to his IMDB page, he also shot the famous curling wave for the credits of “Hawaii Five-O.”

There’s lasting scare value to the scenes in which Hilligoss suddenly sees a white-faced figure looming toward her. The ghostly apparition is played by director Herk Harvey.

Department of unhelpful information, from the dialogue: “Hysteria won’t solve anything. Now control yourself!”

Cult classic: ‘D.E.B.S.’

The first time I was channel-surfing and went past “D.E.B.S.” I thought it must be some TV show I hadn’t heard of.

Maybe it was some syndicated or cable TV show – which might explain why I’d never heard of it – featuring Michael Clarke Duncan, the actor from “Daredevil,” as the supervisor of a bunch of young female spies, living in a dormitory – and hey, are those two young women flirting and kissing?

It was only later, after a cursory Internet search, that I determined I had stumbled upon a cult movie.

“DEBS” – as I’m going to call it from here forward, omitting the periods just like I do with “Agents of SHIELD” – isn’t a TV show, although it would be a natural fit on a progressive cable channel like Bravo or Logo. It’s a 2004 film written and directed by Angela Robinson.

It’s a lightweight and silly movie that’s become something of a cult classic within the lesbian community for three reasons:

It presents a light-hearted flirtation and romance between two young women without a lot of the heartache and tragedy of earlier movies like “Desert Hearts” and “Personal Best.”

There are some “oh my god I can’t believe you’re kissing another girl” moments, but mostly because the romantic leads are young women at the opposite end of the crime and punishment spectrum: Amy (Sara Foster) is one of the DEBS, a government spy recruited right out of school and Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster, more recently Elena of the “Dallas” reboot) is a criminal, prone to robbing banks and threatening the world with high-tech weapons. Lucy is kind of like Dr. Evil if he was a woman, weighed 100 pounds, had great cheekbones and to-die-for hair. And Lucy has better taste in assistants: Scud (Jimmi Simpson) is funnier and more understanding than Mini Me.

And thirdly, Amy and Lucy get – spoiler – a happy ending.

There’s no doubt there’s some intent to appeal to horny guys here. After all, the movie features the DEBS agents running around in school girl outfits and high heels.

But the movie doesn’t treat Amy and Lucy like pieces of eye candy – at least not solely for men in the audience. Judging by the online outpourings of love for “DEBS,” the movie has a cult following among the lesbian community. There are not only fan sites but fan fiction out there. That’s a sure sign of a cult movie.

An added bonus if you watch “DEBS” is Duncan and Holland Taylor in supporting roles and Brewster and Simpson (who more recently appeared in movies like “White House Down”) in early roles.

If you want to know more about “DEBS,” check out the fan site debsmovie.com.

Classic schlock: ‘The Brain That Wouldn’t Die’

Believe it or not, I hadn’t seen “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die” in its entirety until just recently.

It is, after all, one of those classic schlocky horror movies, those cult drive-in classics, that everybody is familiar with even if you haven’t seen it. It was the first Mike Nelson “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” for pete’s sake.

Yet I managed to never see more than random clips until I sat down to watch it on DVD the other day.

And what a treat.

Filmed in 1959 but not released until 1962, the movie’s original title was “The Head That Wouldn’t Die,” who was probably more accurate.

The movie stars Jason Evers – a familiar face from the “Star Trek” series episode “Wink of an Eye” – as Dr. Cortner, an arrogant surgeon who is secretly experimenting, Frankenstein-style, on creating life after death. He’s been saving random body parts and assembling a creature that’s kept in the laboratory closet downstairs in his family’s summer home.

Early in the movie, even Cortner’s surgeon father criticizes his lack of humility and unpleasant ambitions.

Then Cortner and girlfriend Jan are in a auto accident and Jan is decapitated. Jan is beheaded in the kind of car crash that is usually found in low-budget movies: Lots of shots of the car careening along a country road, then quickly approaching a guard rail. The crash itself isn’t seen. Neither is Jan’s head, which Cortner wraps up in his sportcoat and rushes from the scene (with as much footage of him running, bunched up jacket in his arms, as there are shots of the car speeding down the road).

So Cortner put’s Jan … in a pan … at least her head … in his basement lab. Then he begins scouting out a replacement body.

The movie certainly seems to have inspired scenes in “The Re-Animator,” with its head in a pan motif. And “Jan in the Pan” is apparently the nickname for the female lead once she’s … in a pan.

Every cheap horror movie needs a monster and a woman’s head in a pan just wasn’t going to cut it. Hence … the stitched-together monster in the closet.

The creature, the result of Cortner’s previous experiments, is played by seven-foot, six inch Eddie Carmel, subject of a photo by renowned photographer Diane Arbus that depicts Carmel as “The Jewish Giant at Home with His Parents.”

As Cortner goes to a burlesque house to pick out a new body for Jan, he doesn’t seem like a tortured soul looking to save his girlfriend. He seems to be enjoying the view a little too much.

Adding to the overall aura of sleaze: Two dancers get into a catfight, boobs jiggling. Cut to drawings of two cats and a dubbed meow.

Jan, meanwhile, wakes up – well, her head wakes up – and she immediately begins talking to the still-unseen monster in the closet, talking up their mutual need for revenge.

There’s some choice dialogue:

“An operating room is no place to experiment.”

“Very well. The corpse is yours.”

Said during operation: “I’ve been working on something like this for weeks.” Well, tons of research then.

“I love her too much to let her stay like this.” Well, a disembodied head in a pan, yeah.

“The line between scientific genius and obsessive fanaticism is a thin one.”

“Horror has its ultimate … and I’m that.”

And cackling by Jan in the pan. Lots of cackling.

The end credit slide on the copy that I watched still had the original title: “The Head That Wouldn’t Die!”

The essential geek library: ‘Cult Movies’ by Danny Peary

Back in the old days, everything you wanted to know about movies and TV shows and comic books – their makers, their history, their detractors, their weird variations – wasn’t available for perusal at the click of a mouse.

No, children, we had books back then, and they were wonderful resources.

For a few decades, I amassed a collection of books about movies and TV and comics. They were my encyclopedias, my Bibles. I read and re-read them, memorizing facts and committing the photographs to memory.

So I thought I would occasionally mention some of these books here for you. Maybe you’ve got your own copies. Maybe you can find them in used bookstores or on Amazon. Maybe some will still be in print.

Danny Peary’s “Cult Movies” is a good place to start. Published in 1981 and subtitled “The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird and the Wonderful,” Peary’s book lives up to its name. The dozens of movies he writes about in the first book (three volumes total were published) range from beloved classics like “The Wizard of Oz” to still-at-the-time controversial films like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” to “2001” to “Vertigo.”

Peary devotes three or four pages to each movie. He lists the cast and key creative positions and gives a synopsis. He then goes into detail about what made the movies cult films.

Peary tells how director George Romero made “Night of the Living Dead,” from its hardscrabble production to its difficult distribution to its reception by audiences and critics.

He has real insight into the movies he covers.

“Pessimistic and unsentimental, ‘Living Dead’ is so effective because it is totally without pretension,” he notes. “It works on basic fears: unrelenting terror, monsters, darkness, claustrophobia. ‘Aliens’ attack us on American soil; protectors, even blood relations, turn on one another.” He notes how the black and white photography, a side effect of its low budget, made it more effective in some ways (anyone see the recent black-and-white presentation of the pilot for “The Walking Dead?”) but worked against it (Columbia Pictures wouldn’t distribute the film because it wasn’t in color) in others.

Peary, who is still actively writing, although not books about movies, brings the right amounts of reverence and criticism to these great but oddball movies. He and his books are what every modern-day movie and pop culture blogger aspires to be.