Cult & Psychotronic Film Meet-Up: "CARNIVAL OF SOULS" (1962)

Portland Movie Club’s Cult & Psychotronic Meet-Up Halloween Special "CARNIVAL OF SOULS" (1962)

At a Portland Movie Club Meet-Up, just like a book club, we watch the movie before we meet.

Let's talk about movies! Join Movie Club Members and Co-Hosts David J, Victoria G. and Jake B for the underground classic “Carnival of Souls.” A spooky, dream-like gem of inventive, low-budget horror. The kind of urban legend you might spin around the campfire at midnight. A young woman survives a severe car accident, takes a job as a church organist, while a mysterious, ghostly figure beckons her on a journey to an eerily abandoned carnival. A perfect film for commencing Halloween festivities.

Here's how the Portland Movie Club Meet-Ups work

1. Just like a book club, we watch the movie before we meet. You don't have to watch it to join us, but it'll likely be more fun if you do.
2. We won’t discourage you from taking notes to help remember the most interesting parts, or your most inspired observations. But this is a social event where everyone gets to speak their mind and have fun, and not a college lecture (“zzzzzz….”).
3. We’ll meet at Breakside Brewery in Beaverton at 2pm on the scheduled date. We typically have signs or relevant books or memorabilia at our table(s), and sometimes we even wear colorful antennae if the movie we are celebrating demands it (e.g. “Real Genius” or “Robot Monster”).
4. Typically, we'll begin by going around and introducing ourselves. The Hosts may elect to give a summary of the film's development providing critical context, then suggest potential topics for diving into the group discussion.

A little more about “CARNIVAL OF SOULS”
The regional origin of this $33,000 production, in Lawrence, Kansas and Salt Lake City, may remind some of the Pittsburgh base for the early films of George Romero. And like Romero’s original “Living Dead” opus, “Carnival of Souls” is the work of a first-time feature director who learned his craft making industrial films. Incidentally, director Herk Harvey actually appears in the film as the phantasmic stalker.

“Carnival” wasn’t properly noticed until unsuspecting viewers caught it as hypnotic middle of the night programming on local television stations. And they couldn’t shake its mesmerizing imagery. It took a good three decades for it to accumulate a cultish reputation that generated retrospective rediscovery and an art-house reissue in cinemas. Director Harvey has said that among his primary influences were Bergman and Cocteau, and for once that kind of boasting is warranted. A one-of-a-kind B-Movie budgeted miracle.

Viewing Options:
Streaming options will vary from month to month, but currently they are plentiful and include Amazon prime, Tubi, Plex, etc. There’s a beautiful Criterion Collection Blu-ray, which was preceded by DVD and Laserdisc releases (for nostalgia buffs).

Trigger Notes:
We tend to watch edgier stuff in the Cult Films Meet-Up than in other Meet-Up Events. We direct you to the “Does the Dog Die” website for specifics. Carnival of Souls (Movie, 1962) - DoesTheDogDie.com

About Cult and Psychotronic Films:
Cult and Psychotronic films defy mainstream criticism and often exist at the borderline between art and exploitation. They can be any genre and typically have been dismissed – at least initially - by film critics and cineastes. This is arguably because they don’t follow the same rules that Made-In-Hollywood flicks adhere to. Some consider these titles to be Oppositional Cinema, always inhabiting a space outside of mainstream trends and popularity.

It needs to be mentioned that “Psychotronic” was a term invented by Michael Weldon, who published a magazine under that name (and later a pair of groundbreaking books) out of his cramped NY City apartment. Often it is used to describe films in the SF and Horror genres, but not limited to those, whose unique charms have been under-appreciated by the masses.

Previous titles viewed and discussed have included: This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, Possession (1981), Born In Flames, Titane, Barbarella, Fantastic Planet, Eraserhead, Daisies (aka, Sedmikrásky), Jennifer’s Body, Another Day Another Man, The Human Tornado, The Love Witch, Plan 9 From Outer Space, Phantom of The Paradise, Takashi Miike's Audition, and David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and Rabid.

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