What do you think, sirs?

[MightyBombJack]

I had a good time, even though the yucky colorization that made it look like a really washed-out VHS predictably made my eyes sad (I'm hoping for a "just the jokes" track for this to sync up to the Criterion Blu-Ray even if a few of the colorization-specific jokes might not make sense if you're watching it in B&W). And I do still think that presenting the movie that way isn't exactly playing fair with it (kind of reminds me of a criticism of MST3K that I saw once that they would sometimes cut the movies for time and then make fun of them for not making sense). It wouldn't have been high on my list of movies to add to the Criterion Collection, but I do appreciate it as a sort of proto-David Lynch work of "outsider art" (which is why I find it particularly funny that Kevin was wearing an Eraserhead t-shirt), if that label applies to something made by a professional filmmaker (albeit of safety/educational shorts) who was consciously influenced by Cocteau and Bergman (something like Manos: The Hands of Fate might be more properly called cinematic "outsider art"). I kind of think that if a similar silent movie had been made in Germany about 40 years earlier, it would be known as an expressionist classic today. But I digress...

Lots of funny jokes (even the ones about the weird, stilted acting that I would argue is more of a feature than a bug), the one that made me and the rest of the audience laugh the most was the one about how "Unsanitary but Tasty" is Golden Corral's new slogan. The two shorts were fun too, more ACI madness is always welcome.

[MightyBombJack]

BTW, if you want to properly watch Carnival of Souls in B&W, it's going to be on Turner Classic movies on Saturday night (it's also readily available to watch online for free in various places, but TCM's copy will probably be a bit nicer-looking):

http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/70341/Carnival-of-Souls/

[xartffir]

I thought it was very good.  Consistent laughs throughout.  I think the general theme of the night was pointlessness.  A witch who is randomly throwing people into the mud is convinced to take a bath by a little girl.  An educational film teaching kids how to make masks of grass because ... (keeping in mind that this is a SEQUEL to the first film about making masks with grass).  Then the feature in which nothing happens for 99% of the movie, then something happens, then, plot twist...we find out nothing ever happened!

I love how the main character and her sleazeball neighbor both seem to be bipolar. 

[Trekker4747]

There was no melting man.

I have no idea what was going on in this movie or what it was about.

Did this "really happen" did she, as a spirit, really visit this place in Utah and have a corporeal form and interacted with people?  If so then I have a lot of questions.  Did this all happen "in her mind" during the last few moments of life?  Did none of this actually happen and it was just a pointless waist of time?

What was the narrative here?

[Darth Geek]

I had a lot of laughs from the riffing, but WOW that movie was a whole lot of nothing! I think more happened in their A Joke by Ingmar Bergman sketch!
It was funny that so little was happening that a Lifetime Movie started to break out.

I do agree the colorization was ugly, too.

[DrKlahn]

We both enjoyed it. Unfortunately we tried a new location that didn't start the feed until 10 minutes into the feature. So no slides or trivia and what we missed at the start  But the shorts and feature were both a lot of fun. It would have been nice to see it without the colorization, but honestly even though I'm a cinema fan the experience wasn't hurt much by it. Looking forward to purchasing this one!   

[MightyBombJack]

There was no melting man.

I have no idea what was going on in this movie or what it was about.

Did this "really happen" did she, as a spirit, really visit this place in Utah and have a corporeal form and interacted with people?  If so then I have a lot of questions.  Did this all happen "in her mind" during the last few moments of life?  Did none of this actually happen and it was just a pointless waist of time?

What was the narrative here?

I bet the movie was probably influenced a lot by "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce. Carnival of Souls actually slightly predates Robert Enrico's famous short film adaptation of the story by about a year or two, interestingly enough (made 1963, presented as an episode of The Twilight Zone [where something like Carnival of Souls wouldn't have felt too out of place] in 1964).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Occurrence_at_Owl_Creek_Bridge

Not to bang on about this too much, but I think people whose only exposure to Carnival of Souls is the colorized version will be surprised by how much of a different movie it seems to be in its original form, not entirely unlike how different Night of the Living Dead would seem when comparing colorized and B&W versions.

[Darth Geek]

Not to bang on about this too much, but I think people whose only exposure to Carnival of Souls is the colorized version will be surprised by how much of a different movie it seems to be in its original form, not entirely unlike how different Night of the Living Dead would seem when comparing colorized and B&W versions.

Does removing the color add in more things happening? Does it make the plot make more sense? Perhaps it was all that unnecessary color that covered up any character development, or made the acting bad.

Hell, if this was a Criterion release, would showing Armageddon in black and white make that movie better too?

[Pak-Man]

I get the point that there are some things colorization (Or the lack thereof) can't fix, but it does change the experience. The addition or removal of color can completely change the atmosphere. AMC aired the first episode of The Walking Dead in Black and White as kind of a comic homage/way to get people to tune in to the same show twice, and it felt a lot more cinematic.

[Compound]

While Carnival has never been one of my favorite riffs, the crowd seemed really into it at my showing, and that added a great deal to the enjoyability of the riff.

[Toplar Scarre]

A group of us talked about Carnival of Souls after the showing and the general consensus was that although the film was a slog to get through, it was a great riff all around. 

[Darth Geek]

Am I the only one who spent the ENTIRE movie thinking "DULL SURPRISE!" ?

[dbsommer]

Actually I'm the opposite here and for all the movies flaws, enjoyed it as it had a certain atmosphere that is lacking in a lot of modern day horror.

I do prefer it B+W though.

Oh yes, the riffs were superb. The guys kept it going despite the movie being, very slow. They did a good job of filling the spaces

[Trekker4747]

Had I not known the movie was originally in B&W I never would have guess it from this, the colorization in this version of the movie looks very good and, frankly, I find it much more watchable than the B&W version.  Most of the time I can watch B&W movies without any problems but the CoS B&W versions I've seen has very poor contrast and is just really hard to watch and to make out what's going on or grasp the details and feelings of the scenes.

But the colorization here really holds up and looks contemporary to the time the movie was made with natural colors and even a "grain" or quality to it that's not too clean that it looks like a modern-day colorization.  There's a lot of crap colorized movies out there and sometimes colorization can work without taking away from the movie.  (Like here.)  Other times not so much (the colorization in Night of the Living Dead is also pretty clean and nice looking but it doesn't quite work for that movie's look and tone.)