‘I’ve been seeing things, things that can’t be real...’
The best kind of film to be remade is one that had a good concept but was poorly executed first time around. Carnival of Souls was not only a solid concept executed brilliantly, but it was also very modern and influential for its time. It’s a favourite not only of George Romero (it helped to inspire his Dead films) but of many important directors throughout history (David Lynch, Martin Scorsese and Wes Craven (more on him later) have all expressed admiration for the film). And so, surely there is nothing to be gained from remaking it?
Alex Grant (Bobbie Phillips) is haunted by the memory of witnessing the rape and murder of her mother at the hands of a carnival clown named Louis Seagram (Larry Miller). When the insidious clown returns from beyond the grave, Alex, along with her sister Sandra (Shawnee Smith), must attempt to solve the mystery of the carnival of souls.
Anyone familiar with the source material will know that that plot description sounds absolutely nothing like the plot of Herk Harvey’s film. The word “loosely” in the phrase “loosely based on” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. The film started life as a script from Candace Hilligoss, the star of the original film. This script ignited interest in the project to the extent that the original director was brought on board as a producer, and Wes Craven, unable to direct as he was working on Scream, was brought on as an executive producer (he eventually provided a ‘Wes Craven presents…’ credit). So, a cast of actual actors (the name ‘Shawnee Smith’ will be familiar to any fans of the Saw franchise reading this), an endorsement from a horror legend and the involvement of Herk Harvey and yet… this thing is a piece of shit. Adam Grossman’s direction is flat (he never made another feature film after this in a pleasing echo of the first film), the script veers between dull and nonsensical and there is a particularly nasty scene of sexual assault that has no place in such an unserious movie (or any movie for that matter). It’s just all bad.
It’s no surprise that this unnecessary sequel has faded into the mists of time. Now, let’s never mention it again.
