Herk Harvey's sole feature film is beautful because it was carefully made – fortunately, his points of reference were Bergman and Fellini instead of James Whale and William Castle. Though the story—about a woman (gorgeous Candace Hilligoss) experiencing strange paranormal visions after surviving a drowned car accident—is good, it's the photography and dreamlike feel of the film that give it staying power. Hilligoss, a church organist, leaves town after the crash and wanders soullessly through her life, often experiencing a sense of invisibility to the rest of the world, and contending with a super-creepy ghost-man that keeps showing up. Unable to connect emotionally with her surroundings, she is drawn to an abandoned amusement park where the dead dance nightly. There's no big twist to it, but its impact prefigures stuff like The Others by a good 40 years, and while it is not outright scary (musty film critics may claim that old horror movies are scary, but to me everything before, like, The Shining is merely quaint), the psychological suspense factor is high throughout. In another alternate world, Herk Harvey instead had Ingmar Bergman's career, and those movies would really be something else.
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