Slasher and Horror Movies: Yella and Carnival of Souls

💎💎YELLA💎💎 – Yella is estranged from her possessive and violent husband; but he can’t quite bring himself to give her up. When their fraught interaction finally comes to a dramatic conclusion, Yella’s life takes an odd shift. Christian Petzold’s drama deals with a woman, who leaves her hometown for a promising job and a new life but is haunted by the truths of the past. As her marriage to Ben broke and her professional career has no future in their native town in the Eastern part of Germany, Yella has decided to search for a job in the West. When she gets to know Phillip, a smart executive at a private equity company in Hanover, she becomes his assistant and gets involved into the world of ruthless and big business. Realizing her dreams could come true with Phillip’s help, she starts hearing voices and sounds from her past, which menace her new and better life… Yella is a 2007 German psychological horror-thriller film written and directed by Christian Petzold and starring Nina Hoss. The film is an unofficial remake of the 1962 American film Carnival of Souls. Yella premiered at the 57^th Berlin International Film Festival where Hoss won the Silver Bear for Best Actress Award.

A young businesswoman gets in touch with her taste for cutthroat corporate tactics by slowly seducing her inner demons in The State I Am In writer/director Christian Petzold’s free-flowing dramatic thriller. Immediately accosted by her ex-husband, Ben (Hinnerk Schonemann) upon returning to her hometown of Wittenberg, Yella Fichte (Nina Hoss) blows her former spouse off before informing father that she has landed a lucrative accounting position in Hanover. When Ben subsequently offers Yella a ride to the airport, she reluctantly accepts but immediately realizes her mistake when he lashes out at her in an angry tirade before driving the car into the River Elbe. Just barely managing to escape from the car before her lungs fill with water, Yella swims to the shore and catches the first train to Hanover. As it turns out, Yella’s new boss (Michael Wittenborn) has just been fired, yet after rejecting his thinly veiled advances the job-seeking woman seems to experience a stroke of luck when she makes the acquaintance of roving venture capitalist Phillip (David Striesow). Later, after Yella accompanies cold and calculating businessman Phillip to an important meeting, the relationship between the pair quickly turns personal.

Narrowly escaping her volatile ex-husband, Yella flees her small hometown in former East Germany for a new life in the West. She finds a promising job with Phillip, a handsome business executive with whom an unlikely romance soon blossoms. But just as Yella seems poised to realize her dreams, she finds herself haunted by buried truths that threaten to destroy her newfound happiness. Following a separation from her husband, Yella Fichte (Nina Hoss) plans to leave Wittenberg for a new accountancy job in Hanover. Her husband, Ben (Hinnerk Schonemann), insists on giving her a ride to the train station. She reluctantly agrees. When she refuses to return to him, he becomes abusive and won’t let her out of the car. He drives through a bridge siding into a river. They both escape the crash, but Yella leaves him unconscious on the shoreline and catches her train. On her arrival, she is approached by Phillip (David Striesow), a businessman, about becoming his assistant. She doesn’t give him a firm answer. The next day, she discovers that the man who hired her no longer works for the company. The man convinces her to steal a portfolio from the office for him but rewards her by making a crude pass that she rebuffs.

She plans to return to Wittenberg the next day and falls asleep with her door open. Phillip walks in, awakens her and renews his offer. She accepts. He involves her in a series of unethical moneymaking schemes using evidence of malfeasance to scam money out of competitors. Phillip tests her loyalty by asking her to make various deposits totaling €75,000, but actually gives her €100,000. She plans to keep the difference to bribe Ben to stay away, but Phillip catches her. She explains her situation and he forgives her. On separate occasions, Ben attempts to kidnap her and tries to bargain with her to return to him. Instead, his abusive gestures drive her into Phillip’s arms. Phillip loses his job due to his unethical practices. He tells Yella that their scams were intended to raise money to begin a new enterprise, but he’s short €200,000. Yella blackmails one of his previous victims for the additional funds. As they wait for the man to deliver the money to them, Yella as a strange vision of him. When he doesn’t arrive as expected, she is compelled to look for him.

At the man’s home, his wife helps Yella. They find him face down in a backyard pond. Phillip arrives and helps pull the body out of the water. He believes that Yella’s threats drove him to suicide. The police are involved and Yella is arrested. As she is carted to jail, she finds herself back in Ben’s car, going off the bridge. Wittenberg police pull Ben’s car from the water and find Yella and Ben’s bodies inside.

💎💎CARNIVAL OF SOULS💎💎 – Carnival of Souls is a 1962 American independent horror film written, produced and directed by Herk Harvey and starring Candace Hilligross. Its plot follows Mary Henry, a young woman whose life is disturbed after a car accident. She relocates to a new city, where she finds herself unable to assimilate with the locals and becomes drawn to the pavilion of an abandoned carnival. Director Harvey also appears in the film as a ghoulish strange who stalks her throughout. Filmed in Lawrence, Kansas and Salt Lake City, Carnival of Souls was shot on a budget of $33,000 and Harvey employed various guerrilla filmmaking techniques to finish the production. It was Harvey’s only feature film and did not gain widespread attention when originally released as a double feature with The Devil’s Messenger in 1962. Set to an organ score by Gene Moore, the film has been contemporarily noted by critics and film scholars for its cinematography and foreboding atmosphere. The film has a large cult following and is occasionally screened at film and Halloween festivals and has bene cited as a wide-ranging influence on numerous filmmakers including David Lynch, George A. Romero and Lucrecia Martel.

A young woman in a small Kansas town survives a drag race accident, then agrees to take a job as a church organist in Salt Lake City. En route, she becomes haunted by a bizarre apparition that compels her toward and abandoned lakeside pavilion. Made by industrial filmmakers on a modest budget, the eerily effective B-movie classic Carnival of Souls was intended to have “the look of a Bergman and the feel of a Cocteau”- and, with its strikingly used locations and spooky organ score, it succeeds. Herk Harvey’s macabre masterpiece gained a cult following on late-night television and continues to inspire filmmakers today.

In Kansas, Mary Henry is riding in a car with two other young women when some men challenge them to a drag race. As they speed across a bridge, their car plunges into the river. The police spend hours dredging the murky, fast-running water without success. Mary miraculously surfaces, but she cannot remember how she survived. Mary moves to Salt Lake City, Utah, where she has been hired as a church organist. While driving through the desert, Mary’s radio picks up strange organ music and she has visions of a ghoulish, pasty-faced figure (simply called “The Man” in dialogue). She glimpses a large, abandoned pavilion on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, which seems to beckon to her in the twilight. A gas station attendant tells her the pavilion was first a bathhouse, then a dance hall and finally a carnival before it closed.

In town, Mary rents a room. She meets the proprietor who informs her there is another lodger staying there Mary unpacks her suitcase and goes to the church where she will be playing the organ. At the church she meets the Minister and plays the organ for the first time. At the Minister’s offer, Mary takes a ride out to the pavilion at the lake. She is stopped from entering by the Minister who warns her that to enter would be illegal. When she returns to her lodgings Mary meets a man, John, the only other lodger, who wants to become better acquainted. The blonde newcomer though is not interested. That night, she becomes upset when she sees “The Man” downstairs and retreats to her room. Soon, Mary begins experiencing terrifying interludes when she becomes invisible and inaudible to the rest of the world, as if she simply is not there. When “The Man” appears briefly in front of her in a park, she flees, right into the arms of a Dr. Samuels. He tries to help her, acknowledging he is not a psychiatrist.

Mary’s new employer, the Minister (Art Ellison), is put off when she declines a reception to meet the congregation. When she practices for the first time, she finds herself shifting from a hymn to eerie music. In a trance, she sees “The Man” and other ghouls dancing at the pavilion. The Minister, hearing the strange music, denounces it as sacrilege and insists upon her resignation. Terrified of being alone, Mary agrees to go out with John. When they return home, he smooth-talks his way into her room. When she sees “The Man” in the mirror, she tells John what has been happening to her. He leaves, believing she is losing her mind. After going back to Samuels’ office, Mary believes she has to go to the pavilion. However, Mary is confronted by “The Man” and his fellow ghouls. She tries frantically to escape, boarding a bus to leave town, only to find that all the passengers are ghouls. It is just a nightmare; she awakes in her car. In the end, she is drawn back to the pavilion, where she finds her tormentors dancing, a pale version of herself paired with “The Man.” When she runs away, the ghouls chase her onto the beach. She collapses as they close in. The following day, Samuels, the Minister and police go to the pavilion to look for Mary. They find her footprints in the sand and they end abruptly. Back in Kansas, her car is pulled from the river. Mary’s body is in the front seat alongside the other two women.

Mary Henry and two other young women are forced off a country bridge during a drag race and plunge into the water below. While searchers look for the car, Mary emerges from the water and after being treated for injuries, returns to her job as an organist in a church. During practice, Mary has a vision of ghouls dancing in a large, deserted pavilion and begins playing a minor-key melody that frightens and offends the Pastor. Thinking she is possessed the Pastor fires her. As Mary drives to her new position in another town, she continues to have visions of dancing ghouls and sees one of the phantom figures, a strange, white-faced man, along the road or reflected in her car window. Although frightened, she believes these apparitions are signs of shock from which she will soon recover. When Mary tries to start a new life in a new town, the strange man periodically reappears and she finds herself drawn to the deserted pavilion. One day, when Mary is shopping, the white-faced man appears. A passing doctor, seeing that Mary is showing signs of hysteria, takes her to his office and listens to her strange story. One night while she practices on the church organ, the ghostly stranger again overtakes her. The Minister hears the strange music Mary feels compelled to play and dismisses her. John Linden, a fellow boarder whom she had earlier scorned, makes sexual advances in her room; she sees the phantom in the mirror and her screams frighten Linden away. The next day, Mary is drawn back to the pavilion. There, a dozen dancing souls reach out for her and she sees herself dancing with the white-faced man. Later, at the site of the bridge, accident, the submerged car is pulled out of the river with the bodies of all three women, including Mary’s, inside.