Carnival of Souls
For two-thirds of its spare 86 minutes, this remake of the 1962 cult classic is a tautly constructed, engaging, supernatural suspense thriller.  Then, right when it needs to kick into high gear, it all goes flooey.  Splatter fans will be disappointed by the low gore quotient and deliberate pacing; the film favors psychological horror over physical.  The evil screaming worm-people that are intercut throughout the picture lose their shock value pretty quickly.  The climax is, well, anticlimactic.  And the shaggy-dog ending, which was a letdown in the original, is a letdown here too. But Larry Miller is superbly evil as the pederast and murderer who returns from the dead to terrorize the woman who helped put him behind bars.  And Bobbie Phillips, despite her limitations, is nicely effective in the lead, especially in the quieter moments.  It's two-thirds of a good movie (but then again, so wasApocalypse Now).  Trivia factoid:  Sidney Berger, who was the creepy neighbor in the original, plays the older cop in the end sequence.--Geof Miller