(1962, b/w) From the tomb of midnight television rises this macabre B-movie classic with its eerie organ-music soundtrack, produced/directed by Herk Harvey. In a rural Kansan town, two guys challenge a girl with her two passengers to a drag race; on the bridge the car with the girls crashes off into the river. Three hours later, after having no luck finding the vehicle in the rapid current with sandy bottom, those searching watch as Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss), who had been a passenger, emerges from the water.

The attractive blonde displays hardly any emotion afterward - people comment on her "behaving strangely" in her lack of any humbleness or gratitude at having miraculously survived - leaving the town where she'd studied organ performance for Salt Lake City the next day, driving straight through. On the way during the night the radio begins playing a spooky organ piece, which she can't change by switching stations; in the passenger's window she notices the reflection of a ghoulish man's face; standing in the middle of the road is the same figure, which she swerves to avoid hitting.

The guestroom in Mrs Thomas's house is waiting for her arrival as is an abandoned pavilion, formerly a bathhouse, by the lake, drawing her toward its emptiness. At the church as she demonstrates her musical skill, the elderly minister remarks approvingly: "We have an organist capable of stirring the soul."

When Mary sees the creepy guy again inside the house, she asks Mrs Thomas: "Who is the man in the hall?" Mrs Thomas thinks Mary means her other renter John Linden, but Mary has already met him. "There's no one there," says Mrs Thomas, looking into the hallway. In the dark of night when alone, "fantasies get out of hand," Mary acknowledges to John, who's trying to put the moves on her.

While shopping for a new dress the next day, everything becomes silent and everyone ignores her as if she weren't there. At a drinking fountain after sounds and relations return to normal, Mary suffers another terrifying encounter with the ghastly man.

Happening to observe her reaction, a passing physician takes hold of the hysterical woman, inviting her to his office where she relates her strange adventures of being followed by "That man" since the accident in the river and the sensation of feeling "as though for a time I didn't exist." The doctor explains that she's been through a "serious emotional shock" with feelings of guilt.

During the discussion in which the strong-willed Mary allows that she has no boyfriends or much interest in social contact with other people, she counters the doctor's opinion: "If it's all in my imagination, I could put a stop to it." After walking alone through the pavilion, she returns to practice on the organ at the church but loses control of her fingers. Hearing her performance of profane, sacrilegious sounds on the holy instrument, the minister demands her resignation.

Afraid to be by herself at night, she goes with John to a bar, but she has little interest in drinking or dancing with him; back in her room she's torn between being alone and being with John. Once again with the corpse-like figure, appearing at her shoulder, she cries in terror: "He's trying to take me back somewhere!"

In the final scene the car that went into the river is being hauled out of the water.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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