Tonight’s movie is the arty indie movie “Carnival of Souls” from 1962. Loosely based on a French short film and later Twilight Zone episode “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. The setting and characters are drastically changed but the core of the story is the same. This version was directed by Herk Harvey (As his only feature length movie) and stars Candace Hilligoss with main support from Frances Feist and Sidney Berger. Originally it was released as part of a double feature with the Swedish anthology film “The Devil’s Messenger” (Actually a compilation of episodes from a TV show). The movie was largely forgotten until randomly becoming a cult classic in the 80’s. Let’s see if this Carnival is worth visiting.
Life Is A Drag.
The story starts with “Mary Henry” (Hilligoss) and her friends being challenged to a drag race by some young men. During the race Mary’s car goes off a bridge. It appears there are no survivors until someone spots Mary struggling to the shore. A few weeks later she has decided to leave the town and take a job as a church organist in Salt Lake City. Here she is haunted by visions of a strange man (and occasionally over ghoulish apparitions) and finds herself strangely drawn to an old pavilion just outside town where there used to be a carnival.
Mary seems to be indifferent to personal relationships and going through life now almost like in a day dream. When she actually does dream, she dreams of being invisible to people and still pursued by that strange man. Usually when he catches up to her is when she awakens. One day while practicing her organ parts at the church she falls into a kind of trance where she starts playing spooky music (It’s a shame it was six years too early for In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida) and sees people from the carnival dancing around. She is stopped by the reverend who fires and for playing such “Satanic” music. Freaked out, Mary tries to spend the evening with her neighbouring lodger John (Berger) so as to not be alone, but eventually drives him off too. The following day she decides to flee from the town… but can she leave?
A Silent Movie With Sound.
Carnival of Souls is very much an art movie. Director Herk Harvey was influenced by European films of the period such as the works of Igmar Bergman and Jean Cocteau. However, this movie comes across to me more like a silent movie… just with occasional speech. The organ soundtrack is reminiscent of a live musician playing to a silent movies (As well of course being a reference to Mary’s job) and the more silent scenes involving the carnival ghouls have the entities moving around in exaggerated ways that could be right out of a silent film. There is not a great deal of dialogue and that’s probably for the best because the acting is mediocre at best.
The editing and cinematography is well done considering how much of it was filmed guerrilla style (I.e. Rushed and without permit). It’s no masterclass though and is overall quite a mixed bag. Some very impressive spots and some seeming quite amateur. However all together, it fits the tone of the movie. The whole thing is designed to feel like somewhat of a dream and for a very specific reason, which you should have already guessed. Spoilers for the next section, skip to the conclusion if you don’t want to know the twist.
Soul Spoiler Section.
I’ve written before about twist movies, but there are some times where a twist doesn’t make a movie disposable and that’s where the movie doesn’t rely on the shock factor to work. In the case of Carnival of Souls… well, the name is pretty much a giveaway to the story, at least paired with the already quite suspicious intro with the car crash. It’s pretty obvious that Mary is dead so when the car is recovered in the epilogue with her still in it, there was no shock.
But it’s not just the title, the entire tone of the movie, the dreams where Mary can’t be seen by regular people and her aloof nature, not even feeling any desire to be with people, until she was afraid to be alone. All these things laid out Mary’s condition pretty plainly. I don’t know what they did intend with the movie, but in my view it was never meant to be a shock. It was meant to feel inevitable and we were meant to be watching a lost souls journey into accepting the reality of her terrible fate. The story of the ghost that doesn’t realise they are dead is pretty well known these days and a fairly standard part of the horror genre, not sure I can think of earlier examples on film though. So credit for that.
Conclusion
All told this is a very melancholy horror film. Indeed it’s not really much of a horror, it’s more just a sad supernatural story. The ghouls are far from scary, partially because neither the extras playing those roles nor the quality of their make up was especially good. The lead ghoul was actually played by the director, but was not much more convincing than the rest. But none of that is a big problem because as a melancholy supernatural tale it doesn’t need horror. The movie talks to isolation, both self imposed and simply not feeling part of society. It is also a very fatalistic movie. It certainly invokes a vibe.
Overall this movie is a pretty straight line from A to B but presented like a confusing dream. It was always clear where things would lead, and while it embraces that it doesn’t give you a huge amount extra. With very little actually going on in, without any real actors performances of note and with a conceptually interesting but easily forgettable soundtrack this movie ends up feeling overly long, despite the short run time (80 minutes). This is effectively a short movie dragged out into a feature. Which is not surprising considering it is literally based on a short French movie/Twilight Zone episode. This is a strong 5.5/10. Sure to be divisive, artier viewers and those that love good cinematography will enjoy it, those after fun entertainment or engaging characters will probably not.
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