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Title: Carnival of Souls (1962) (B&W) (0) Starring: Candace Hilligoss Director: Not available Rating: NR (Not Rated) Runtime: 76 minutes Avg. Score: 5 Submit Comment Hits: 10

Review of Carnival of Souls (1962) (B&W)

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Comments for Carnival of Souls (1962) (B&W)

• Posted on 2008-01-07
  Haunting Story in Decent Transfer
  
  Carnival of Souls is a haunting story of someone caught between life and the afterlife. Obviously made on a shoestring budget and in black and white, Carnival of Souls uses simple, perhaps cliched, techniques to indicate moments of disorder or dissonance. Nonetheless, they work.
  
  The Alpha Video version is generally good but has one or two glitches in transfer. A more glaring omission -- conspicuously cut out -- is a scene after Mary Henry first plays the organ and factory workers are going to make some comments. Omitted in Alpha version, but retained in Criterion version. No extras in Alpha version. If you can convince your spouse on the expense, get the Criterion version.
  Score: 3
• Posted on 2007-10-15
  Carnival of Souls
  
  A ghost is a soul which doesn't realize it is dead, and that is what Mary Henry is in Carnival of Souls. When she sees that she is invisible to others, Mary realizes that she's "not in this world." The creepy organ music is like something you hear in a silent horror movie,and the camera angles and b&w photography add to the eerie atmosphere of the film. It's a psychological horror film with sexual overtones,like Psycho, and a precursor to Night of the Living Dead. A true classic,not to be missed.
  
  
  Score: 4
• Posted on 2006-08-26
  In the dark, your fantasies get so far out of hand
  
  Some brilliant directors only make a few movies. Herk Harvey made over four hundred -- but sadly, he only brought his astounding talents into one non-educational movie.
  
  That one brilliant movie is cult horror flick "Carnival of Souls," a nightmarish tale of a young woman who is lingering on in the world of the living -- and is pursued by the dead. Made for a piddling seventeen thousand dollars, this little gem is as eerie now as it was in the 1960s.
  
  Three young women decide to drag race a car of young men -- and their car goes off a bridge into the river. Only Mary (Candace Hilligoss) staggers out of the water, seemingly undisturbed by the accident. The next day she travels to Utah for her new job as a church organist, but on the trip she keeps seeing a grinning, corpselike man watching her from the road.
  
  Mary tries to distract herself with shopping, dodging her lecherous neighbor, and playing the organ. But she keeps seeing the corpse-man), having strange moments where nobody can see or ear her, and also finds herself drawn to a run-down former carnival pavilion. As the dead close in on her, Mary runs from them. But she can't escape what has already happened.
  
  A simple plot, but Herk Harvey handles it with brilliant skill. There's a goofy moment here or there -- at one point Mary turns around to shriek into the camera lens. But most of the time, Harvey keeps the atmosphere piling on, with relatively little dialogue (the most memorable lines are usually shrieked ones like "I don't want to be alone!").
  
  In short, Harvey had the ability to inspire something a lot rarer than fear or shocks -- dread. Mary's confusion, fear and denial are almost palpable as she wanders through the town. By the climax, it has transformed into a sort of nightmarish maze that Mary can just run through, with the dead people just a few steps behind her. And there's that creepy organ music all the time.
  
  The ending is not so much a twist as the inevitable answer to all the bizarre events that came before it -- and it's a brilliant, bittersweet ending. Suddenly the "invisibility" moments and the dead faces make perfect sense, and we understand that Mary was not meant to be where she was -- having never lived, she could not bear to accept the inevitable.
  
  Mary is also not your typical early-sixties heroine -- she's sharp-tongued ("Thank you, but I'm NEVER coming back here") and kind of spinsterish by nature. What's more, she is completely detached from everyone around her, since she is not meant to be in the world of the living. Hilligoss (who only made one other movie) is absolutely amazing here, with her distant attitude and frightened eyes.
  
  The Alpha Video version of this is a good cheap version -- the picture is clear, though slightly tinted with purple in some scenes; it seems that Alpha got their hands on a very good print of this movie. Not a snap, crackle or pop to be heard on the soundtrack either.
  
  Brilliant and creepy, "Carnival of Souls" is a deserving cult classic. It's a shame that Herk Harvey never made another horror flick, but at least we have this one.
  Score: 5
• Posted on 2005-11-07
  Low-budget winner
  
  Given its low-budget pedigree, this film is far better than anyone had any right to expect. Director Herk Harvey, in his only production (!), shows himself to be a master of atmosphere. There's not much to the story: after a near-death experience, a young woman (Candace Hilligoss) is stalked by ghosts. She sometimes appears to become invisible to those around her and has a weird attraction to an abandoned resort out in the Utah desert. I can imagine that this was the perfect drive-in movie; the images are of paramount importance and deliver an eerie experience without the necessity of distracting teenagers from their necking with the need to follow a story. The film ends with a "twist" that is very passe today (and probably was in the 60s as well), but by this time Harvey has already delivered plenty of shivers. Our heroine's mysterious end is a beautifully orchestrated black-and-white nightmare. What would Harvey have accomplished if he had continued making films...and why didn't he?/
  Score: 4
• Posted on 2005-04-01
  Sound and Music Tell the Story
  
  One of the best things about Carnival of Souls is the way the sound and music create the film's atmosphere. The first organ chords that open the film with shots of the river's murky surface foreshadow a later diegetic appearance of the same music. The magnified sound of the boards of the fateful wooden bridge ratchet up the eeriness of the mood, and echo the distorted sound of Mary Henry's footsteps when, toward the end, in her last terrified flight through the town, the clacking of her heels on the street takes on a strange and unreal rhythm.
  After the accident, we see Mary Henry from above, from the point of view of the crowd on the bridge. She crawls out of the muddy water where the police have been dragging for the car, which had earlier plunged from the bridge. This is the first of many times that she is viewed from an overhead angle. The second time we see her from such a height is at the organ manufacturing warehouse, from the balcony where several of the workers, lured away from their various jobs as if hypnotized by her music, have gathered to see her practicing. In this scene we learn that she is leaving for Salt Lake City to take a job as a church organist. The installation supervisor wishes her luck, and tells her: Put your soul into it a little OK? (Spot the low-budget dialog, OK...?)
  
  An interesting sound device occurs next in the car, en route to Salt Lake City. We discover that the music we hear is not coming from the radio as we had thought, because as she turns the dials, nothing happens. The source of the music appears puzzling to her as well. Hilligoss is stunning here - crazy-eyed, her face in ECU lit by otherworldly light.
  The film was made in 1962, and so we never see a pack of Marlboros or a can of Pepsi. But when Mary Henry arrives at the rooming house in Salt Lake City and we meet the landlady, Mrs. Thomas, she happens to be carrying a can of Ajax - quite amusing!
  Most of the scenes are tense as Mary is often in claustrophobic spaces: inside her car, or with the cloying Mr. Linden, the neighbor, who continually forces into her space with his hands, face, and body. Later, the minister too crowds her in the blocked area behind the organ. The first peaceful scene is the one where she first visits the abandoned fairground, which inexplicably draws her. Again we see her from high above when she enters the pavilion.
  
  Probably the most important scene in the film occurs when Mary visits the empty church to practice. She starts out with all the correct organ music, pauses to look at her hands as if they don't belong to her, and resumes. But now the music changes. It becomes the haunted carnivalesque score building on what we'd heard briefly in the opening scene. Gene Moore is credited with the music, and it's superb! Has anything been written anywhere about this? (Did it influence the opening of Led Zeppelin's "Your Time is Gonna Come"?) She's become one with the organ, and we see her bare feet floating over the pedals, rows of choir robes shiver disembodied on their hangers, we see images of clouds over the moon then reflected in the water, saints frozen in the stained glass, and dancers in the pavilion in compressed time. I think this is really an amazing cinematic moment! It ends when the minister bursts on this scene, horrified. He's heard all this, and shrieks: Profane! Sacrilege! He blurts out that he pities her for her "lack of soul" and instantly banishes her from the church, firing her from her job as church organist forever.
  
  There is a particularly sublime shot in the film to watch for. It occurs in the scene of Mary Henry's final visit to the pavilion. There is a long shot of the ballroom dancers in the dark pavilion, embracing and motionless, entangled with the long dangling streamers. This is count one. Counts two, three, and four occur like this: the strings of lights illuminate, the music starts, and the dancers begin. The lights, the music, and the motion occur with a cadence so deliberate and careful as though counted out by metronome, and as if to suggest that everything will happen in order, as it should. No need to hurry, no need to run. This time we see Mary from a low angle, the sky behind her instead of the ground.
  
  Score: 5