"Carnival of Souls" (1962)

 

• Director: Herk Harvey
• Written by: Herk Harvey & John Clifford
• Starring: Candance Hilligoss, Frances Feist, Sidney Berger & Art Ellison

     There was a huge boom in independent horror in the 60s. The most well-known of these indie excursions is, of course, George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" from 1968, which launched an entire subgenre of horror films. However, there are other horror films, not as well-regarded and certainly not as well-known, but definitely deserve to be mentioned and talked about. The film that I'm speaking of today is "Carnival of Souls", an intriguing, strange horror film from 1962.
     "Carnival of Souls" begins in a fairly normal fashion, with some guys challenging some gals to a car race. The girls oblige, but racing on a narrow bridge is a bad decision, and the girls' car crashes over the edge, careening into the river below. Just as the police think that they'll never find the car or any of the survivors, Mary Henry (Candance Hilligoss), the lone survivor of the crash, climbs out of the river. Her friends all dead and heartbroken from the guilt of being the only survivor, she becomes a drifter, buying an apartment in town and generally being very reclusive. The only times she goes out are to go to church to play the organ.
     However, soon she is plagued by demonic hallucinations, feverish visions of a man with dark eyes coming after her. Over time, the hallucinations become more and more frequent, and Mary's frequent attempts to reach out to people are in vain. Soon she finds herself drawn, as if in a trance, to an old run-down pavilion, nearby the scene of the crash...
     During the first few minutes of the film I found myself unimpressed by the incredibly low production values and the atrocious acting, but as the film dug deeper and the story grew more and more outrageous and complex I found myself compelled by it's atmosphere. It starts off with time moving in a relatively ordinary way, but as Mary's hallucinations become more intense, the film in turn becomes more and more surreal, and time begins to dilate. Toward the end, we aren't sure of what reality is, and if we can trust all that we're seeing.
     Dialogue becomes incredibly sparse, and Mary begins to (what we are assumed to believe) shift in and out of existence, experiencing strange, dreamlike periods where nobody can see her and she cannot hear them. There's a particularly great sequence where she spends almost 5-10 minutes simply wandering around the town in a daze, reaching out to anybody who will listen to her. But of course, no one can. It's astounding.
     But there is so much more to the film than atmosphere. It's frought with evocative Christological imagery, such as close-ups of stained glass windows adorned with priests, hands held up to the heavens. Music also plays an important role in the film. Mary is a professional organist, and as such the entire organ score becomes darker and darker as the film goes on, carrying us into her psychological despair. Mary's attempts to get closer to people become more and more desperate and saddening, and it endears her to us, despite Hilligloss' hammy acting.
     She and the audience are lead to ask themselves where she belongs, and it is something that Mary struggles with throughout the film. We aren't sure if she is merely suffering from emotional trauma or if she is actually not meant to exist on this plane. One of the things I also find incredibly effective is the fact that we are not told what exactly the beings that she keeps envisioning are. Whether they are mere stress-triggered hallucinations or something more, something not of this world, is left up to the viewer.
     The demons, or hallucinations, or whatever they may be also offer some incredibly chilling moments, especially during sequences where Mary keeps seeing the same ghoul with blackened eyelids, simply staring at her. Every time he is on screen he evokes chills, and it only gets better toward the end when Mary travels back to the pavilion and witnesses a horrifying, hypnotical dance of the dead between many different ghouls.
     In the end, the movie closes on an incredibly bleak and uncertain note, and I'm not entirely sure what the director, Herk Harvey, was attempting to say. Perhaps he was asking us to question our own mortality, or maybe he was offering us an experience in surreality, to show us what it may be like to be a wandering soul, lost in a sea of the living. Are the demons that pursue Mary truly evil for wanting to take her to eternal rest? Perhaps not.
     When any supposedly "low grade" horror movie can force us to confront things like this, and can suck us in so thoroughly with nothing but a spellbinding atmosphere, I think it deserves points. If you ever get the chance to see this film, please try to look past it's technological shortcomings, hokey acting, and somewhat clunky dialogue and instead look into the deeper, more meaningful heart of the film. At only 76 minutes, it's quick, and it sure is worth the ride. Just be careful... the bridge is out.