Carnival of Souls (1962)

That was an excellent one.

hyped garbage

Fantastic!

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Producer: Herk Harvey. Not copyrighted. A Harcourt Production. U.S. release through Herts-Lion International: September 1962. No New York showcasing. U.K. release through Tony Tenser: April 1967 (sic). Sydney opening on the lower half of a double bill at the Victory. Original running time: 91 minutes. Cut to 80 minutes in the U.S.A., 75 minutes in England. 71 minutes in Australia. Released in Australia through Regent: 22 November 1964 (sic). Australian video length: 86 minutes. SYNOPSIS: After surviving drowning when her car is forced off a bridge into a river, a young lady tries to resume her life as a church organist, but is haunted by visual and aural phantoms.NOTES: Despite its enormous cult following, Carnival of Souls seems to be the only film made by Herk Harvey and most of his players and technicians. (Candace Hilligoss has a smaller role in 1964's Curse of the Living Corpse). PRINCIPAL MIRACLE: Highly spooky special effects achieved on small budget. COMMENT: Independently made (for less than $100,000), this stimulatingly directed, off-beat little weirdie has become something of a horror classic. Obviously inspired by such previous nightmares as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera, it makes chillingly atmospheric use of some haunting natural locations, especially a long-deserted amusement pavilion. Candace Hilligoss gives an unforgettable, mesmerizing performance as the seemingly bewitched heroine. The other players are likewise sympathetically natural. Aided by suitably misty cinematography, a powerful music score and rhythmically smooth film editing, Carnival of Souls is more than the professional equal of any similar Hollywood offering. And that goes double for entertainment quality.

While there were plenty of spooky settings used to great effect, the episodic plot line just felt like several segments unfolding. The logic of the story is also hard to believe. Three girls are drag racing against some guys before their car goes off a bridge. Why three girls? Why would girls in this time period be so openly daring, aggressive, and foolish? She drives away in a car after the crash, but where did it come from and whose car was it? Mary is haunted by some mysterious guy (Herk Harvey) but we never know who he is or where he came from. Why not put the guy in the car when it crashed? The carnival grounds keep drawing Mary there, but why? How did she know where they were? Director Harvey who played the ghost said in an interview he did not know a reason for these events or who the guy was, but wanted viewers to fill in the blanks. Some claim this is based on the "girl at the bridge" legend where a girl keeps haunting the same bridge she leaped off of before.

Films out of the ordinary are always interesting, especially if they are unpretentious and still demonstrate a uniqueness in lacking any similarity with other films. This is such a unique orchid in the garden of roses and weeds, which in addition is made almost without a budget, like a soup cooked on a nail, but it's a miracle of sustained concentration on the essence of filming all the way.A young girl emerges as the sole survivor after a car accident, where the car went into the river off a bridge, and she is a professional organist, who gets a job in a church in Utah in some small town close to a lake, where there are some remnants of past glory holidays and bathing in the form of a derelict massive tabernacle of a pavilion. She is drawn to this spooky place, but she suffers from her previous trauma, which somehow occasionally disconnects her entirely from reality, and this gets of course worse.The music is very important to the film. It's generally spooky organ music, she plays the organ well, and even the priest is satisfied with her, until she falls into a trance in spooky improvisations, which deeply upsets the priest, which really no one can understand why - it's just organ music and original improvisations at that. The music sets the mood, which is increasingly haunting all through the film.You could call it abstract, but it is really perfectly realistic all the way, especially in visualizing her disconnected moods. It reminds you very much of Polanski's "Repulsion" and Catherine Deneuve, but this is entirely different. This is more para-psychological, transcending the borders of life and death and giving a fair view of ghost existence. Mary's problem is she doesn't understand her own situation and therefore has no control of it, and as she can't get what's wrong with her, no one else can help her either, no matter how they try and do their best, from the landlady to the doctor. You might think that she will get things sorted out at last, while certainly none of the others will.This is a film you will never forget, especially if you are a musician and know something about the other side.

I've been watching a run of horror films made from the 1930's til now, and I've got to say this is one of the few that really gave me the chills. I've read that it aimed for "the look of a Bergman and the feel of a Cocteau". Actually, it made me feel often like I did in the very first scene of Romero's Night of the Living Dead: uncomfortable in a world with rules I can't quite grasp. Its sensitivity is remarkable, its "woman in a man's world" theme is beautifully rendered. Yes, it has flaws. Yes, you see dead characters blinking. Yes, you end up not caring about any of that.