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The Criterion Channel Presents: Carnival of Souls (1962)


There are so few chilling horror films these days -by which I mean horror movies that don’t aim to startle so much as send a shiver up your spine. One of the best movies that has ever had that effect for me is Robert Wise’s original adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting. And Carnival of Souls, from just a year earlier, has that same effect -perhaps even more so. A moody, mysterious, creeping and hypnotic piece as transfixing as it is both palpably and psychologically terrifying.
Before George Romero, Tobe Hooper, or Sam Raimi, there was Herk Harvey -one of the first great independent horror filmmakers. His background was in theatre and freelance directing gigs for educational and training films, through a small company based in Lawrence, Kansas. He developed Carnival of Souls with one of his colleagues John Clifford, and they were able to raise about half of the $30,000 budget through basically courting investments from local businesses. All this is to emphasize just how small-scale this venture was -so far from Hollywood and its resources. But Harvey was a surprisingly sharp and experimentally-minded director, and looked to Jean Cocteau and Ingmar Bergman as his primary influences on this film.
That is the source of the movie’s very unique pace and mood -this art-house dreamlike sensibility that permeates everything and renders it so much more frightful than it might be otherwise. Because Harvey recognizes that in a movie like Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, while the intent may be more ephemeral than scary, there is nonetheless a lot of eeriness to its style and aesthetics. Combining this with the observation that there are few places more spooky than an abandoned fairground and he had the recipe for something truly new and haunting.
The movie is unsettling right from the start when one brief studio title card abruptly transitions into a drag race. It is between some cocky guys and a trio of young women, who appear to beat them in the race but on a suspension bridge are pushed by the guys down into the river below. Hours later as the river is searched only one emerges, alive and seemingly unscathed but without any memory of how she survived. We the audience never learn how either.
This is Mary Henry, played by Candace Hilligoss, a professional Actors Studio veteran whom the production was able to hire as their lead character. The plot follows her in the aftermath of this incident as she moves to Salt Lake City to be a church organist, where she feels alienated by locals at the same time she is attracted to an abandoned carnival pavilion. And also she keeps seeing this mysterious figure, played by Harvey himself -a gaunt man in a suit with stringy white hair and sunken eyes.
His first appearance is staring at her in the passenger window of her car, evoking “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”, the classic Twilight Zone episode that would air the following year. And the movie does overall have a very Twilight Zone feel in its underpinnings of paranoia and psychological fear. As this unexplained figure seems to stalk Mary, her behaviour becomes more and more outwardly strange to the people around her, including the minister (Art Ellison) and neighbour John Linden (Sidney Berger) -a creeper in his own way as he tries to sexually proposition her. And though it may hardly have been the intent this relates well the anxiety of suddenly being in a new city around new people, and the particular distinctness of this experience for a woman. Mary is not taken seriously at various junctures and in some moments finds she is unable to be seen or heard by anyone -which is honestly one of the great nightmare scenarios not much exploited in movies.
These and the other horror sequences (with even a couple small jump scares) are shot pointedly and efficiently by Harvey and his crew -disguising the movie’s budgetary shortcomings with compelling editing, using sharp cinematic techniques to enhance the scares. Harvey in his make-up for the figure credited only as “The Man” is not all that scary, but in the context of a smash cut or sudden close-up he becomes this horrifying ghoul. The daunting organ music by Gene Moore goes a long ways to achieving this terror as well.
In the climax, we see a proto-zombie film take shape as the Man is joined by several others like him, including one who bears a strong resemblance to Mary, herself in a kind of reverie as everything escalates -unsure of reality and dream, always a great horror motif. The carnival looms large around it all, at times emphasizing its dark, labyrinthine corners as evidence of an entrapping nature that only grows as the creatures become erratic, closing in on Mary. The ending is terrific, in the spirit of the most classic ghost stories -The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in particular.
It comes with a detail that may not make sense, and indeed pedants could easily rip apart this movie. But horror has always been more effective the less that’s explained -so many horror films now feel the need to give the audience everything. Carnival of Souls though believes in restraint, and the capacity of its audience . It could perhaps best be described as a nightmare film, inspired by them and inspiring of them.

Criterion Recommendation: The Hunger (1983)
Equal parts creepy and sexy, Tony Scott’s debut film The Hunger is one of the most stylish of all vampire movies. Also one of the most slick and aesthetically 80s of all vampire movies. It stars Catherine Deneuve as an ancient vampire living as a wealthy New York recluse with her centuries-long companion played by David Bowie -teaching music by day, scouring nightclubs and seducing young victims by night. But as Bowie finally succumbs to a vampiric curse, Deneuve finds a new companion in a gerontologist played by Susan Sarandon. A far better first film for Tony than The Duellists was for Ridley, The Hunger is extremely atmospheric in both visuals and mood, particularly around the empty and imposing mansion where much of the plot takes place. Its story is also strong and interesting, as it develops its vampire lore in curious ways, and manages quite a haunting twist pertaining to the fate of Bowie’s character and his precursors. Sexually provocative it is also probably the most erotic vampire movie made in the United States since the cult films of the 1970s -more effective for its polished production. It is almost obscure these days in the canon of vampire classics, so all the more reason Criterion should give it a renewed afterlife.

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