- Heck Harvey directs Carnival of Souls– an early 1960s low budget horror film starring Candace Hilligoss as Mary Henry.
- It is part Lynne Ramsay (a past trauma—a drag racing accident- leaves the protagonist an empty vessel drifting through life) meets Antonioni (alienation in modernity) as much as any horror film.
- Clocks in at 77 minutes.
- Shot (on 35 mm though- not 16mm) in parts of Kansas—and the Carnival itself is in Utah.
Eerie organ music from Gene Moore- and Mary is an organ player- certainly fitting.
Mary is haunted by the accident- but also by a ghoulish-looking man (though surrealism). Harvey has a few innovative shots using a mirror on the car window as a sort of natural dissolve.
- Zoom camera technique to connect with the surrealism sequences—Mary’s sort of spiral out of reality continues- and the audio drops out.
- The best sequences are at the abandoned carnival- but unfortunately it is 43-miuntes (very quiet cinematically up to this point in the film) before she arrives there. These sequences (at least a minute or two of them) have aspects that will remind you (though this predates both films) Red Desert (1964) and The Shining (1980). Mary heads back to Caronbdale and the strange dance hall.
- She walks to overlook the lake at the 72-minute mark (above)—and that may be the best composition in the film.
- A sort of twist M. Night Shyamalan ending.
- The film is famous for inspiring George Romero to make Night of the Living Dead.
- Harvey’s main job was making industrial films in Kansas
- Recommend but not in the top 10 of 1962
Very excited to see this page. Watched this film last year at some point and then re-watched on Halloween this year. From your grading I definitely thought higher of it than you but agree on the lack of stunning visuals prior to the abandoned carnival. None the less I found this to be a masterful work of atmosphere.
I like your references to The Shining and Red Desert, this film makes great use of its setting as most of the movie takes place in a run down dilapidated town/ghost town, almost a David Lynch atmosphere, think Twin Peaks. I actually think Harvey manages to make the low budget work to his advantage with the barren landscape and lack of polished actors/actresses gives the Ghost town atmosphere an authentic feel.
Love the use of the church organ, the score is incredibly eerie and unsettling.
The ghoul who keeps showing up is actually the director Herk Harvey himself. Reminds me a little of death from The Seventh Seal, it even has a sort of “dance of death” sequence. There is even a scene where Mary is talking to what she thinks is a doctor but ends up being the Ghoul figure known in the film simply as “the man”. I could not help but think of the scene where Von Sydow’s Antonius Block is in the confessional booth talking to what he presumes to be a priest but is actually “Death”.
This film is certainly lean starting in medias res with the opening drag race. We get no background on Mary and I actually think this is a positive as it adds to the mysterious nature of the film. She has a sort of cold detachment to the world, a self proscribed “loner” who has trouble making connections with people. As the film progresses there is a growing paranoia that makes Mary’s world feel like it is closing in on her a la Rosemary’s Baby. There is no safe place for her to go. The entire abandoned carnival scene is incredibly chilling, I love the closeup low angle shots of the ghouls dancing. The camera zooms in and out a few times adding to the claustrophobic feeling of Mary’s world closing in.
And for the record I think it’s MS
And to think it was made with a budget of a paltry $30K…amazing.
One of the only horror films that still haunts me. Picked it up on an unpretentious “AMC Monsters Cult Classic” when I went to the US – so watching it right after “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die”, “Night Tide” and “The Atomic Brain” caught me off guard.
And I totally agree with James Trapp. It is a MS for me.
@Gabriel Paes – awesome to see it has other fans, apparently it is a cult classic but I am yet to meet any person who has seen it.