Carnival of Souls (1962)
Posted on July 2, 2005
Filed Under Black and white, Classics, Creepy stuff, Ghosts
Carnival of Souls represents Herk Harvey’s solitary departure from making educational and industrial films and, intriguingly, he really manages to pull it off. Though the plot is really nothing more advanced than an average episode of The Outer Limits, it is to Harvey manages to mould everything together and churns out a little gem.
The story concerns the sole survivor of a car crash-Mary Henry-(who is excellently played by Candice Hilligoss)as she tries to come to terms with the trauma of losing all of her friends within the first few minutes of the film. The introspective and self-absorbed Mary is a really absorbing character, and her rejection of all offers of material and spiritual help, coupled with her determination to carry on with her life in spite of the pervasive tragedy are really unsettling and effectively add a hard edge to the conventions of early 1960’s American horror. You get the impression that absolutely nothing could frighten Mary, which makes her impending move to Utah in search of a fresh start ever more forbidding.
True to form, on route she sees a strange image of a ghoulish man just as she’s driving passed an abandoned circus, and this ‘man’ seems to follow her with increasing purpose as the film goes on. I should mention here the arresting beauty of this film, from the desolate creepiness of the Utah desert through to the rendering of the ‘ghouls’ in the final, chilling sequences. It is difficult when watching Carnival to pick up the fact that it was made on a shoe-string budget, which adds to the tragedy of it being Harvey’s only horror film.
Anyhow, the ‘ghoul’ appears ever more frequently which leads to Mary finally facing her destiny, and though the ending is fairly predictable (though none the less rewarding for it) I won’t spoil it here. I do have a few gripes with the film-I think the issue of Mary’s atheism is a little overplayed, and adds very little to the plot, as well as the distraction of the scenes with her amorous fellow lodger-but none are serious enough to detract from the true affection in which I hold it. It stands head and shoulders above many horror films of its time, and makes a really valuable contribution to the genre. What industrial and educational film-making gained from the efforts of Herk Harvey we can only envy on the basis of his natural horror-film making abilities.
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