My dear, you can't live in isolation from the human race, you know.
When the argument is made as to why a B-movie drive-in style feature like Carnival of Souls belongs in the esteemed ranks of the Criterion Collection, emphasis is usually placed on its pivotal role as an influence on the development of the horror genre. Most specifically, the connection is made between this film and George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, which took the creepy notion of a mob of animated corpses chasing after their terrified human prey to a whole new level of grisly terror.
While there's no disputing Carnival of Souls' rightful place in the evolution of the "walking dead" subset that has since grown to such monumental mainstream success, I'm really not the guy to write at length about the journey that producer/director Herk Harvey's unlikely one-off foray into commercial filmmaking has taken over the years. The movie had a short run, was characterized as a flop in its original release, but was apparently seen by enough people to warrant various phases of rediscovery over the ensuing decades, culminating in a full-fledged print restoration and revival circuit tour in the late 1980s that led indirectly to its being considered "Criterion-worthy" back in 2000 after its cult-following had been firmly established. The fact that this movie is in the public domain, and thus could be released without much expense, didn't hurt either. We see that reflected in how frequently Carnival of Souls is bundled up into cheap dollar bin DVD collections. Or even colorized with impunity, as demonstrated by this trailer, offered up as a curiosity, not an endorsement:
But Criterion did themselves, Harvey and everyone else associated with this film proud by putting together a 2-disc package loaded with supplements that, even by today's advanced home video standards, still holds up as definitive and unlikely to ever be surpassed. Unless they re-release it in blu-ray format, that is.
Filmed on a tight microbudget (even for that time) of somewhere around $30,000, with a cast of no-name actors, Carnival of Souls represents the confluence of many happy coincidences that turned what could have been a thoroughly forgettable venture into something memorable and easily enjoyable on its own terms, The project was inspired during a cross-country trip when Harvey, who was employed by the Centron Corporation, a leading purveyor of industrial and educational films, stumbled upon an intriguing location: the abandoned Saltair resort on the edge of Utah's Great Salt Lake. The lake's regression from its former shoreline and changing times and fashions transformed the former amusement park and dance hall into a lifeless hulk that dominated the otherwise flat horizon of the area. Too large and expensive to demolish, Saltair just sat there wasting away, and it's to Harvey's everlasting credit that he was able to visualize and take advantage of the cinematic possibilities. He persuaded his colleague John Clifford to come up with a story treatment that would incorporate the resort, giving them a plausible excuse to film there, which led to them employing a horror motif - quite an inspired choice, as it turned out. Since their company was based in Lawrence, Kansas, where most of the scenes would be shot, they needed a reason to move the action from there out to Utah, so a road trip scenario was developed. With access to a large pipe organ factory in Kansas as one of the location settings, and the obvious spookiness of a mainly organ-driven soundtrack working in its favor, Carnival of Souls' plot device of a female protagonist moving across country to take a church organist position fell perfectly into place.
Soon enough, a ghost story plot was concocted, with almost no concern as to how the whole thing would end up being explained at the end of the film. The assorted elements of the thin and largely unresolved story line don't amount to a whole lot in terms of what the narrative actually tells us, but the blend of odd atmospherics, amateurish corner-cutting and uptight moralism responded to by alienated indifference to social customs that we see throughout the movie leaves an impact.
For those who haven't seen Carnival of Souls, a brief recap: After succumbing to peer pressure to drag race one afternoon, a car carrying three young women plunges off a bridge into a river in a tragic accident. Only one of them survives. Her name is Mary Henry, an attractive blonde who soon announces after cleaning up from the wreck that she's going to leave town for keeps, taking a new job playing organ for a church in Utah. Along the way she has some frightening experiences as she finds herself being pursued by a ghoulish apparition, a demented and sinister looking man whose face shows up at random moments in impossible places. She also passes the abandoned resort, aware of a strange irresistible compulsion it exerts upon her. The visions prod Mary from the delicate post-traumatic balance she tries to maintain and she finds herself slipping in and out of contact with her fellow humans, alternately resisting and then yielding to the lecherous advances of her wise-cracking male co-tenant at the boarding house she resides, and likewise drifting from polite but detached interactions with others to lapsing into a private reality in which she becomes invisible to the outside world. Eventually, she has no other choice but to explore the eerie resort where, under cover of darkness, she discovers to her horror that it is the undying home of the Carnival of Souls, and that her new found friends have a place for her to join them, if she will only let herself go...
Even for those who haven't seen the film yet, the formula of a dead person who doesn't quite realize it as she continues to sojourn among the living is by now very well-established. In order to employ the concept nowadays, some startling new variation on the theme has to be introduced merely to get the audience to go along with it. Those expecting some kind of wrap-up that makes sense of Mary's ethereal juxtapositions and alternating states of consciousness will walk away disappointed, perhaps even accusing Harvey and Clifford of inexcusable laziness. That wouldn't be a fair verdict to render, in light of all the evidence. Those two men in particular were already taking significant risks in simply casting and pursuing the project, and what makes their achievement even more admirable is the blessedly naive ambition to produce a middle-American take on art house cinema; as Harvey famously put it, "the look of a Bergman and the feel of a Cocteau." I think he fell well short of the mark in terms of cinematic depth, but there's no denying the surface similarities, considering Bergman's intense use of dramatic facial close-ups (and employment of enticing blondes in his lead roles) and Cocteau's seemingly arbitrary and whimsical incorporation of camera tricks and gasp-inducing cuts to startle his audiences.
The other big art house name that I think is relevant here, but seldom gets mentioned in the reviews of Carnival of Souls that I've read, is Antonioni. I see a lot of common visual language that Harvey carried over from his presumptive viewings of L'avventura and L'eclisse, and Candace Hilligoss is about as close a rendition of an upper Midwestern Monica Vitti as one could ever hope for. Most profoundly is the way that Antonioni's celebrated "alienation" in those films informs Mary Henry's inability to connect with those around her. She's too much of an enigmatic cypher to embody the kind of iconic qualities that Vitti displayed in her collaborations with Antonioni, but I have a hunch that there are more than a few pretty women out there who can relate on some level with Mary's ambivalence between wanting to distance herself from the prying leering eyes, only to wail "why can't anybody hear me?" when she succeeds in doing so. Certainly, the settings of Antonioni's films are very different than this limbo-like realm occupied by the Carnival of Souls. And the supporting characters are more caricatures than real people, whether they be the stuffily proper minister, the pedantic Dr. Samuels who tries to provide psychiatric support for Candace or the horny bachelor John Linden in the room across the hall. I'll hardly set the character of Mary Henry alongside the psychologically complex and fully rendered female leads of either Bergman or Antonioni, but I admire Harvey and Clifford's willingness to strive for such heights from the most mundane and pedestrian of filmmaking backgrounds.
And to me, that's probably what will be the enduring impression that Carnival of Souls leaves on me - as much as I can enjoy its off-kilter scattering of jolts and mind-tricks, or respect its formative influence and macabre atmospherics, I'm just pleased to see that a loyal, stable, middle American journeyman, gainfully employed in cranking out corporate propaganda for the sake of the Establishment (and a steady paycheck) was able to have his moment of release and free expression, even if it didn't exactly open the doors he was hoping it would until much later in life. The hour-long anthology of some of Harvey's 400+ films that he shot for Centron, along with interviews he gave in the documentary produced for the film's 1989 reissue, amount to a celebration of the workingman directors of this world whose contributions to the art of cinema will probably never get recognition in proportion to the honest efforts they put forth. But for those who are able to pursue their unique vision, and take advantage of the rare opportunities they're given with as much savvy and technical craft as Harvey and his shoestring crew were able to apply in Carnival of Souls, there's at least that little ray of hope that somebody out there will sit up and take notice.
Next: Mafioso