Carnival of Souls
Herk Harvey’s “Carnival of Souls” has been riffed in the “Mystery Science Theater 3000” vein before, but it’s not of the same caliber of film we’re accustomed to seeing get this treatment. On the surface, I get it- made for almost nothing, the film is as low-budget horror as you can get, and there are some potentially silly moments in it. This most recent watch of it, though, I saw the film’s artistry more acutely than I have before; there’s a power to Harvey’s images that allow it to inhabit our dreams in a way few films are capable of. Prior to seeing it get the RiffTrax treatment a few years ago, I first watched it in 2000-2001, and that escaped me, at the time. That is no longer the case.
In many cases, a shot like the final one Harvey presents in “Carnival of Souls” would throw off the dramatic weight of what we saw before it; in this case, it solidifies it in a way that answers the most necessary questions, but also raises more. Since this film is about a woman teetering on the brink of life and death, though, maybe it doesn’t raise as many as we think. Instead, it emphasizes the film’s look at PTSD, the way trauma can bring about guilt and isolation, and the way horror is capable of using the supernatural to give us a window into the emotional journey of characters, and few are more wrought with struggling as Mary Henry, “Carnival of Souls’s” protagonist.
The score by Gene Moore may, very well, become one of my favorites in the horror genre. On a $33,000 budget, there was not money for much in the way of music, but Moore’s organ score doesn’t need anything else- it is as indelibly creepy as the music Kubrick uses in “The Shining,” or Bernard Herrmann’s score for “Psycho.” Not only does the choice of organ fit with the narrative of the film- Mary is a professional organist- but it has the capability of giving us any number of unsettling voicings and atmospheric touches with how the pedal is utilized to fit the movie’s atmosphere perfectly. Put the dialogue in title cards, and this film would be just as effective at what it’s doing as a silent film.
The film begins with a drag race where one of the cars goes off the bridge they are on, and into the river. The drivers in the other car don’t tell the whole story, and the police are having a hard time finding the car. But the car couldn’t be that difficult to find, right? It’s hard to see it going further down the river. Out of the river comes Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss). A week later, she is making her way out of town to Salt Lake City to become a church organist, but she starts seeing a terrible specter everywhere she goes, and it isolates her further from the people around her, whether it’s the landlady of the house she is staying at, the young man across the hall interested in her, or the preacher at the church she is playing organ at. And then, there are moments where she seems to be invisible for those around her. Is there more than just survivor’s guilt at play? She doesn’t seem too heartbroken about the lives lost that day.
The screenplay by John Clifford is not one that I would call “deep,” but when combined with Harvey’s images, we get an unforgettable story of trauma, loneliness, and the inextricable feeling of being drawn to a nearby, abandoned carnival, arguably one of the most haunting locations in horror movie history. The economy of the storytelling, and the filmmaking, is what gives Harvey the freedom to visually challenge the viewer with how he tells this story, and makes something truly powerful. Even without the macabre images of specters dancing at the carnival, just the scenes of Mary walking around it have a hold on us, even more so when the final moments snap everything into focus, and leave us having greater appreciation for what the film was capable of, and how it achieved it.
