Carnival of Souls

I was equally frustrated and intrigued as I viewed 1962's CARNIVAL OF SOULS, the former winning out a majority of the run time and immediately afterward.  But it was a film I could not shake.  I wasn't expecting to be so affected by this, something I figured to be little more than an atmospheric B-chiller that would make a nifty addition to my annual "Horror Month" series.  I've often spoken of films that have "gotten under my skin".  Damned if writer/director Herk Harvey's movie didn't invade my consciousness with such a deceptively simple tale, yet one that only gets deeper with the time spent recalling it.

Mary and two friends seem to be lost after their car goes over the side of a bridge.  Rescue efforts are futile.  But wait - Mary emerges from the lake soaked and dazed.  Coherent, though.  Her plans to take a job in Utah as a church organist proceed as planned.   She sees a ghoul appear in the passenger window of her car.  Then later in a rooming house.  Does this pasty figure have anything to do with the abandoned pavilion on the outskirts of town?

Mary (Candace Hilligoss) is attractive and usually pleasant but also a bit of a misanthrope, possibly even a sociopath.  Or maybe people just annoy her.  She also feels no spiritual connections, as her job in the church is just that.  The hymns she plays hold no significance.  Her pastor and landlord don't understand such behavior and attitudes.  The jerk who lives across the hall foolishly tries to hook up with her, and is even led on when she accepts a date.  But Mary is truly alone.  By choice? Does she really detest contact with others? What sort of girl was she back in her other town?

In a few effective sequences, Mary suddenly finds she can't hear others and they can't hear or see her.  Is she even alive?

Undoubtedly, Mary will eventually visit the lonely, empty pavilion, once the site of a carnival.  There are others there......

CARNIVAL OF SOULS is a relatively short film but I felt most of its eighty-three minutes.  It's awfully talky.  And the dialogue is usually cornball and the actors exaggerate their expressions and vocal intensity, often coming off like too-eager community theater thespians.  It gets tedious more than once.  Mr. Harvey could've made his creepy, atmospheric film even more disturbing if he dispensed with all the inane conversations (including a few with a psychologist) and just shown us Mary's hell. We do still get that, in a gallery of strong imagery in haunting black and white.  It's impossible to not be reminded of David Lynch in certain moments.  Gene Moore's organ scoring is appropriately eerie.

This technically is a "horror" film but not in any manner I was expecting.   It was not at all frightening.  The bargain basement feel lends a certain cache.  As a nightmarish study of alienation, it continues to be far more successful as its implications expand in my brain.  Most disturbing might be that in certain scenes I was reminded of myself.  Many others may have a similar experience.