Monday, October 7, 2013

Riske Business: Why You Should Watch Carnival of Souls This Month

by Adam Riske
Have you ever been at a “fun” bar or social gathering that makes you so uncomfortable that you feel like you need to desperately escape? This is a feeling of horror unto itself. The movie that best captures it, to me, is Herk Harvey’s 1962 classic Carnival of Souls.

This movie has slowly collected a cult audience over the years, but could still use a bump. That's why I am strongly suggesting you find time to watch it this month. It’s quirky and fun (enough for hipsters to chew on), but also a landmark in the psychological horror subgenre. You will not be disappointed.
From the first time I saw Carnival of Souls, the movie has stuck with me. I remember sitting there watching it and being amazed by the screenplay. It’s a psychologist’s wet dream. Here is a horror movie from the early 1960s which is confronting its protagonist on topics like isolation, soul and belief. Carnival of Souls is a horror movie that could only have been made by people outside of the Hollywood studio system. People with something specific they wanted to express. And it was.
The plot and backstory in brief: Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) is cruising with some friends when they are challenged to a drag race. The race ends with Mary’s car going off of a bridge and into the river below. It appears everyone in Mary’s car died until Mary emerges after a long while has passed, seemingly unscathed. Everyone at the rescue site is stunned. Mary recovers and drives west to Utah for a new job as a church organist. She is not religious and treats the role as simply a job. She is a professional musician and the venue is a non-factor. En route to Utah, a ghoulish figure (played by the director, Herk Harvey) begins to appear and continues to dog Mary while she is in town. The ghoul resides in an old shut-down pavilion that Mary passes on the highway to which she is drawn to like a magnet.

The team behind Carnival of Souls was mostly non-professionals who worked at the Lawrence, Kansas-based Centron Studios, an industrial film company that produced educational movies and “social guidance” short subjects. This was their only feature length production. According to screenwriter John Clifford, the genesis came from Herk Harvey’s sighting of the Saltair Amusement Park, outside of Salt Lake City, while driving on a road trip. He commissioned Clifford to write a screenplay based on the single image he had of creatures rising from the lake and doing a dance of death in this pavilion. While writing the screenplay, Clifford was thinking of locations in Lawrence that would provide atmosphere at little expense. One of those locations was the Reuter Organ Company.

The pipe organ-heavy score (by Gene Moore) complements the eerie black and white photography to create a horror movie with a very peculiar mood. It all feels drained of life, otherworldly, sad and longing but, most surprisingly, inviting. A key to psychological horror is that it draw you into the protagonist’s point of view, and Carnival of Souls achieves that in an interesting way. Because even if you don’t share Mary Henry’s indifference to life itself (which we’ll touch on shortly), you still feel drawn to a pavilion which is never shown to be anything but ominous and void of a future. Why is that?
It’s because the reason Mary wants to see the pavilion so badly is that same reason that you or I love the Horror genre. On its face, it doesn’t make sense. Most Horror fans are really nice people – polite, reasonable, strong-willed and loving – but we’re drawn to a genre predominantly about death and bad feelings. There’s a scene early in Carnival of Souls, when Mary visits the pavilion for the first time with the minister from her church, where the dialogue can almost function as an answer to the question “Why do you like Horror?” Mary answers (I’m paraphrasing) that it’s for no other reason than to satisfy curiosity. Mary’s curiosity is something the other characters in the movie, mostly men, cannot accept.

For better or for worse, Mary is trying out some things throughout Carnival of Souls, which in the early 1960s might have been unpopular to do. She’s not Donna Reed and has no intention of being the typical 1950s housewife or a doormat of any sort for a man. She’s independent and outspoken to the point of being rude, but she’s not dishonest. She wants a man only when she needs one (in this case the skeevy Mr. Linden, who lives across the hall in a rooming house). She tells the minister that she’d prefer to skip the meet & greet with his congregation. She sits with a doctor (amusingly trying to play the role of a psychologist) and discusses how she has never had the desire for the close company of other people. The doctor then asks “Do you want to join in the things other people do, share the experiences of other people?” Mary answers, “I don’t seem capable of being close to people.” Mary has some solid reasons to feel this way beyond experiencing a traumatic car accident.
Most of the men in this movie only want her body or her soul. They have no intention to listen to her, sympathize or understand her. And when they do, they are not equipped to handle her worldview, concerns and interests (e.g. the pavilion). Their answer to her is to give her guilt trips, call her cold, say she lacks respect or reverence and comment that she has no soul. And the ghosts (it’s important to note that by the end of the movie, it’s a group of ghosts and not just the Herk Harvey ghost) just want her to accept that she’s dead – physically, spiritually and emotionally. The movie is commenting on a dichotomy that exists in real life for some – how can someone who would prefer to be left alone exist in a society of inclusion, even if it’s forced inclusion? Again, have you ever been at a bar where you just wanted to leave? You had no interest in socializing; it just feels like something you are not capable of doing. This is an impossible position to be in. How do you explain to someone that “fun” is your nightmare? How do you fix that? Is that even possible? Mary Henry would have a very difficult time in Spring Breakers.

The impact Carnival of Souls has had on Horror is significant. David Lynch has cited it as an influence, which can be seen everywhere from the photography and mood in Eraserhead to his satirical outlook on community in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks. George A. Romero’s zombies in Night of the Living Dead owe a lot to the ghouls in Carnival of Souls from a makeup and design perspective, and movies as recent as Ti West’s The Innkeepers touch on similar themes of being a waking ghost – passively existing and unable to express the usual human emotions.

A scene that always struck me in The Innkeepers is the one where Sara Paxton’s character cannot even close on buying a cup of coffee. We don’t see what happened that led her to desert her order, but we know that something went wrong. It’s played as a joke, but was she so uncomfortable talking to Lena Dunham that she had to flee, thus breaking the unwritten rule of social interaction where you grit your teeth and bear it. Also, when Pat Healy’s character pours out his heart to Sara Paxton, she just ignores everything he says like she’s incapable of understanding feelings of love. She immediately changes the subject to tracking down the hotel ghost (of that movie). She’s not too much unlike Mary Henry in Carnival of Souls, both careening perilously into the abyss.
Carnival of Souls is a movie that leaves you with no answers or catharsis, and that’s truly horrifying. It’s a miracle movie -- one that shouldn’t exist. A group of filmmakers, amateurs at features, collected $33,000 to produce it over the course of a weekend, shot it in two weeks and made a movie for the ages. They followed in the footsteps of 1960’s Psycho and were leading the charge in a more adult-based Horror movie, soon followed and reinforced by the likes of Roman Polanski and George A. Romero. It deserves more accolades and fans.

Carnival of Souls has been described by some critics derisively as a feature-length episode of The Twilight Zone, to which I ask: what’s wrong with that? The Twilight Zone rules!

Carnival of Souls is my favorite horror movie and one you should watch during Scary Movie Month. It’s available all over the place, but the best place to watch it is the fantastic DVD put out by Criterion. It’s only $23 on Amazon. If you’re worried about expenses, just don’t use birth control for a month or something. In 9 months, you’ll have a baby and have seen a great Horror movie. You’re welcome!

P.S. Don’t go near the movie of the same title on Netflix Instant. It’s not a remake and it’s awful.

What are your thoughts about Carnival of Souls? Are there any other classic horror movies you think should be getting more attention?

26 comments:

  1. I adore this movie. It was on TCM just a few nights ago (hosted by Bill Hader) and I watched it for probably the 5th or 6th time in my life and it still manages to unnerve me every time. There's something almost hypnotic about it, probably due in no small part to the organ music.

    I watched the remake (for the record, it is a remake, just an inexcusably awful one) not long after I first discovered the original and it's the worst. Larry Miller as a rapist murderclown is no substitute for Herk Harvey when it comes to menacing creepitude. The remake goes for explicit scares rather than the under-your-skin creepiness of the original and there's simply no comparison.

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    1. I'd just like to note that I'm enjoying Bill Haderm TCM host; he has a nice enthusiasm for his subjects.

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  2. P.S. Vampire Tom Cruise is fantastic, kudos to the photoshopper

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    1. Doug created all of the special SMM artwork. I love it.

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    2. It's great, as is your new avatar. I thought of you as soon as I saw that on last night's Treehouse!

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  3. It seems like the whole movie was shot without sound, and then the dialogue was looped in later. I'm not crazy, right? And that's maybe why there is so little dialogue?

    I wish I could hear Bill Hader talk more about horror movies. He is a HUGE horror nerd.

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  4. I like Carnival of Souls, and yeah, what's wrong with an extended Twilight Zone episode? It's a movie that exists to be creepy, and it does the job admirably.

    The movie I think needs more attention is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which a lot of people seem to feel like they've seen, but haven't. Tim Burton made the aesthetic of the movie popular, and people have seen stills and stuff, but it's remarkable to me how many people I've shown the movie to and found that they were totally surprised by it.

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  5. I can't believe this movie was remade and then remade again as "Soul Survivors".

    I love this movie and its mood. And the use of Salt Air was both brilliant and haunting.

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  6. @JP - I don't recognize the 1998 thing as a remake. Just like Staying Alive and 2010 do not exist. Saturday Night Fever and 2001: A Space Odyssey never had sequels :-)

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    1. And Die Hard is a trilogy. Got it!

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    2. Really? 2010 is one of your most loathed sequels? It's a different animal to 2001 to be certain but I think a pretty solid film in its own right. But that's a discussion for another time.

      I saw Carnival of Souls only once around 1999. You review definitely makes me want to give it another look this month.

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    3. I've always liked 2010 but it might just be because of my Jaws-induced man-crush on Roy Scheider.

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    4. Yeah, 2010 is pretty damn solid (and in retrospect, a ridiculous cast.)

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    5. My 2010 gripe is that it fills in details that I don't want filled in.

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    6. Yeah I get that. I feel that way about Clarke's novel of 2001.

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  7. "Like" a Twilight Zone episode? It WAS a Twilight Zone episode called "The Hitchhiker" with Ingrid Stevens.

    Meanwhile, I like Carnival of Souls. Can't full out love it because of some of the amateurishness of it. This was made by a director who - through Centron - made literally hundreds of educational films over the years and yet they can't get the sound of Mary running correct? Also can't deal with Mary and her friends (?) looking like they just got out of the shower at the end of the film....along with that the other two girls seem like the last people who would be hanging out with Mary and vice versa.

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    1. I can see your reasons for not loving it. Valid reasons all.

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    2. To be fair, this was an independent low-budget flick, so the crew had to make do with what they could get--it's as non-Hollywood as possible, which is what I like about it. Plus this was their first time making a full-length feature flick (educational films tended to be shorts,anyway.) I got it on VHS, and yeah, it's a genuine cult classic that's earned that status (that last half-hour or so is genuinely creepy.)

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  8. I've become a huge Twilight Zone fan as of late (Tip: The blu-rays are pretty cheap on Amazon.uk) so this sounds like it could be right up my alley - I was thinking as I read your review (and as Kathy said above) that it sounded a lot like "The Hitchhiker" episode.

    You've sold me Adam - sounds super creepy and interesting - I'll try to check it out soon!

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  9. Excellent write-up, Adam; this movie is completely messed up in a fever dream sort of why and you nail why it works and why a fellow "messed up movie made by amateurs" that has a similar feel, Manos, doesn't work in any of the ways that Carnival does.

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  10. Thank you for writing about this. I remember when the film was "rediscovered" in the nineties. It really is something

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  11. I also have to say thanks for putting a spotlight on this one. This is my favorite horror movie as well (well, it's a close tie with Night of the Living Dead) and it's absolutely tragic that Harvey and company were so burned by the distributor they never tried making another feature again. The scene where Herk pauses in his dancing to stalk right toward camera made me jump out of my chair as a kid.

    One similar film, though maybe not as psychologically interesting, that also deserves a bit more attention is Sole Survivor from 1983. This one also centers on a woman who miraculously survives a disaster, in this case a plane crash, only to discover why few sole survivors of such accidents live for too long afterward. It's directed by Thom Eberhardt, who also directed Night of the Comet, and has some of the same quirky sense of humor and some damn creepy moments.

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  12. Thanks so much for recommending this Adam, the mood of the film and some of the images has really had a very big impression on me. I also saw some Lynchian qualities to the film. Right at the beginning when Mary gets out of the car, the organ music is playing loudly and someone asks her 'What about the other girl?' She replies 'I don't remember' I immediately had Mulholland Drive spring into mind. Some of the atmosphere and mood is similar between Mary and Rita. Both lost and alone, slightly empty. Am I crazy for thinking about Antonioni throughout the film? I kept thinking this was a horror film that had been influenced by Italian art cinema of the era. Really strongly linked me to the way I feel when I watch La Notte, which came out the year before in 1961. So it is possible after all the film had an impact on Herk Harvey. The psychological and philosophical approaches to the way the characters, particularly the female protagonists, in both La Notte and Carnival of Souls are explored in similar ways. Neither film gives any answers, but raises many questions. Both films unsettle and take care in the way in which they are shot. I also got a lot out of watching Night of the Living Dead in the same day as Carnival of Souls. I really saw that influence. I will definitely be watching this film again!

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    1. Cool! I'm really glad you liked Carnival of Souls Gabby :-) You're making me want to watch La Notte. I have not yet seen that one. Thanks for the recommendation!

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    2. Great, let me know what you think if you watch it :)

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    3. I read somewhere that Harvey admitted to being influenced by Ingmar Bergman in particular for the look and feel of the film---so,yeah, that's why the European influence really comes out in the last half-hour--to me,anyway.

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