Classic Horror: CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962)

All right, so I started out with the best of intentions, to watch these horror films in chronological order and review them, to reflect on how trends weave and change over time and how things vary over a span of a few decades of cinema. But my friend Dave came over and we ended up watching three entirely random films in the set, and knowing my tendency to procrastinate, I figured that I might as well get something out on the first film we watched, Herk Harvey's 1962 film Carnival of Souls. With school starting and my ability to do massive projects limited, I think reviewing these films in the order I see them will have to do until I get a little more used to blogging regularly--and this project is nothing if not a challenge to see if I can blog regularly. This may seem a little fragmented, but the goal here is to write something coherent and put it up. If I try to cover everything I will lose myself in the bowels of infinite draft hell.

So, Carnival of Souls. I knew the ending of this film before I even started it, due to a heavy amount of reading and a truly bizarre capacity to recall random trivia, but it's an interesting little film nonetheless. Filmed on a budget of less than $35,000 and released as a B-movie, Carnival of Souls has a plot that was fairly well-known, even for the time: a drag race ends tragically when one of the cars plunges off a bridge; the only survivor is Mary (Candace Hilligoss), a church organist who immediately moves to a new town to try to forge a new life. However, strange things begin to happen around Mary; there are times when nobody seems to be able to see or hear her, she has increasing difficulty relating to the people in her life, and she is haunted by a ghoulish man who seems somehow connected to the old abandoned pavilion just outside of town.

If you can't guess how the film ends, I won't spoil it for you; but while Carnival of Souls' plot has since become urban legend fodder, its execution contains some genuinely creepy moments and some really interesting subtext. The influence of one Alfred Hitchcock is immediately obvious; Hilligoss is a very Hitchcockian protagonist, a young woman with layers of sadness and secrets immersed in a world that has rejected her in such a fundamental manner as to actually turn against her. This is a film that came out a comfortable amount of years after both Vertigo and Psycho, both of which deal with women who do not quite fit into the world properly.
Mary would not be out of place seducing Jimmy Stewart, no, but her characterization is a great deal more pessimistic than Hitchcock might have made her. She is an embodiment of clinical depression in many ways: she has no libido, she goes through stages of being unable to communicate with anyone or anything, and she has no ability to enjoy that which she once (apparently) loved--this is a point of possible contention, for we are only ever told that Mary is a church organist after her accident, and thus it could be as unreal as the ghosts following her. The complete uncertainty of anything, even the things you thought you knew, is a frighteningly accurate portrayal of clinical depression, speaking as someone who has struggled down that road.

For a film shot in three weeks on a pretty small budget, the ghouls are pretty effective; the Man that haunts Mary (played by the director himself) has some pretty excellent jump-scare moments, even for jaded 21st-century viewers. Furthermore, the ghosts represent a discretely sexual, hedonistic presence. There is one scene where Mary, practicing the organ, begins to play a tune that is decidedly un-churchly in intent, making her very distinctly--if unwillingly--a seductress. As horrific ghouls and ghosts rise up from water to dance to her music, Mary's tune reaches a very distinct climax--a seduction by the things she is frightened of, but, in the end, cannot resist. It's a well-created scene, and the sexual component is not surprising in the least, for cinematic horror has almost always had a sexual component. Seduction is seduction, even if the seducers are horrific monstrosities; we are fascinated by what we cannot fathom or possess, and our emotions are so strongly connected to both sexuality and death that it is all too easy to mesh the two. Mary's story--from virginal church organist to semi-willing participant in her own destruction--is a morality tale about the dangers of straying from the beaten path as much as it is a meditation on depression, alienation, post-traumatic psychosis, and Death itself. There is something to be said for the ability to take a well-told tale and tell it in a memorable way, and Carnival of Souls fits that niche very comfortably.