“Carnival of Souls” (1962)

Carnival of Souls

Grade: B+

Carnival of Souls is a cheap movie done right, with one-time director Herk Hervey turning in an effectively creepy horror film out of a $33,000 budget.

Directing:

Influenced by the likes of Jean Cocteau (Orpheus, 1950), Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal, 1957) and Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad, 1961), Hervey’s style is amateurish yet ambitious; surreal and minimal; captivating in its resourcefulness and efficiency; filled with trippy visuals that make Carnival of Souls still worth watching over 60 years later.

Acting:

Unfortunately, Carnival of Souls is still a B-movie, which means the acting isn’t the greatest. Then again, the uncanny performances — I’d like to know how many of the scenes were completed in one take — add to the unnerving atmosphere, whether intentional or not.

Writing:

Based on An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1890), Ambrose Pierce’s influential “it was all a dream” short story, Carnival of Souls is like a long-lost Twilight Zone episode (pretty close to the plot of “The Hitch-Hiker” actually) but with a more elliptical structure: the somewhat plotless narrative about an adrift church organist haunted by a near-death experience teems with purgatorial tension.

Music:

Just like Last Year at Marienbad, Carnival of Souls uses a ghostly atonal organ score to engulf the film in an inescapable supernatural aura which, when combined with Hervey’s directing, transmits a unique and hard-to-replicate vibe.

Ending (SPOILERS):

Back in 1962, horror movies didn’t have to make sense, and so “she was dead the whole time” is a cool twist as long as you don’t worry about trivial things like logic, plot holes or the fact that the actors are clearly moving as their lifeless bodies are dragged out of the river.

“I don’t belong in the world, that’s what it is.” — Mary Henry

Why Carnival of Souls gets a B+

Stylish scare flick better than it has any right to be, in a tier of cult classics with Phantasm (1979) and Re-Animator (1985).

---