Starring: Candace Hilligoss
Director: Herk Harvey
Writer: John Clifford
Genre: Horror
Year: 1962
My rating:
Two cars drag race on a desolate stretch of road in rural Kansas. One car runs off a bridge, plunges into a deep river and quickly sinks. All three young women inside are assumed dead. However, hours after the crash, one woman emerges from the river, alive and unharmed, but unable or unwilling to explain her miraculous survival.
That intriguing premise, ladies and gentlemen, is merely the pre-credits opening sequence of CARNIVAL OF SOULS.
I hadn't heard of this movie before. However, quick trips to IMDB and Wikipedia tell me that I should have. It was an cheap, obscure, throwaway flick when it was first released, but has gained a cult following in the decades since. And it's easy to see why. Because despite its flaws, there is a lot of atmosphere and horror here.
The story follows Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss), the young woman inexplicably left alive when all reason would indicate that she be dead. Following the accident, she leaves town as she has been hired as a church organist in Utah. During her trip, she is haunted by bizarre and unexplainable visions. After her arrival, the sightings continue and she finds herself drawn to a mysterious, abandoned carnival. Also, despite making a serious impression on a man living in her building, she begins temporarily slipping out of reality, unable to make herself seen or heard by those around her.
I'm not the first (nor will I be the last) to notice that CARNIVAL OF SOULS has the definite feel of a lost, elongated episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE (indeed, it contains similar themes to "The Hitchhiker", although CARNIVAL is creepier and has more going on). This is very atmospheric, very creepy and unsettling. It's the kind of movie you watch and then don't want to look out of dark windows at night because if you don't look, you won't have to see what's out there.
I liked that the central character is both an identification point (we, like her, want to discover what is going on around her) and a enigmatic mystery. How did she survive the car crash? That event must have something to do with her visions, but what is the connection? Why is she drawn to the carnival?
Of course, I found it difficult to watch CARNIVAL without being distracted by the cheap production values and numerous technical flaws. While occasionally the mistakes add to the atmosphere of confusion, overall they can't help but detract from the film as a whole. Keep in mind that this film gets a lot of attention based on how good it is despite its flaws. So don't go into it expecting perfection.
However, those flaws almost enhance the genuinely effective moments, because they seem to rise like roses out of, well, if not manure, than certainly ordinary film making. There are many creepy individual shots I'll remember, most of which concern the unnerving ghostly apparitions. Sometimes simple, primitive special effects are more chilling than there expensive counterparts, and the shots of the specters stalking the protagonist are clear evidence of that.
I really enjoyed the ending of the film. Sometimes a script will attempt to explain too much, leaving the movie feeling a little too neat. Other times, the producers will leave things so vague as to render any coherent theory impossible. CARNIVAL hit the magic median for me. I got a lot out of the ending, and was happy to see that while there are numerous theories on-line "explaining" the conclusion, not one of them exactly lines up with my own. I like that about a film.
The inexpensive Digiview Productions release of this DVD is quite watchable, and while I'm sure the Criterion version has a vastly superior picture, this is great for people like me who are discovering this for the first time.
No comments:
Post a Comment