HalloWatch: Carnival of Souls (1962)

Watched:  10/29/2024
Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Herk Harvey

I don't know what I was expecting from Carnival of Souls (1962) but a sort of low-budget art-horror film wasn't really it.  Further, The Sixth Sense's twist ending doesn't seem like that big of a deal now.  

Probably famous because someone forgot to put a copyright notice on the film - and therefore it was copyright free and fair pickings for rebroadcast and re-showing on creature features - Carnival of Souls is now part of the horror canon.  It's a low-budget affair that easily could have delved into Ed Wood territory, but instead uses what it has - which is photography and lighting, great locations, pipe organs, a protagonist with a great profile who does a "haunted" look like no one's business...  add in a lot of dark clothes and pancake make-up, and we've put together a tight, spooky flick.

In Kansas, a group of young women cruising on a sunny afternoon race a bit with some young men, but accidentally drive off a bridge into a deep river.  The car is submerged and can't be found.  But three hours later, one of the women emerges from the water, confused and with no idea what just happened.

After the accident, Mary (Candace Hilligoss) seems untraumatized... but also unbothered by much of anything.  She leaves town for a job in Salt Lake City where she'll play pipe organ for a large church - which she makes plain is just work and she has no feelings about the religious nature of the job.  En route, she passes a mysterious old bathhouse on the edge of the Great Salt Lake...  a gigantic affair of late 19th century splendor left to rot in the sun.  She feels it pull at her - something happening inside.

Soon, she's seeing The Man - a spectral figure who appears in mirrors and reflections, and people aren't seeing her from time-to-time, even as she stands in front of them and yells.  Further, she starts having visions of a ghoulish ball thrown in the abandoned bath house/ dancehall/ carnival.  

SPOILERS

For those of us who've seen a few things, it becomes pretty clear, Mary has been dead this whole time.  But if you're going to do the "and she was dead all along!" bit, and that's the chilling ending - this is a great way to do it.  Pulling the car out of the water with Mary still inside and explaining absolutely nothing as she disappears in Utah is...  a pretty awesome way to do this.  The odd behavior of Mary and the strange occurrences all making sense.

I'm not sure why Candace Hilligoss had an abbreviated acting career.  She's a solid leading lady in a tough role here, doing all sorts of challenging stuff very well.  Her Wikipedia page states she studied with Meisner and Strasberg, so she was putting in the work, and I never doubted her.  To be candid, I am also not surprised she was modeling, so she had that going for her. - I feel like the camera loves her.

But this was a small-time indie movie and mostly only became a cult classic later on.  Not everyone in the movie is a pro-actor, and some of the performances definitely have that feel you get to know from MST3K fodder as non-actors deliver lines like they're at the Rotary Club promoting good dental hygiene.  But even that kind of works in context as Mary - our protagonist - navigates a world from which she feels curiously detached.

The long tail of this is that Hilligoss gets to enjoy being Candace Hilligoss and be a cult-film superstar, and we have this terrific film from '62 that feels a bit ethereal and strange.  And I have to think this movie made many, many other directors think they could pull off similar with lesser results.