This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of a film that many people will probably never have heard of unless they somehow came across it at midnight screenings. Or, if you’re like me, you heard about it through Criterion and wonder what the hell this no-name movie is. Who is Herk Harvey? What kind of movie is this? Why did this film influence David Lynch and George A. Romero? Carnival of souls it was not widely anticipated at the time of its release, but it was only in later years that the film became established as a cult classic and carried characteristics that have been seen in later horror and surrealist films.
A woman in trouble
The film follows a young woman (Candace Hilligoss) who somehow survives a car accident and moves to Utah to start her life over. After starting her new job as a church organist, the woman finds herself interested in a large, abandoned building in the salt flats. However, she is constantly haunted by the following ghost (Harvey) and cannot adapt to her new surroundings. Elsewhere, her past threatens to engulf her through the strange hypnosis of what lies in the tent.
The atmosphere throughout the film is a constant vibration that follows the path of the woman after the accident. She is innocent in the opening seconds until the car crashes into the muddy river; Coming out of it, she is a completely new person, with no memories of what happened. The mysterious vampire symbolizes the death from which she has somehow escaped. Throw in the endless organ score, played by a local organist named Gene Moore, who implants a carousel of horror that lingers in her mind as she tries to rediscover who she is.
Building a haunted house
Carnival of souls was the only film directed by Herk Harvey, who worked for the educational film company Centron. Based in Lawrence, Kansas, where Harvey was studying at the University of Kansas, Centron produced many low-budget short films aimed primarily at students on various subjects. One of his short documentary films, Leo Beuerman, would be nominated for an Academy Award in 1970. During his time at Centro, Harvey learned how to make films on tight budgets and with good quality, giving him the creativity he would need to shoot Carnival.
Returning from California after shooting a movie, Harvey passed through Utah and saw the abandoned Saltair Pavilion, which was built in the late 19th century. It was a resort to attract members of the Mormon church that was closed in 1958 and the Salt Lake where it was built receded drastically below the building. This inspired Harvey to make his own film and enlist his collaborator, John Clifford, to write a screenplay about the abandoned pavilion. Candace Hilligoss, a young actress who studied at the Actors Studio in New York, was cast in the lead role. Filming took three weeks on a budget of $33,000, roughly $314,000 in 2022 today.
Freeing the Ghouls
The film was released in September 1962 in Lawrence and was forgotten overnight. Worse for Harvey, while he acquired the television rights, he did not copyright the film for distribution and it would become available in the public domain later. When a small distributor picked up the film, Harvey wouldn’t see any money from it, as it was bootlegged and the distributor fled to Europe. However, it was those who saw the film on TV and through bootleg versions who would keep it Carnival relevant until the late 1980s, when it was remade and screened at horror film festivals to build a larger cult following.
When broadcast for TV, the film was cut slightly from 80 to 78 minutes; later, the film was restored as Harvey originally intended it to be at 84 minutes. Thanks to VHS, LaserDisc and now DVD/Blu-Ray, distribution is far greater than Harvey, who got a second chance at fame when the film was revived, imagined. He did not make any other films after that Carnival but was happy to spend the rest of his life visiting the various cities where the film was shown. Along with Lynch and Romero, directors James Wan and Lucrecia Martel have also cited the film as an influence on their own films. In 2008, a free shoot took place in Germany, Yella, written and directed by Christian Petzold.
ABOUT spirits, remains a cult film for those who appreciate the forgotten film genre and the hidden qualities it retains. It’s very similar to the Ed Wood films, which played a role in Tim Burton’s upbringing. This is a taste outside of mainstream art and movies that only a few can truly watch and find the hidden power it has. Horror is a genre with the power of metamorphosis, changing its appearance all the time and approaching stories in all new directions. Carnival of souls it’s no different than any major studio and its sense of direction.
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