Horror/Mystery
1 hour and 18 minutes
Rated: PG
Written by: John Clifford
Directed by: Herk Harvey
Produced by: Herk Harvey
Cast:
Candace Hilligoss
Frances Feist
Sidney Berger
Art Ellison
She Escaped Death. Now It Wants Her Back!
With the booming of drive-in culture really reaching its peak in the late-1950s, the time frame of the 1950s until around the mid to late 1960s saw a plethora of B-genre movies being produced, most with the intention of filling out double or triple feature billings, simply because there was a market for them. In the cities, grind houses churned these movies out just as rapidly as the rural drive-ins could, and teenagers and youngsters everywhere were hardly ever deprived from a vast array of choices when it came to B-genre cinema. Most of these films lacked much in the way of quality, even though most remain to this day quite fun and amusing. However, every once in a while a B-movie would come along that would genuinely surprise its audience with its overall content pegging it as being much more brilliant than the labeling of B-cinema could merit it.
Such is the case for Herk Harvey's 1962 supernatural horror film Carnival of Souls. The motion-picture stems entirely around a simple but brilliant concept that Harvey masterfully never loses sight of. In essence, the main premise of Carnival of Souls never fades to the sidelines, and Harvey magnificently weaves the suspense and terror around it at all times. He was a filmmaker who clearly understood the importance of story over all other elements.
And yet Carnival of Souls has been ripped apart over the years as being a sexist allegory - or at the very least a sexist product of its times - commenting on the now debunked theory of female hysteria. While there are certainly arguments to be made that are credible if one chooses to view the film in this light, it seems as if Harvey was much more interested in paranoia and the inescapability of death - i.e. mortality - than he was with commenting on female pseudo-psychology. Carnival of Souls would not function any differently as a film if its protagonist were male, and this is again because Harvey's point seems to be an examination of paranoia surrounding one's own mortality. While the female figure, played by Candace Hilligoss, on surface levels does come across as a helpless damsel in distress, Carnival of Souls doesn't fall into the trappings of other 1960s B-horror movies riddled with sexism by having a male hero save her, or attempt to save her. Hilligoss's character, Mary Henry, must find her own answers - something she at first seems incapable of doing due to her fear and paranoia. But by the film's end, Mary answers the call. She finds it within herself to face down what's been haunting her all along to find her conclusions - as dangerous as they may be.
Also undermining the sexism claims are Mary's abilities to fend off the advances of her brutish and overtly rape-y neighbor John Linden, played by Sidney Berger. If Mary were really the helpless damsel in distress one of two things would have come about from her interactions with John: 1) she would have succumbed to his grim intentions, or 2) some other alfa-male figure would have stepped in and saved her from John. Instead, Mary is capable of keeping John at bay all on her own, until finally her sweeping paranoia drives him completely away from her.
Within the story, Harvey manages to create some truly terrifying and sinister moments of atmospheric horror genius. These begin with Mary's stumbling out of a river - still alive after a fatal car crash. They continue to moments involving the ghostly figure of a man's white, lifeless visage haunting her throughout her new life in Utah. These all lead up to the climax of Carnival of Souls, a brilliant descent into paranoia and madness that is masterfully orchestrated and without a doubt one of the scariest, one of the most beautiful, and one of the most memorable conclusions to any supernatural horror film, B-movie or mainstream, from this era.
Just as brilliant as the film's story are its technical aspects. Carnival of Souls is beautifully photographed by cinematographer Maurice Prather. Prather managed to capture the two worlds of both day and night, as well as Mary's paranoia versus her functioning state in a gorgeous manner. Certain set pieces never seemed to be photographed the same way twice, mirroring this duality of worlds. Prather brilliantly shows us a Utah church, an abandoned carnival, and even a room in a boarding house in two different lights. First as something grand, but seemingly normal, then as something dark and sinister, filled with shadows and unknown spaces. Editors Bill de Jarnette and Dan Palmquist utilize seamless transitions in certain moments to create the illusion that all these spaces are somehow sinisterly connected. Perhaps their weird wash-transition to indicate Mary's slipping out of reality is the only moment of editing that comes across as a bit hokey, but even this is easily forgiven.
But the most brilliant technical aspect of the film is its score. Composer Gene Moore, like director Herk Harvey, seemed to understand the brilliance surrounding the idea of keeping things simplistic. Moore's score for Carnival of Souls, entirely performed via the pipe organ, flutters between the church-like and angelic and the sinister and bizarre notes of a carnival calliope. This, like the cinematography and editing, helps to create the worlds of the living and the dead while simultaneously blending the two together in a connecting and seamless fashion.
The performances in Carnival of Souls are effective enough for its being a B-movie, and Candace Hilligoss does manage to appear genuinely frightened in sequences that merit her character as being so. Moments of extended dialogue, however, seem to reveal the casts' shortcomings as actors. Still, this does not ruin the viewing experience of the film, since, again, director Herk Harvey was most interested on focusing upon the story of Carnival of Souls, keeping that as the main focal point - not the characters.
Featuring brilliant direction, an intriguing concept, and incredible technical qualities including gorgeous cinematography, effective editing, some truly creepy makeup effects, and an outstanding score, Carnival of Souls manages to triumph over its few shortcomings as well as its B-movie label by being a much more brilliant motion-picture than that particular marking would otherwise suggest its being.
8.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment