Carnival Of Souls (1962) Noir From The Twilight Zone

A Low Budget Masterpiece.

I've seen Carnival Of Souls numerous times over the years. It's one of my favorite films.

It came out during what I now recognize was the Transitional Noir period. Back then I suspect not too many people had even knew of Film Noir, and even less heard of it. Classic Film Noir was cut loose from it's shackles with the demise of the Motion Picture Production Code, producers and  directors were free to exploit that freedom. Noirs went beyond simple crime stories and began to delve into areas that explored the dark side of the mind and human relationships, sex, fantasy, science fiction, madness, horror. The films that kept the visual components of Film Noir, it's basic DNA, so to speak are the Transitional Noirs.

Supernatural and fantasy based Noir have been around since the beginning. During the Classic Film Noir Era films like Alias Nick Beal (1949), Repeat Performance (1947), The Amazing Mr. X (1948), Fear in the Night (1947), The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948), Nightmare (1956), covered roughly the same territory, there are probably a few more. You can possibly even include It's a Wonderful Life (1946) for the Noir-ish sequence "Potterville" and Val Lewton's The Seventh Victim (1943). David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997) practically covers the same type of territory but without the Judeo-Christian iconography.

Television in the 1950s was seriously syphoning off the crime based stories (along with familiar "B" unit actors) from Hollywood and a lot of the shows they produced were quite Noir-ish, Naked City, Mike Hammer, Johnny Staccato, Peter Gunn, etc., etc.. Television also, like film, was keeping the stylistic Noir components but bending and twisting it in new ways. It "tuned" noir but it wasn't necessarily always about crime, Alfred Hitchcock Presents was one the original Noir-ish anthology series, others were Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, One Step Beyond. 

Carnival Of Souls I saw as a kid. I was probably about 12 or 13 years old. It was on late night TV, one of New York City's local channels, WNEW, WPIX, WOR, which I couldn't tell you, probably in the mid 60's. It "tuned." It was one of those films that can really creep you out and I've never forgot it.  It fit right in with The Twilight Zone. If you are a Aficionoirdo or a Noirista and a first time watcher and have no idea what it's about at first it may also "tune" Noir for you.

Stylistic rippling title effect

It's a stylish mood piece that builds an impending dread to the accompanying eerie cacophony of demented organ music. The style is even evident in the titles.

wanna race?

A young woman Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) is cruising up and down the main drag of Lawrence, Kansas, with two of her friends (Sharon Scoville and Mary Ann Harris) in a 1949 Chevrolet Fleetline Special. It's what you do for fun in these little hick towns. A guy (Larry Sneegas) and his buddy driving a souped up 1935 Chevrolet Master De Luxe, challengers them to a race.

Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss)

Battle of the Chevys  a1949 Fleetline Special left vs. 1939  Master De Lux right.

The girls accept. They race out of town. At the one lane bridge over the runoff swollen Kaw River they go head to head across. The De Lux crowds the Fleetline. The Fleetline swerves against the wooden bridge rail, she catches a tire. The car breaks through and drops into the drink. It sinks. The police come. A crowd gatherers, Grapple hooks are tossed in the river.

A cry is heard the crowd on the bridge runs to one of the mid river abutments. A woman is seen struggling in the silt of the built up bar behind the abutment. It's Mary Henry she has escaped from the submerged car. Mary is in shock and disoriented.

Mary, dazed and confused

Mary was an organist and apparently test-played the pipe organs manufactured at the Reuter Organ Company in Lawrence (still to this day). She had been hired as a church organist in Utah and once recovered from the shock of the accident, decides to drive straight through to Utah. Before she hits the road in her 1961 Chevrolet Impala she stops on the bridge over the Kaw River. They are still dragging the river for the wreck and the bodies of the other two girls.

Kaw River

interior '61 Chevy Impala

Mary heads West. It's about a sixteen-seventeen hour 1,100 mile trip. While driving at dusk, Mary begins to suffer perhaps the effects of post traumatic stress. Or is she tired and just hallucinating?

She starts to see things, a strange pasty faced man (director Herk Harvey) looking in her side window or just her reflection? Her radio emits erie expressionistic organ music.  She changes channels but they are all playing the same tune. Suddenly the man appears in the road in front of her, she swerves and goes off the road. Did she just fall asleep at the wheel and drove off the embankment?

The Saltair Pavilion

She puts the car in reverse and backs back onto the highway. Near the end of her trip she passes, on the horizon a large pavilion it seems to draw her attention. In Salt Lake City she asks a gas station attendant about the pavilion. He tells her it was a dance hall and and an amusement park at one time. She also asks for directions to her boarding house.

Mary and landlady Mrs, Thomas (Frances Feist)

At the boarding house she rents a room from Mrs. Thomas (Frances Feist) and meets her sleazy peeping tom neighbor John Linden (Sidney Berger). John wants to play hide the sausage with Mary but Mary wants no part of him. That evening, Mary begins seeing the pasty faced man again but no one else does.

Mary and John Linden (Sidney Berger)

a peeping John

Soon, Mary begins to have disorienting phases where she seems to pass into another dimension, she is invisible and inaudible to the world. Nobody sees her and nobody hears her. It's as if she doesn't exist. One phase happens in a department store. The phases begin when the world seems to ripple like the surface of water. Mary wanders around in silence. I noticed this last go round that she comes back to the world whenever she touches a branch of a tree.

At this point the image ripples like water and all goes silent one of her phases begins.

She's invisible in a world of silence

The phase out ends when she touches the tree branch and hears birds sing

Mary's job as the organist goes South when during one of her phases in a trance like state, she switches from playing an inspirational hymn, to some eerie discordant dirge. The minister requests her resignation.

Mary warms abit, out of necessity, to Linden because now she is genuinely afraid of being alone, she agrees to go out on a date. When they return to the boarding house  she lets Linden into her room. Linden thinks that maybe he'll soon be rounding the bases. However, Mary sees the pasty faced man in the mirror and cracks up. Linden thinks she's insane. After another hallucinatory sequence she is uncontrollably and mysteriously drawn back to the deserted pavillion on the lake.

Noirsville  

the race

The old  Reuter Organ Company building in Lawrence, Kansas

You have the Noir stylistic cinematography, an alienated and obsessed character, with a bizarre denouement of sorts at a sensational location.

So much was done with so little. The budget was $17,000. It's like an expanded, artistically well made Twilight Zone Episode.  I've always liked it for its subtle eeriness, it's cinematography, its mostly amateure actors and its use of rural Kansas and isolated pavilion at Saltair, Utah.

Everybody should see this especially the Criterion pristine DVD release with the added scenes. 9/10