Carnival of Souls (1962 Independent Horror film)

Carnival of Souls is a 1962 American independent horror film produced and directed by Herk Harvey and written by John Clifford from a story by Clifford and Harvey and starring Candace Hilligoss.Show more

Its plot follows Mary Henry, a young woman whose life is disturbed after a car accident. She relocates to a new city, where she finds herself unable to assimilate with the locals and becomes drawn to the pavilion of an abandoned carnival. Director Harvey also appears in the film as a ghoulish stranger who stalks her throughout. The film is set to an organ score by Gene Moore.

Filmed in Lawrence, Kansas, and Salt Lake City, Carnival of Souls was shot on a budget of $33,000, and Harvey employed various guerrilla filmmaking techniques to finish the production. It was Harvey's only feature film and did not gain widespread attention when originally released as a double feature with the now mostly forgotten The Devil's Messenger in 1962.

Since the 1980s, the film has been noted by critics and film scholars for its cinematography and foreboding atmosphere. The film has a large cult following and is occasionally screened at film and Halloween festivals. The film's plot resembles that of Ambrose Bierce's 1890 story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

Plot
In Kansas, Mary Henry is riding in a car with two other young women when two men challenge them to a road race. During the race, the women's car is nudged by the boys’ and plunges off a bridge into a muddy river. Three hours after the police start dredging the water to look for them, Mary miraculously surfaces on the riverbank, but cannot remember how she survived.

Cast
Candace Hilligoss as Mary Henry
Frances Feist as Mrs. Thomas
Sidney Berger as John Linden
Art Ellison as Minister
Stan Levitt as Dr. Samuels
Tom McGinnis as Organ factory boss
Forbes Caldwell as Organ factory worker
Dan Palmquist as Gas station attendant
Bill De Jarnette as Mechanic
Steve Boozer as Chip
Pamela Ballard as Dress saleslady
Herk Harvey as "The Man" (the main ghoul)

Production/Development
Harvey was a director and producer of industrial and educational films based in Lawrence, Kansas, where he worked for the Centron Corporation. While returning to Kansas after shooting a Centron film in California, Harvey developed the idea for Carnival of Souls after driving past the abandoned Saltair Pavilion in Salt Lake City. "When I got back to Lawrence, I asked my friend and co-worker at Centron Films, John Clifford, who was a writer there, how he'd like to write a feature," Harvey recalled. "The last scene, I told him, had to be a whole bunch of ghouls dancing in that ballroom; the rest was up to him. He wrote it in three weeks."

Casting
In New York City, Harvey discovered then-twenty-year-old actress Candace Hilligoss, who had trained with Lee Strasberg, and cast her in the lead role of Mary Henry. Hilligoss had been offered a role in the Richard Hilliard-directed horror film Violent Midnight (1963) but opted for the role in Carnival of Souls.[8] She stated that at the time, she took the role as a "take-the-money-and-run type of situation"; she was paid approximately $2,000 for her work in the film.

Filming
Harvey shot Carnival of Souls in three weeks on location in Lawrence and Salt Lake City, after taking three weeks off from his job at Centron in order to direct the film,[6] and starting with an initial production budget of $17,000.[6] He raised the $17,000 cash budget by asking local businessmen if they were willing to invest $500 in his production. The other $13,000 of the total $30,000 budget was deferred. Harvey was able to secure the rental of the Saltair Pavilion for $50, and several other scenes, such as the scene featuring Mary in the department store, were shot guerrilla style, with Harvey paying off locals to allow the crew to quickly film. Hilligoss described the filming process as brisk, with the cast and crew working seven days a week.

Musical score
Carnival of Souls features an original organ score by local Kansas City organist and composer Gene Moore. Film and music scholar Julie Brown comments on the score, noting: "The organ is one of the spectral presences in Carnival of Souls, summoning up, or being summoned up by, the various allusions in the film to cinema's past.