Like so many B-horrors of its period, Carnival of Souls fell into the public domain, so bad, unrestored
prints have landed on many, many cheap VHS tapes and DVDs. Despite the film’s
easy availability, the prestigious Criterion Collection recognized that Carnival of Souls deserved better and
cleaned it up for release in 2000. Sixteen years later, Criterion has given the
film a 4k buffing for blu-ray, and it’s probably safe to say that it has never
looked so beautiful. Harvey made magical use of shadows and extreme lightness (Hilligoss’s pallor is second to none), and
his images are incredibly rich, deep, and clean on this new disc. Comparing it
to all of those washed-out, flecked-up budget releases makes it seem like a
completely different movie… even if watching a movie like this with washed-out,
flecked up picture does have a certain cheesy charm.
Criterion’s double-disc DVD from 2000 came with a bushel of
extras, and they’ve all been ported over to this 2016 upgrade. There is the
78-minute theatrical release and the 83-minute director’s cut, which includes a
few extended and exclusive shots, a scene featuring the minister who hires Hilligoss
to play organ in his church (creepy pipe organ music plays a co-starring role
in the film), an exclusive conversation between Hilligoss and her psychologist,
and a lot more material during the hoe down at the title carnival. A few shots
have also been slightly shortened. All of this makes for a better fleshed-out,
more fluid picture, though if you don’t have five minutes to spare or want to
recreate your own drive-in experiences faithfully, the shorter cut is the one
for you.
Also from the old disc are outtakes (scored with more of
Gene Moore’s haunting organ), a 1989 documentary that reunites the original
cast and crew (Harvey appears in the same blotchy pancake makeup he wore in the film as the specter of death. Awesome), a featurette on the carnival location, selected audio commentary
with Harvey and screenwriter John Clifford, a photo gallery, and six short
films Harvey helped make for the industrial film studio Centron.
New bonuses are a pair of video commentaries, one with movie
critic David Cairns and the other with comedian Dana Gould. The former actually
features several commentators (a critic, a screenwriter, a horror-comics artist)
and effectively captures the creepy ambience of the feature. We should also be
grateful for its total absence of boring talking-head shots. The latter is a
lot of fun, as the incredibly well informed Gould (though he does get the release year of Psycho wrong). He voices what it means to be a
Monster Kid, referring to movies such as these as “comfort food.” That is
exactly how I’ve always thought of them. I remember Gould working an imitation
of Ray Harryhausen’s Cyclops into one of his bits from the eighties. He clearly
loves this kind of stuff. How could he not?
