With the renewed interested in Gothic ghosts and monsters
that arrived on the tails of Famous
Monsters of Filmland and late-night TV spook show packages such as “Shock
Theater”, no-budget horror flicks really started crowding matinees and
drive-ins in the early sixties. Most of these movies have been forgotten by all
but the most hardcore horror hounds, but Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls continues to live beyond the grave because it
works on so many levels. At its most fundamental, it is a 78-minute “Twilight
Zone” episode complete with that series’ disquieting atmosphere, low-budget
makeup and twist ending (and let’s be honest, it basically is a remake of the
first-season episode “The Hitch-Hiker”). It also works on the delicious level
of so many early-sixties schlock shockers with its jazzy dialogue and stilted,
amateur-hour acting. However, Candace Hilligoss’s performance works so well
because the shaken, wide-eyed, freaked-out demeanor she adopts throughout the
entire picture heightens its low-key tension and two-clicks-south-of-reality
atmosphere. Maybe there’s actually some genuine method behind her portrayal of
a woman who starts seeing walking corpses after she walks away from a car
crash. She did study acting at NYC’s American Theater Wing and did her time on
the boards in a touring production of Idiot’s Delight. Whatever the case is, it
works.
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?
