HALLOWEEN HORROR DAYS ~ DAY 3: CARNIVAL OF SOULS

This film gets the Criterion Collection stamp of approval. That alone is what stirred my curiosity for the 1962 film CARNIVAL OF SOULS. It's not always a 100% guarantee that if it's in the Criterion Collection that it's gold but in this case I agree. When I saw Herk Harvey's beautiful black and white film I was shown eerie creatures and haunting imagery. I bought the movie on DVD and have since watched it numerous times and never has it lost its effect.

SPOILER ALERT
Mary Henry and two of her friends careen over the side of a bridge in her friend's car and plummet into the river below. The authorities and townsfolk combine their efforts to dredge the riverbed in hopes of finding the car and its presumed dead occupants. Out of knowhere Mary rises from the murky water covered in mud and white as a sheet. She can't explain how she escaped nor the fate of her two friends.

Mary, still in shock, decides to leave town and put the awful memory behind her. She drives through the night. She sees a ghostly white man in suit standing in the road in the dead of nigh, a grim smile upon his face. She swerves into the ditch. She looks out onto the road finding no trace of the man. She pulls out of the ditch and continues on toward town. Just outside of her destination, off in the distance, looms an abandon pavilion.

Mary arrives at the boarding house, purchases a room, sets up a job as a church organist, and starts seeing the man across the hall. But Mary feels apart from these people, detached. She doesn't share their values and doesn't feel she belongs. She experiences frightening moments where all sound disappears but hers. No one seems to see her nor hear her, as if she didn't exist. But always she sees the ghostly man in the suit with the ghoulish smile. And for some reason she feels the need to go to the abandoned pavilion.

Hounded by the man in the suit, tortured by the moments of non-existence, Mary breaksdown and heads for the pavilion. There she sees a large group of people dancing amidst the ruins. Each of their faces is faded and worn. Their eyes are wide and emotionless. Their skin chalk white and sunken. She sees herself dancing with them, appearing just like them. They turn and see her. They chase her out back into the marsh laughing and howling. She falls and they descend upon her.

The authorities come looking for her. They find her tracks into the marshes but then the tracks simply end. No body. Back home they finally find the car in the river, three bodies inside.

The film is subtle. At first glance its not much. But by the end the scenes of the ghouls dancing in the pavilion as disturbing and genuinely creepy. It's a ghost story about a person who doesn't realize they're already dead. The man in the suit who appears frequently throughout the film is portrayed by the director himself and proves to be an ominous and spooky character. The dark twist ending too is worth it. For all it's subtleties the movie stands out among the rest.

I'll also say that the DVD from Criterion is really good. The transfer is clear and the audio is crisp. There are two versions of the film, the original theatrical cut and the director's extended cut. Audio commentary for the extended version, trailers, essays, and interviews fill out the extras. A superb package. This film happens to be in public domain too so there are more affordable editions out there if you balk at the steep Criterion Collection price (it's always worth it though ;)

Overall Ranking: 7 out of 10
Nude-O-Meter: 1 out of 10