Semiquincentennial Movie Project # 46: Carnival of Souls

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

Week #46: Utah -

 

 

 

 

The state of Utah was established on January 4, 1896 

Details about Utah:

State bird: California gull    

State flower: sego lily

State tree: blue spruce 

Additional historical trivia:

It's one of four states that intersect with each other. The other three are Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona (which this same trivia piece will appear...) 

 

The flag pictured above is one of those rarities of a recent change (much like Mississippi). It was changed in 2011. For most of it's existence the Utah state flag was different.

 

The John Wayne film The Conqueror was filmed near St. George. The film is infamously blamed for the high cancer rate of those involved in the filming, because of the nuclear testing that occurred nearby (not during filming, but it still gets blamed).

Utah is unique in the fact that it is the only state with an official State Cooking Pot. It's the Dutch oven.

Salt Lake City is the site where the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise opened. (Not the invention of it; that actually DID occur in Kentucky. Just the first place that was officially called KFC...) 

Famous people born in Utah: Hal Ashby (director of Being There, The Last Detail and Harold and Maude),  James Woods, Roseanne Barr, Donny and Marie Osmond, J. W. Marriott, Steve Young and Philo T. Farnsworth (supposed inventor of the television). Not surprisingly, so were many well known names in the Mormon Church.

 

 

 

Carnival of Souls (1962): 

Carnival of Souls is considered a landmark film. But it wasn't always that way. On it's release it went mostly unnoticed. The director, Herk Harvey, never made another theatrically released film. His primary output was those educational films that many people of a certain age remember seeing in high school health and social studies classes. Titles like Street Safety is Your Problem, Health: Your Posture, None for the Road and What About Juvenile Delinquency?, the kind of educational scare tactics films many of us growing up in the 60's and 70's would find familiar.

Carnival of Souls, more or less, was just an attempt by Harvey to prove to himself he could pull off a feature length film. The movie was made on such a micro budget that I think most of it just came from cadging local business into chipping in to pay the bills. Since it was filmed by a group based in Lawrence, Ks, it has a connection with some friends I have made in recent years, although it is supposedly set in Salt Lake City, Utah.  

Besides the director, virtually nobody in this film ever transitioned to a career in the film industry.  The star, Candace Hilligoss, had only 8 films to her IMDb credit. The woman that appears as Mrs. Thomas, Frances Feist, must have been friends with Harvey, because every other credit she had was as a character in one of his educational shorts. The sleazy neighbor, John Linden, was played by Sidney Berger, and his only credits were this and the remake of the film from 1989 (They remade this film...?)

The other major character in the film, the ghoul credited as only "The Man" was played by Harvey himself. Harvey made the film with a total of only 6 people behind the camera, which is why it only cost $30,000 to make. But that low budget cost is not necessarily an indication of the quality of the film. Sure it comes off as a cheap horror film, but like another film from the same era, Night of the Living Dead, the film is immensely intriguing to watch. Not because the actors are really any damn good. Hilligoss is the best part in that respect. The rest of the cast just seems to be going through the motions.

What really impresses and holds my attention with this film is the music. The music, done by a guy named Gene Moore, really captures the haunting feel of the film. The story is somewhat reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode, especially "The Hitch-hiker", which also involves a woman being haunted by a mysterious stranger who keeps showing up at odd moments.

The film starts off as three girls end up in a drag race with some boys, and their car ends up going off a rather decrepit bridge into a river. There is some sort of mumbo jumbo about the current probably taking that car far downstream, (although that river doesn't really appear to be moving fast enough to sail a paper boat...) 

Mary (Hilligoss) climbs out of the river, apparently the only survivor. She becomes increasingly isolated in her demeanor and decides to move on, away from town. 

She takes a job in Salt Lake City where she is going to be a hired church organist. (Don't most churches just get someone in the church to do that?) There are several little details like that that don't make much sense, but you have to go with it because the film refuses to explain any of these things.

 

Mary moves into a boarding house run by Mrs. Thomas (Feist), who has only one other tenant, the somewhat sleazy John (Berger). 

Early on John develops a rather intrusive obsession with Mary. Personally I would rather spend a few minutes with "The Man" than an hour with John. John wants Mary for basically one thing, and this being the early 60's, he doesn't come right out and say it, but it isn't really all that much of a secret.

 

Mary has problems. Psychologically she is somewhat of a recluse, whether this is a result of a guilt complex for being the only survivor of that car wreck or it's something else entirely is not really dwelt on. It might be because she doesn't have a clear grasp on reality. There is that nagging recurrent appearance of "The Man", whom no one but she sees. 

She also, at times finds herself drifting into some kind of fantasy, wherein she is physically in the world, but hears no sound and can not get anyone to respond to her and acknowledge her presence.

Some sites refer to this as a zombie movie, although my Frightfest Guide to Ghost Movies includes it as one of it's selection for "ghost movies". I leave it up to you, but my opinion is these things act much more like ghosts than zombies, even though on occasion they shuffle along like characters reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead, and in fact George A. Romero cites this movie as one of his inspirations for making that classic.

 

Of course, by the end of the film most everyone in the audience should be aware that she actually did NOT survive that car crash. What is not exactly clear is whether she is having these experiences in her own mind as she is dying or if, like in the classic Twilight Zone episode, she is dead but just hasn't come to grips with that fact and is wandering through a kind of afterlife.

This is one film that will stick with you long after you've finished watching it. It's an arthouse film without an arthouse aesthetic. You shouldn't come into it expecting something like Häxan or Eraserhead, but you shouldn't dismiss it as cheap low budget tripe either. 

Even though Hilligoss barely holds her own on some occasions, you can't help but feel some sympathy for what she is going through. In that sense she is like quite a number of characters in the aforementioned TZ episodes. For instance; most of the actors in the "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" episode of that series are really not all that good, but the situation and trials that the characters have to go through during it stir up emotions that otherwise might not have triggered any emotion.

I have not yet seen that remake from 1989. It apparently is no where close to being as good as the original, however. This version garners a 87% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and although it didn't get much attention on it's initial release, in retrospect it has become highly regarded. Two lists of the "greatest horror movies of all time" quoted in the wikipedia article on the film put it in the top 50. The Criterion company, which usually doesn't waste time with junk, has put out a DVD version, complete with an audio commentary by the writers and the director, and a documentary on the Saltair Resort, an abandoned resort where many of the scenes were filmed.

Until next time folks, drive safely. And it should go without saying... don't get suckered into a drag race, especially if part of the race involves going over a rickety bridge that should have been condemned when Eisenhower was still President...

 Quiggy