Sunday, November 4, 2007

Carnival of Souls

     This movie made such a huge impact on me. I just couldn't get it out of my head for the longest time, because it is just so haunting and so completely unnerving, but in such a subtle way. The story it tells gets into your head and makes you question everything you may have believed about life and death. For this reason alone, I hold this film in higher regard than I do most cult films because it isn't just some campy piece of shit filled with bad sets and terrible acting, it's really a true work of art. 

     Mary Henry is in a car with two other women when another car full of guys pulls up next to them and wants to drag race.  Mary isn't the driver and doesn't look too happy about the proposition, but the driver in her car is eager to accept the challenge.  While going over a bridge, the car full of guys hits them from the side, causing the car Mary is in to have an accident and fall into the river below. Later we see Mary crawling onto the shore soaking wet where she is met by police and paramedics, She's asked about the other women but she doesn't seem to remember. 

     Ever since the accident though, her life seems somewhat altered. We assume she's just mildly traumatized from the crash.  Mary is a paid organist who has decided to make a new start after the accident by relocating to Utah and taking a job as the organist for the local church. She's a very cold individual, very much a loner, and doesn't seem to have much emotion for anything.  Even though she is an organist who plays for a church, she is devoid of any religious views and regards her job at the church as nothing more than just a job.  Since the accident, she also seems to be haunted by an eerie pale-faced man with dark eyes who appears to be following her and she almost has an accident while driving to Utah when she sees him peering through her car window. Also along the way to Utah, she passes the Great Salt Lake and sees a desolate pavilion out in the distance.  Mary becomes more than a little obsessed with this old pavilion on the lake and thinks about it often. 

     Mary checks into a boarding house once she reaches town and soon even stranger events begin to happen. There are times when it seems that no one can hear or even see Mary and won't react to her in any way despite her desperate attempts to be noticed.  During these episodes, the only sound that can be heard is the spooky organ music that is almost a character in itself and is present throughout most of the movie.  

     Mary continues to be haunted by the pale-faced man and is sure that he's been following her since she left for Utah.  After a few incidents where she seems to be unable to be seen or heard and starts to feel as though she has no place in the world and is becoming more and more frightened by this creepy man that she's sure is stalking her, she finally sets out to solve the strange events that now plague her constantly. 

      Believing that the answer somehow lies in the old pavilion on the lake, she goes there and faces the ghostly truth behind her own existence. Once there, she sees more pale-faced people, coming out of the water and dancing.  She then envisions herself dancing with the pale-faced man that she has been seeing everywhere and we notice that she also has a pale face and dark eyes just like he and all the other people there have. She screams and they all begin to chase her.  She runs out to the shore and collapses in the sand as their corpse-white hands surround her.  

     Afterward, we see police examining a set of footprints on the beach that mysteriously stop right where Mary had collapsed.  We then witness the police pulling a car out of the water with three deceased girls in it...and one of them is Mary.  Apparently, along with the other women in the car that had crashed and landed in the river, Mary had drowned.  She's been dead this whole time.  This explains why she is sometimes not able to be seen or heard and might suggest that the pale-faced man is some kind of collector of souls or maybe even death itself.

     After watching the movie, some may say that there's an awful lot of easy-to-understand symbolism in it, but a great story nonetheless.  Frankly, I found this ending to be very unexpected and when you realize what's taken place, it forces you to take it all in at once, creating a lot of built-up tension that the movie has achieved to be internalized in one single moment.  I don't know if the filmmakers knew how emotionally invasive this movie was gonna be, but that's how it felt, and it sticks with you, just like really fine art does.

     Candace Hilligoss who plays Mary Henry is an actress who has the ability to seem cold as ice, even when she smiles, quite appropriate for someone who is basically playing a dead person. As far as I can tell though she didn't do much else as far as acting goes which is a shame because she was wonderful at it.  This true classic was made on a shoestring budget but was still an instant hit, and has gone on to gather followers of the cult for years. I can still hear the creepy organ music that permeates the film like the stench of death and becomes a character of the movie just as much as the main actress herself.  Carnival of Souls has since been restored and colorized by Off Color Films, who did an excellent job, but it's the black-and-white version that really has the more haunting impact. Both versions are now available on YouTube.  This movie makes a great conversation piece, due to the different ways the symbolism can be interpreted. Was Mary a ghost when she could see people but they couldn't see her?  Were the people that could see her dead as well?  And who exactly was the pale-faced man, Death personified?  A wonderfully artful film that reaches inside you and possibly makes you question your own belief in the soul.

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