Carnival of Souls

“Carnival of Souls” (1962, Herk Harvey)

Driving back from California, Herk Harvey passed the Saltair pavilion on the south shore of the Great Salt Lake. A great wooden Moorish structure rising out of the lake resting on over 2000 pilings and deserted. Harvey drove back to Kansas and conceived the idea for a film that had to involve the pavilion he’d seen. Herk Harvey directed the 1962 release “Carnival of Souls” and created one of the more memorable films in the horror genre. Fantastic haunting images are fluid throughout the film, coupled with an ever so prescient soundtrack of eerie organ music. It is a must see for any horror fan.

A car with three youngsters is challenged to and accepts a drag race with another car of youngsters. The race results in one car getting nudged off of a bridge and into the river below. Somehow, sometime later, one woman emerges from the water. Professional church organist, Mary Henry tries to move on with her life post-crash and accepts a job at a church in Utah. She is immediately haunted by a well-dressed man with a white face and black around his eyes, a sort of raccoon zombie. She also feel the need to travel to the Saltair pavilion to explore a connection between the man and this strange place. What follows is a different, if not original, ‘I see dead people’ trip. Scenes of Mary rising out of the water, Saltair rising out of the water, and the dead people rising out of the lake before staging a ballroom dance inside the building are examples of the remarkably strange aura this film emits. It’s as if the film is able to slowly seep out fog into the unlit room we’re watching the film in. A silent film without being silent.

Herk Harvey returned to the world of commercial and industrial films he had resided in pre-“Carnival of Souls” afterwards. None of the actors in the film own an impressive, to say the least, resume. Worlds collided and stars aligned to make this truly independent film and it stands out. The filmmaking is great. The acting kind of sucks but perhaps that is what adds to the quality. Or it’s the inherent strangeness of the characters the actors play that elicits a display of ‘poor’ acting ability. However, Herk Harvey stumbled upon something when he saw the awesome Saltair pavilion rising out a desert lake. Once billed as ‘a mile out in the Great Salt Lake,’ according to a 1920s Saltair brochure, and deserted by the late 50’s, this place deserved a starring role in a creepy picture and got it.