Carnival of Souls

In Kansas, Mary Henry is riding in a car with two other young women when two men challenge them to a road race. During the race, the women's car is nudged by the boys' car and plunges off a bridge into a muddy river. Three hours after the police start dredging the water to look for them, Mary miraculously surfaces on the river bank, but cannot remember how she survived. Mary moves to Salt Lake City, where she has been hired as a church organist. While driving near an abandoned pavilion on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, Mary begins experiencing visions of a ghoulish, pale-faced figure (referred to as "The Man" in the credits). A gas station attendant tells her the pavilion was first a bathhouse, then a dance hall, and finally a carnival before it was abandoned. In town, Mary rents a room and visits the church where she will be playing the organ. Mary takes a ride out to the pavilion at the lake with the church's minister who stops her from entering, warning that it is against the law. Mary continues experiencing visions of The Man and also rejects the repeated advances of John, a socially awkward neighboring lodger. Mary goes to the pavilion by herself to investigate but does not find anything. Later, Mary begins experiencing terrifying interludes when she becomes invisible and inaudible to the rest of the world, as if she were not there. During one of these episodes, Mary meets Dr. Samuels, who offers to help her while acknowledging he is not a psychiatrist. Mary returns to the church by herself to practice the organ and finds herself shifting from a hymn to eerie music. In a trance, she sees visions of The Man and other ghouls dancing at the pavilion. The minister, hearing the strange music, denounces it as sacrilege and insists that Mary resign. That night, Mary accompanies John to a bar. Terrified of being alone with her nightmares, Mary tells John she wants his company, although he has little sympathy for her obvious distress and is only interested in sleeping with her. When they return home, John tries to convince Mary to let him stay the night; however, Mary becomes hysterical when she sees The Man in the mirror. John leaves, believing Mary to be insane. The following morning, after moving out of the boarding house, Mary returns to the pavilion where she encounters The Man and his fellow ghouls. She tries frantically to escape, but the locals do not acknowledge her and she only encounters more ghouls until she wakes up, revealing the previous scene to be merely a nightmare. She is later drawn back to the pavilion once again, where she finds the ghouls dancing, with a ghoul version of herself paired with The Man. She tries to run away but is chased by the ghouls onto the beach, where she collapses as they close in. The following day, Dr. Samuels, the minister, and the police go to the pavilion to look for Mary. They find her footprints but note that she has otherwise vanished. Back in Kansas, the submerged car is finally pulled from the river. Mary's body is seen in the front seat alongside the other two women. ==Cast==

Development in Salt Lake City, Utah Harvey was a director and producer of industrial and educational films based in Lawrence, Kansas, where he worked for the Centron Corporation. While returning to Kansas after shooting a Centron film in California, Harvey developed the idea for Carnival of Souls after driving past the abandoned Saltair Pavilion in Salt Lake City. "When I got back to Lawrence, I asked my friend and co-worker at Centron Films, John Clifford, who was a writer there, how he'd like to write a feature," Harvey recalled. "The last scene, I told him, had to be a whole bunch of ghouls dancing in that ballroom; the rest was up to him. He wrote it in three weeks." after taking three weeks off from his job at Centron in order to direct the film, and starting with an initial production budget of $17,000. He raised the $17,000 cash budget by asking local businessmen if they were willing to invest $500 in his production. The other $13,000 of the total $30,000 budget was deferred. Harvey was able to secure the rental of the Saltair Pavilion for $50, and several other scenes, such as the scene featuring Mary in the department store, were shot guerrilla style, with Harvey paying off locals to allow the crew to quickly film. The shot in which the face of The Man appears in the car window was accomplished through the use of an angled mirror placed on the far side of the window. The scene at the start of the film in which the car goes off the bridge and into the river was filmed in Lecompton, Kansas. The town did not charge a fee for the use of the bridge, only requiring the film crew to replace the bridge's damaged rails once they were done filming. This was done, at a cost of $12 for the repair. Musical score Carnival of Souls features an original organ score by local Kansas City organist and composer Gene Moore. Film and music scholar Julie Brown comments on the score, noting: "The organ is one of the spectral presences in Carnival of Souls, summoning up, or being summoned up by, the various allusions in the film to cinema's past." Screenwriter John Clifford has stated that the locations Harvey chose for the film (particularly the Saltair Pavilion, and the grand church organ) influenced the decision to use an organ score. The onscreen depiction of the organ played by Mary was implemented by Harvey to add to the film's "Gothic look." An original soundtrack album for Carnival of Souls was released in 1988, featuring Gene Moore's original musical score. In 2023, Waxwork Records licensed the soundtrack rights from Peter Soby and Matthew Irvine and released Carnival of Souls as part of the Rob Zombie Presents soundtrack series. It was pressed on colored vinyl and housed in special packaging featuring artwork by Graham Humphreys. ==Release==

Carnival of Souls had its world premiere at the Granada Theatre in Lawrence, Kansas, on September 26, 1962. While the US release of Carnival of Souls failed to include a copyright on the prints, automatically placing them in the public domain, the foreign release marketed by Walter Manley did contain a copyright card and was protected for overseas sales. The 35 mm theatrical prints were cut by Herz-Lion to 78 minutes, which trimmed the camera original. However, the 16 mm television copies were printed complete and individually cut by each station to fit their time slot, which is why they vary in length. WOR-TV in New York City used to broadcast the film intact in a late-night time slot in the 1960s. The scenes cut by the theatrical distributor include a scene where Mary stops at a gas station and discusses the carnival building with the attendant, a longer dialogue sequence between the organ factory boss and a carpenter, and an extra scene where the doctor talks to the landlady. In 1989, the film was screened at festivals across Europe and the United States, affording it renewed public interest, and it has subsequently appeared at numerous Halloween film festivals. Prints of Carnival of Souls vary in length, from 78 minutes in the theatrical release to 84 minutes in the original cut. While some sources have erroneously listed the film at a 91-minute-runtime, Michael Weldon stated in The Psychotronic Video Guide to Film that the original theatrical cut of the film ran approximately 80 minutes. He also stated that the director's cut, which runs 84 minutes, is "the best and most complete version we'll ever see." Reception and legacy Carnival of Souls went largely unnoticed by critics upon its initial release and received "delayed acclaim" in the ensuing decades, Leonard Maltin gave Carnival of Souls a score of two-and-a-half out of four stars, calling the film an "eerie" and "imaginative low budget effort." Critic Roger Ebert likened the film to a "lost episode of The Twilight Zone," and noted that it possessed an "intriguing power." Joe Brown of The Washington Post remarked upon the film's cinematography, writing: "Harvey's camerawork gives a new twist to the word 'deadpan,' making the most mundane places and people imaginable seem like ghastly hallucinations, and the director shows a flair for elegantly employing existing locations and lighting for maximum disorientation value." Stephen Holden of The New York Times saw the 1989 screening at the Fantasy Festival and wrote: "What has earned Carnival of Souls its reputation is the director's knack for building a mood of fatalistic angst." The Los Angeles Times Peter Rainer perceived the film's cinematography to be inconsistent in merit, called the acting "fairly amateurish" with "a one-take-only quality", and noted the "inept post-dubbing"; however, he concluded that "these rinky-dink elements only add to the horror." TV Guide gave Carnival of Souls a score of three stars out of four, praising the film's atmosphere, acting, and eerie score, calling it, "A chilling ghost story with artistic pretensions." Film Reel.com gave Carnival of Souls a positive review, praising the film's atmosphere, slow-building tension, and disturbing visuals. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 87% based on , with a rating average of 7.2/10. The site's consensus states that the film "offers delightfully chilling proof that when it comes to telling an effective horror story, less can often be much, much more". Carnival of Souls has gradually developed a cult following since its release and is now considered a low-budget classic. Slant Magazine placed the film at number 32 on its "100 Best Horror Movies of All Time". Paste magazine ranked the film at number 85 on its list of "100 Best Horror Movies of All Time". Rights Although some believe that Carnival of Souls is in the public domain, the original filmmakers received official copyright status on the film in 1987 in the names of Harold Harvey and John W. Clifford. This was done under copyright registration number PAO1-230-677, in the Office of the United States Register of Copyrights in Washington, D.C. John W. Clifford also has a copyright on his original unpublished screenplay manuscript (copyright # PAU2-064-013). Clifford and Harvey were legally able to copyright their film because the original distributor, Harcourt Productions, never filed for copyright in 1962. The film, including the original negative and a handful of surviving prints and outtakes, were purchased from the filmmakers, along with all rights, by Peter Soby and Matthew Irvine of Chicago West Entertainment in January 1997. Home media Carnival of Souls has been released in a significant number of formats through numerous distributors, which, according to film scholars Chris Vander Kaay and Kathleen Fernandez-Vander Kaay, has ensured it "a constant presence in the video market and [contributed to] its enduring cult popularity." The Criterion Collection licensed the official copyright version of the film from Peter Soby and Matthew Irvine and issued a 2-disc DVD set of the film in 2000, featuring both a 78-minute theatrical version and an extended 84-minute director's cut. In 2009, Legend Films released the film on DVD featuring both the black-and-white and a colorized version of the directors cut, including an audio commentary track by comedian Michael J. Nelson, a former writer and host of Mystery Science Theater 3000. In 2016, the Criterion Collection reissued the film on DVD, as well as premiering it on Blu-ray, featuring a new restoration. In 2012, the Academy Film Archive restored Carnival of Souls alongside Peter Soby and Matthew Irvine. They also keep the original negatives stored in their facilities. The film has been named as a precursor to the works of various filmmakers, including David Lynch, George A. Romero, Lucrecia Martel and James Wan. The film was used for a RiffTrax Live event in October 2016, where former Mystery Science Theater 3000 cast members Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy and Michael J. Nelson riffed the film for a live audience and broadcast to other theaters through NCM Fathom. Rifftrax's website offers the video downloads of the live performance as well as a studio-recorded riff of the film. A novelization of the film titled Nightmare Pavilion, written by Andrew J. Rausch, was released by Happy Cloud Media in October 2020. Carnival of Souls (1998) Producer Peter Soby negotiated the rights to the title from Herk Harvey and John Clifford, resulting in the 1998 version of Carnival of Souls (also known as Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls). Not a remake, it shares little in common with the original film, apart from a similar ending. Sidney Berger, who appears in the original film as John Linden, appears in a cameo in the later film. ==See also==