Why “Carnival Of Souls” (1962) Is Still Scary

Well, since I’m still in the mood for writing about the horror genre, I thought that I’d talk about why Herk Harvey’s 1962 horror film “Carnival Of Souls” is still scary.

This was a film which I watched on DVD (because, unlike in the US, it isn’t public domain in the UK) back in mid-January. Given that the film was in black & white and given that – even just from a plot summary – I could guess the plot twist, I wasn’t expecting anything too scary. Yet, the film was still genuinely unsettling to watch. Why?

This article will contain MAJOR PLOT SPOILERS.

Set in the US, the film begins in Kansas and focuses on a woman called Mary (Candace Hilligoss) who is the sole survivor of a car accident. After the accident, she decides to take a job in Utah as a church organist. However, she finds herself haunted by visions of a creepy-looking man…

Again, the main twist of this film is probably something you’ve already guessed. It has been over-used in all manner of horror media. In fact, plot twists of this type even go back as far as at least the late 19th century. Still, in case you’re unfamiliar with the horror genre, the twist is that Mary actually died in the accident and everything afterwards was either an afterlife or a dying hallucination.

But this isn’t what makes this film scary even when watched today. And, whilst the departed souls that haunt Mary are certainly disturbing – often taking cues from 1920s German expressionist films – even they aren’t what make this film so unsettling.

No, a lot of the real horror in the film is much more subtle. Whilst we don’t get to see much of what Mary was like before the accident, she’s seen by the other characters as being a very emotionally “cold” character. Whilst this would be an understandable reaction to what has happened to her and/or to the terrifying visions she’s experiencing, there’s also a deep undercurrent of loneliness and alienation running throughout the film.

Other characters are either jovially polite towards her, make creepy romantic advances towards her, disapprove of her, question her sanity or just outright ignore her. Yes, the last one of these is mostly there are a way of foreshadowing that she’s actually the “ghost” here, but the fact remains that – aside from her former friends (who didn’t “survive” the beginning of the film) – there are literally no characters who she truly feels at ease around.

No genuine friendship or anything like that. Everyone either politely tolerates her or is subtly hostile towards her in some way. And, given that we see the film from her perspective, this is a surprisingly chilling and effective way of creating a feeling of loneliness and alienation.

Likewise, the film also hints that she doesn’t really fit into the staid world of early 1960s America (which seems more like the 1950s...) either.

Despite being a church organist, it is implied that she doesn’t really follow the religion and even gets fired from working at the church after accidentally playing carnival music on the organ. And, understandably, she has absolutely zero interest in romantic relationships either. Given how much mainstream society at the time obsessed about things like religion and relationships, she’s very much presented as an “outsider” character. A proto-“Daria“, if you will.

Yet, there’s little to none of the “counterculture” of the later 1960s in this film. None of the ironic “alternative” sarcasm of the 1990s either. She’s ahead of her time, a modern character stranded in what is basically the stuffy, formal 1950s in all but name. And, if you’re someone who doesn’t really “fit in”, then this old horror film will probably be more relatable than you might think.

Yes, the ghoulish apparitions add more overt scares to the film but these scenes only really “work” as well as they do because of the atmosphere of alienation and loneliness. You get the sense that, even if Mary wasn’t in some sort of strange afterlife, she’d probably still feel incredibly lonely and out of place in the world around her. She’d still feel like a ghost, like she’s somewhere which makes no sense or which just feels confusing, hostile or meaningless in some way. The sort of place where emotionless “coldness” is the only rational response.

All of this stuff is fairly subtle, but it is what makes the film’s horror elements stand up so well decades later. It’s a film about loneliness and alienation, about being trapped in a culture which you don’t fit into. And, for a low-budget horror movie made in Kansas and Utah over sixty years ago, not only is the main character incredibly well-written but the film is also ahead of its time too.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂