Carnival of Souls

March 22 · Regal Riviera · 10:00 P.M.

Herk Harvey, 1962, 78 minutes

“Unlike most of today’s horror movies, Carnival of Souls has few special effects – some wavy lines as we pass through various levels of existence, and that’s it. Instead, it depends on crisp black-and-white photography, atmosphere and surprisingly effective acting.” — Roger Ebert

“Carnival of Souls is a creditable can of film considering it was put together for less than $100,000.” — Variety review from 1962

Lawrence, Kanasas-based filmmaker Herk Harvey (1924-1996) worked for the Centron Corporation for over thirty years, producing hundreds of educational and industrial shorts. Then, in 1961, working with a crew of five other filmmakers drawn from Centron’s ranks, Harvey produced Carnival of Souls, a $30,000 horror film shot in Lawrence and Salt Lake City, Utah.

The lone survivor of a drag race accident in Kansas relocates to Salt Lake City to take a job as a church organist. It’s not long before she begins to be tormented by apparitions, which ultimately draw her to a deserted carnival. The dreamlike plot synopsis (think David Lynch before David Lynch), doesn’t do justice to the film, which overcomes its low-budget limitations with a rich, haunting atmosphere thanks to Maurice Prather’s Jean Cocteau-inspired cinematography and Gene Moore’s moody organ score.

Herk Harvey never made another feature film due to the film’s financial failure. The film’s distributor went out of business and the film’s copyright was not properly registered. As such, Carnival of Souls was barely seen on release and all-but-forgotten for nearly thirty years. Its rediscovery in the late 1980s, subsequent restoration, and inclusion in the Criterion Collection cumulatively led to the film’s appreciation as one of the key early works of independently produced horror in America.

Herk Harvey is now mentioned in the same conversation with those other directors of great, one-off directorial efforts — filmmakers like Charles Laughton (The Night of the Hunter), Barbara Loden (Wanda) and Leonard Kastle (The Honeymoon Killers).