Day: October 7, 2008

Hulu.com offers this 1962 "I see dead people" film shot in two locations: Lawrence, Kansas and an abandoned amusement park outside Salt Lake City. Part of the eerieness stems from the disjunction between the settings. The stately but decrepit funland next to a dead lake pulls the main character, a woman who seems to be slowly going crazy, away from the structure and safety of prosperous mid '60s Middle America. At the same time it pulls the viewer, like an entropic dark star magnet. The energy is reversible--Lawrence KS comes more and more to seem like a dead, alienating place full of shuffling sleepwalkers. It is a dream film, beautifully shot, edited and scored.

IMDb on director Herk Harvey:

(after being asked if he was happy that "Carnival of Souls" was his claim to fame): "I have to say yes and no. When you work someplace for thirty-five years making educational and industrial films, and the one feature that you make is really what you're known for---a film on which you spent a total of maybe five weeks---that to me doesn't seem right. Some of the things I'm much more proud of, we did in the industrial area. We shot hour-long films in two days, musicals with people like Eddie Albert and Ed Ames and so on. Some of those with skits and original music and all that, are really kind of interesting. And I think that many of the other films that we made in the educational and industrial area really had something to say. Yet, as you say, I'm known for 'Carnival of Souls.'" (1990)

Note that Harvey's marriage of ten years ended a year before this film--and it was the only time he left the comfort and routine of his day job to make an "indie." Don't know if it it's fair to draw any conclusions from that. The human characters are notably dark, such as the protagonist's fellow boarder who spikes his morning coffee with booze and hits on her relentlessly.

1979 magazine cover from www.computerhistory.org via cpb