Watched Carnival of Souls the other day – really ace film – although the transfer was pants since it was from an extra-cheap pre-Criterion DVD.
Anyway, I spotted something very odd in my version which no one else seems to have noticed, which makes me wonder if I’m going mad.
It happens when our heroine goes into the changing room to take off her black dress. Everything goes wobbly and freaky – this is just before she goes into the store and no one can hear or see her. Just as she’s looking in the mirror in the changing room, in the right-hand bottom of the screen, you can see the back of a head reflected in the mirror – probably that of the director/spooky zombie man who keeps on following her.
She’s meant to be alone in the room, so what is he doing there? She doesn’t react, so it’s not leading to a scary shot.
Anyone else spotted this? I’m not seeing ghoulies, am I?!
Lemme get this straight. You are remarking on a screwed up shot in a movie that was filmed in Lawrence, Kansas, in three weeks, for the princely sum of $17,000?
I haven’t spotted it, but I doubt it was there intentionally. When I was in high school a local theater did a revival of CoS, just after Harvey died. His wife and one of the producers was there, they all told stories about Herk and filming. They pointed out locations that are still around in Lawrence, trivia, etc. Nothing was said about that scene.
When I started film school, of course, there is a TON of info on Carnival of Souls all over the studio (now Oldfather Studios, previously Centron) and no one has ever mentioned that that scene was to be the first shot of “creepy guy”. I think it’s just a mixup. There wasn’t money for reshoots and in the original cut the sound is often not synced correctly (when all you hear is her footsteps in the city and the train station, they are NOT synced up, I don’t know if this is remedied in the Criterion Collection DVD).
INTERESTING. If it is a mistake (it’s not the first shot of the zombie guy, by the way) it’s an amazingly fortuitous mistake, because it makes the whole thing much more freaky, as if the guy’s making everything go wobbly but, in this instance, not choosing to show himself.
Do have a look next time you see the movie, it’ll freak you out when you see it.
IIRC, the magazine Cinefantastique said that the “ballroom scene” was filmed in the Saltair Pavilion outside Salt Lake City (Not the one currently there – the one that was destroyed in the 1960s).
By the way, if you want to see bloopers and outtakes from this movie (!!!) get a hold of Zackerley’s Horrible Horror
