Playing drag and racing, a group of boys "accidentally" push another car off a bridge. The car, which had three girls in, quickly sinks and disappears into the river. Soon after the town people are at the spot in attempt to withdraw the car from the bottom of the river. As three hours have passed by since the accident everyone assumes the girls must be dead but a survivor unexpectedly creeps out the river.
Apparently a few days later but still not quite recovered from the shock, the survivor Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) decides to leave the town not to be seen again. She accepts a job as a professional organist in a church in Utah to start anew. As she is driving there alone, she begins seeing a ghostly apparition reflected in the side car window.
The figure seems to reside in an old run-down pavilion, a spooky abandoned amusement park to where she is strangely attracted. It is the abandoned Saltair Pavilion outside Salt Lake City. There is a shot of her in front of a promotional poster for the Pavilion and, on the poster there is a look-alike blonde with the same hairstyle. Saltair had been a family swimming, recreational facility and it looks like a cross between an Eastern Orthodox church and an Arabian Nights palace. The falling lake level doomed the swimming feature but the place operated as an amusement park until abandoned five years before the filming of "Carnival of Souls" (a story structure adapted to fit sets and locations to which Harvey had free access). Anyway, it is here that Mary must confront the personal demons of her spiritual insouciance. It is a quite scary movie but not the kind of scary that exploits blood and violence to make you jump. The plot is incredibly simple, all the haunting comes from the simple visual craft. The dead man seems to echo some German Expressionism, which I think is great, but the soundtrack and the sound itself lets down.
As much as a pervading sense of disquiet is enhanced by the efficient use of locations (a church, a vast ballroom, a decrepit and deserted amusement park at the end of a pier), the organ music is a bit irritating, however it brings in some disturbing religious images and undertones. There are, though, nice angular shots with the huge organ pipes in the foreground and the diminutive figure of Hilligoss far below. As a church organist, she is also "possessed" by her instrument, her playing alternates between the spiritual and the profane, and that deeply disturbs her wrapped-too-tight minister. There is the moment when she is alone on the highway and her radio will only pick up organ music.
Mary lodges in a boarding house and fends off the aggressive advances of her across-the-hall neighbor. The man is named John Linden, he is an alcoholic and very persistent in his attempts to seduce Mary. But those strange vision have not been left behind and she is still being haunted by the apparition of a ghastly-looking stranger. Mary is very indifferent to her job and to those around her. She is kind of "passive" and completely detached from the ordinary life situations. "I don't belong in the world….something separates me from other people" says Mary Henry. Quite lyrical! There is the isolation theme going on here, the drama of someone who feels they no longer belong.
I also liked the way Mary went from real life to "limbo", where people couldn't hear or see her.The two occasions where Mary Henry suddenly becomes invisible to everyone are much more vivid because Hilligoss is so beautiful. Unlike a person of average appearance, an especially beautiful woman walking down the street is used to drawing stares from virtually everyone. The director throws in some symbolism and the viewer has to fill in the gaps. Not much explanation is given, it seems just the supernatural at work. I thought it was excellent, very atmospheric but not truly spooky. The visions of the phantom man became more often, Mary goes to the abandoned carnival pavilion in the afternoon an experiences a surreal, dreamlike moments of sensual necro-beauty. All the phantoms come out of water to be reborn.
