"Carnival of Souls" and the Inherent Creepiness of Men
The men in Mary Henry’s life are as intrusive, if not quite as malicious, as the spirits who stalk her.
We are mired in October, arguably the best month of the year, particularly for those of you lucky enough to live in a place where seasons change (I curse the palm trees that sway gently overhead, mocking my wish for a discernible autumn here in Los Angeles). While your viewing habits don’t have to change just because the month ends, there’s little reason to deny horror films enjoy a little extra charge at this time of year, not just for Halloween but because you feel the creep of night as it elongates and takes away more of the daytime.
With what little time we have remaining, I want to cover as much as I can, but there’s no way I can address everything. All of this is my way of saying my Halloween four-pack is a cheat this week: Instead of doing four films, I’m covering one anthology film with four parts. More specifically, I’m discussing what may be the greatest horror anthology film, the masterpiece that is Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan. To be fair to myself, this is a 3+ hour film, so not one you’re likely to fit in with three other films in a night. To be even more fair to myself, I’m telling you to watch a stunning, brilliantly staged exploration of Japanese folktales, one with some of the most remarkable imagery ever captured on celluloid.
Kwaidan
One film, but four stories. It counts, dammit!
Masaki Kobayashi created films that were challenging and empathetic, and charged with a searing morality, in both contemporary and classic settings. Rather than do a quick rundown of his filmography, I’ll just point out that he directed Harakiri, my pick for the greatest film ever made. Not “among the greatest,” the greatest, singular, a position it has held with ease since my first viewing.
Kwaidan is, at least superficially, something of a departure, a break from socially conscious tales in favor of animating classic folk stories from Japan collected by Lafcadio Hearn. The stories range in length and intensity, with the third, Hoichi the Earless, being particularly elaborate in both its execution and style. All four tales are enriched by intricately arranged visuals and lush color. It’s a must-watch if it happens to play at a theater within driving distance. If you’re watching at home, splurge on the blu-ray. Maybe upgrade your television, too. Horror is often sought for its unsettling qualities. Kwaidan is a testament to film’s stylistic versatility, bringing a dazzling sense of style that contrasts the expectation a horror film will rely on chiaroscuro lighting and gothic trappings to shape its visual language.
Carnival of Souls and the Inherent Creepiness of Men
The men in Mary Henry’s life are as intrusive, if not quite as malicious, as the spirits who stalk her.
As Mary Henry finishes her bath at the boarding house where she’s recently settled, a seam opens at the door. She has no idea that as she dries herself and slips on her robe that a rogue eyeball fills the newly-made crack into her room, but it has, and it begins to roam over her body. Just outside, John Linden watches her with a slack, lurid grin creeping across his face before he finally composes himself and puts on a performance of “casually” arriving at the door to welcome his new neighbor. He is not the villain of the story, ostensibly speaking. Before the film is over, Mary will turn to him for protection against a supernatural presence she can’t begin to understand, a task at which he will fail pitifully.
Strictly in terms of his portrayal, I love John Linden. Actor Sidney Berger was keen enough to see his character for what he was—a creep—and depict him thoughtfully but unsparingly. Insecure, overbearing, ingratiating, and deeply ordinary, this not-quite-antagonist may not do harm within the story, but it’s easy to see how close he is to the precipice of real violence, and how ill-equipped he is to be a benevolent or even useful presence. In terms of keeping Henry safe from the phantoms who pursue her, he would be lower in the Power Rankings than the dresser she pushes against her door to keep intruders out.
Carnival of Souls is a seminal horror film, a product of artists at a stock film company in Lawrence, KS who crafted a timeless and influential work thanks to director Herk Harvey’s fateful drive past the then-abandoned Saltair Pavilion. In the story, Mary Henry is pursued, but not (just) by a lecherous neighbor at her boarding house. The sole survivor of a car accident that takes her friends’ lives, Henry is physically unscathed but curiously cold after her traumatic experience. She tries to leave the incident and her old life behind to take a job as a church organist, but a suit-clad phantom (played by the director and referred to simply as The Man) pursues her, appearing both physically and in her mind’s eye as she unravels.
This is Herk Harvey’s only feature film. The spark for making it came when he drove past Saltair, the then-dormant Salt Lake City entertainment resort possessed of a resonant eeriness he just couldn’t ignore. Upon returning home, he collaborated with a coworker, screenwriter John Clifford, to wrap a script around that strange landmark. Although this would be their sole effort outside of their stock work for the Centron Corporation, Carnival of Souls influenced artists like George Romero and David Lynch and maintained enduring appeal as it appeared on the lineups of local TV stations across the country. That would build to a critical reappraisal and celebration, and later a vaunted spot in the Criterion Collection (it’s one of their first hundred DVD releases). The film endures because its affecting atmosphere, effective (and necessary) use of actual locations in the American Midwest, captivating and idiosyncratic characters, and deft deployment of Harvey’s influences (Jean Cocteau and Ingmar Bergman are the two sources he cited) make it an unforgettable watch.
In interviews, Harvey and Clifford would concede audiences found subtext and hidden meanings to glean from what was, to approximate their words, a horror film with some pizazz. (You can hear them discuss this in a local news report about the film at the time of its reappraisal in the late 1980s, a feature archived both in the Criterion Collection physical release and on the Criterion Channel.) While the film was just meant to be a lean but stylish genre piece, it forms a sharp argument for how men, even if they mean well, become inherently discomfiting when they have the power to intrude on a woman’s life. By lacing Henry’s story with both a supernatural threat and a series of overbearing dudes, the film depicts a dual bind where our heroine is denied the life she wants by intrusive male figures in both a natural and supernatural context.
Of all those who are firmly among the living, John Linden is the most persistent, and by far the most overtly threatening. However, he’s certainly not the only one who breaches her physical barriers. In one jump scare to close Henry’s first uncanny fugue state (part of her descent from life to afterlife, we come to realize), she’s startled at a water fountain by a figure in a dark suit. As the camera pans up with her gaze, we realize he was just a bystander, though what goes unremarked on is why someone patiently waiting for water would stand so close that the flap of his jacket could brush her cheek while she takes her sip. Even before the borders of her life and afterlife start to bleed into each other, a figure at the organ factory where she trains insinuates himself into her personal bubble, placing a hand at her back as he tries to admonish her for her indifference to the religious significance of her vocation as a church organist.
The encroachment by male characters repeats throughout the film, which helps set the dynamic between Henry and the men she encounters, and also sets up scares where The Man surprises us by appearing in the place of someone who’s supposed to be safe. Safe-ish, at least, when he takes the place of John Linden. In one pivotal sequence, the roles of The Man and a man are reversed. During Henry’s fugue state at her organ in the church, she begins to provide unholy accompaniment as The Man and his ghouls take over Saltair’s abandoned dancehall. As the movements build speed and the music ratchets up the tension, The Man breaks away and marches toward the camera, his hands outstretched. Just as he seems poised to reach through the screen, a different pair of hands, belonging to the kindly minister, come down on Henry’s to stop her performance. He then fires her, sending her into the final throes of a spiral that will fully flush her from our world.
Whether they’re as openly predatory as John Linden or just benignly domineering, the mundane men who deprive Henry of her solitude clarify an unhappy truth; dead or alive, our heronie will not be granted the peace to live the life she wants. Her vocation comes with the pressures of conforming to church culture and filling a role among “the women,” as her minister refers to them. Her home life will be spent fending off a horny housemate forever scrutinizing her locked door while maintaining a dully predatory smirk. Even the doctor (not a psychiatrist, he admits, but intent on helping anyway) who tries to help her manage her fears can’t help but pass judgment over her disinterest in a social life or male companionship. (That last point adds a different kind of subtext to Henry’s discomfort with the boundaries set for her life, one that, like the point in this piece, probably wasn’t “supposed” to be there but adds another welcome wrinkle to the viewing experience.) If she wasn’t being pursued by some grim figures from the underworld, Carnival of Souls could still work as a searing psychological drama about one young woman’s inability to live free from the strictures of a society that’s just a little too intent to claim her as their own.
Between their backgrounds, the time crunch they faced in making the film, and their professed humility in the face of its enduring legacy, it’s hard to imagine Carnival of Souls was meant to be something subversive. It’s also fair to note that horror films had and would continue to heavily favor imperiling women (while Universal Pictures set out to make Dracula, Carl Laemmle, Jr. was adamant the titular vampire would not be seen biting another man). But when you think about how much the effective evocation of fear calls for subconscious manipulation, it feels more apt to look for what wasn’t explicitly intended. Whether it originally meant to or not, Carnival of Souls continues to compel in part because it understands how frightening it can be to be coveted, whether you’re the object of attention for sexist or supernatural reasons.