Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962)

Cast: Candace Hilligoss, Frances Feist, Sidney Berger, Art Ellison, Stan Levitt, Tom McGinnis, Forbes Caldwell, Dan Palmquist, Bill de Jarnette, Steve Boozer. Screenplay: John Clifford. Cinematography: Maurice Prather. Film editing: Bill de Jarnette, Dan Palmquist. Music: Gene Moore.

There aren't many one-offs in movie history, films like Carnival of Souls that come out of nowhere, made by unknown directors who never make another commercial feature, but which capture the imagination enough to develop -- after time passes -- not only a cult following but also critical admiration. Herk Harvey was an employee of a firm based in Laurence, Kansas, that made industrial and education films, when he had an idea for a horror movie that would be set, at least in part, in an abandoned amusement park like the one he had seen near Salt Lake City. He mentioned the idea to his colleague, a writer named John Clifford, who whipped up a screenplay about a woman who survives an accident but then begins to feel that she's going mad. It needed, Harvey told Clifford, to climax with a scene in which ghoulish figures were dancing in the abandoned amusement park. Harvey scraped together the money and hired an actress and model named Candace Hilligoss, who agreed to take $2,000 for her role in the film. There is no credited art director for Carnival of Souls, but Harvey or whoever assisted him found a great variety of evocative locations, including the Saltair pavilion, a former dance hall and amusement park that had fallen on hard times and was standing derelict near the Great Salt Lake. The settings also include a factory that makes pipe organs and a carpenter gothic rooming house, both of which serve the creepy atmosphere of the film. Not all of the semi- and non-professional actors Harvey cast in the film are up to their jobs, but there's a somnambulant quality to Hilligoss's performance as the haunted Mary Henry that's just right, and while Clifford's dialogue is sometimes tin-eared, the story he crafted around Harvey's suggestions takes hold of the imagination. That's Harvey himself as the spookily made-up man who menaces Mary.