Carnival of Souls Soundtrack
© STC
Soundtrack of Souls
By: Randall LarsonDate: Friday, October 27, 2006
Herk Harvey’s macabre 1962 masterpiece gained a cult following through late night television. Made by industrial filmmakers on a modest budget, CARNIVAL OF SOULS was intended to have the “look of a Bergman” and “feel of a Cocteau,” and succeeded quite well with its strikingly used locations and spooky organ score. Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) survives a drag race in a rural Kansas town, then takes a job as a church organist in Salt Lake City. En route, she becomes haunted by a bizarre apparition that compels her to an abandoned lakeside pavilion.
Gene Moore’s soundtrack to this 1962 cult classic begins like a picnic at a monster-truck rally; an engine revs into the red, and a scream is cut off by a limb-rending crash. But this is only the prelude to a festival in purgatory as a church organist is plagued by sinister visions and a stalker in corpse paint. Moore’s organ score runs the gamut of carefree filler to a hygiene film (“Travel Music”) to gripping, spooky colors and tones.
First provided on CD by a label called Birdman in 1998, with 37 tracks in poor monophonic sound taken off of the movie soundtrack, Citadel is now providing the score in rich stereophonic sound for the first time. Their release has 26 tracks, a mixture of music and dialog excerpts from the film.
One of the most provocative yet least known scores of the era, Moore’s organ-heavy soundtrack is a treasure of low-budget, high-creativity monochromatic filmscoring.
Cinescape’s Music News provides weekdaily news and views on film music, game music, progressive rock, and other notable musical genres, culled from a variety of sources.
More From Mania
DVD Shopping Bag: TWISTER, on the Small Screen
It's ALL SOULS DAY on January 17th
(Friday, January 13, 2006)
That DVD Bastard
(Tuesday, August 16, 2005)
Noir-a-rama
(Tuesday, July 5, 2005)
CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962)
(Saturday, June 9, 2001)
The Phantom of the Movies' VIDEOSCOPE
(Friday, September 29, 2000)
Direct-to-Video Horrors: The Best and Worst of 1999
(Friday, January 7, 2000)
See more related content
