CARNIVAL OF SOULS
The Stalking Dead
released 23 OcTOBer 1962 | 12 | Blu-ray
Director Herk Harvey Cast candace Hilligoss, sidney Berger, Herk Harvey, Frances Feist
Cited as an inspiration by David Lynch, this tale of a road crash victim pursued by spectral visions in a desolate Utah is a masterpiece of off-kilter lyricism, haunting and haunted.
Director Herk Harvey doubles up to play the ghoul stalking Candace Hilligoss’s disintegrating survivor. All flaking greasepaint skin, electroshock hair and tomb-dweller’s eyes, he looks like a crazed escapee from German Expressionist cinema. When his fellow damned emerge at the movie’s climax it’s tempting to think of them as the ghosts of silent cinema, breaking into a strange new America, only a road sign away from Twin Peaks…
Extras “The Movie That Wouldn’t Die”, a 1989 documentary from a Kansas TV station (32 minutes), includes footage of a cast reunion, while “Saltair: Return To The Salt Queen” is a 1966 doc about the film’s magnificently eerie locale. Writer/comedian Dana Gould riffs on the movie (23 minutes) and critic David Cairns provides a video essay (24 minutes). “The Centron Corporation” showcases clips of six industrial information films. A commentary track created from a 1989 interview with Harvey and screenwriter John Clifford, three deleted scenes, out-takes (27 minutes) and a trailer complete the package. Nick Setchfield
The scene of ghouls rising from a lake was actually filmed in the swimming pool of an apartment complex.