Trivia / Carnival of Souls

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• Completely Different Title:
  • Brazil: The Macabre Park
  • Denmark: The Dance of Horrors
  • Finland: Hell
  • Norway: The Infernal (Ten Seconds Between Heaven and Hell)
  • Germany: Dance of the Dead Souls
• Descended Creator: The Man is played by director Herk Harvey.
• Executive Meddling: The distributor cut 5 minutes from the original print to fit advertising — then ran off with the profits from the film.
• Follow the Leader: Many films have borrowed the same plot (i.e. twist ending) from Carnival of Souls including 2001's Soul Survivors (which was literally just ''Carnival of Souls...in College!'') and the 2005 psychological thriller Stay.
• He Also Did: Sidney Berger (John Linden) went on to become the longtime chair of the drama department at the University of Houston, training many notable actors, including Dennis Quaid, Brent Spiner and Jim Parsons.
• Missing Episode: About eight minutes of footage belonging to a sequence set just before the final danse macabre was lost in processing when the film was overexposed. It would've shown the ghouls appearing from behind the dock pylons at the edge of the water, making their way to the pavilion.
• Money, Dear Boy: Candace Hilligoss (a Lee Strasberg-trained, New York-based actress) says this is why she did the film, but she only ended up making $2,000 (only about $19,000 in today's money) from it.
• No Budget: Made for $30,000 ($324,000 in today's money), but since the creative team had lots of experience making low-budget industrial and educational films, they knew how to shoot resourcefully and the film is quite professionally done.
• One-Hit Wonder: Herk Harvey's industrial short production company made only one narrative film, this one, and never did one again.
• Stillborn Franchise: Candace Hilligoss (who played Mary in the original) had been in talks to greenlight a sequel, and had even written a treatment and screenplay. For good or ill, the deal fell through. Her claim was that Peter Soby feigned an interest in her script just to get his foot in the door with Harvey and get the film rights to do a remake. In acquiring these rights, Hilligoss wound up being written out of the deal and Soby went on to produce the 1998 remake (which had nothing to do with Hilligoss's script).
• Vindicated by Cable: Joe Bob Briggs, James Rolfe, and other B-movie aficionados. The documentary Schlock! notes that had Carnival of Souls been a foreign film, it would have been hailed as a True Art Is Angsty masterpiece.
• What Could Have Been: Hilligoss was asked to make a cameo in the remake, but turned it down out of feelings of betrayal and disrespect due to the above reasons.

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