It is true that one of the biggest reasons for “[person] is still alive?” is someone who hasn’t acted in decades. Especially if it’s someone who basically has one iconic role. Candace Hilligoss is on that list—yes, she is still alive, and, no, she hasn’t really done much acting since 1964. It seems, in fact, that she spent quite a lot of years as the housewife to another actor. They had two children and divorced in 1981. If she’s done much else in the way of acting, including stage, I don’t know about it, because it hasn’t made it to any of the pages I use for my regular research.
Before being hired for her one and only notable role, she was a model. How she ended up coming to the attention of a couple of guys who worked for Centron and were making a movie on their vacation is probably a fascinating story, and it might be in her memoir, but I haven’t had a chance to read her memoir. Certainly it hasn’t made it onto any of the regular sources. Still, however it happened, she was cast as the haunted Mary Henry.
Carnival of Souls is a controversial film—Mike Nelson famously says that no one who says they like it is telling the truth and that it’s really a very bad movie, but it is after all in the Criterion Collection. Mike’s feelings notwithstanding, it’s there for a reason. It’s extremely low-budget; Hilligoss was paid $2500 and may well have been one of the biggest expenses in the movie. She was completely unknown and would remain so. It wouldn’t have been surprising had she been terrible and the movie, made by makers of educational shorts, even more so.
It’s true that Hilligoss brings a certain flatness of affect to the role. However, that’s what she’s supposed to do. She’s in a strange world that she cannot express, being sleazed on by the creepy guy across the hall and accused by a minister of being cursed. And she’s in Utah, poor creature. She knows she has survived a car accident, and everything since then has seemed strange and frightening. The two choices are pretty much overacting and flatness of affect, and the latter choice is more convincing.
She not only refused to appear in the in-name-only remake, she openly said she’d gladly pay to not be forced to watch it. From what little I know, she is not wrong. It sounds awful. The original Carnival of Souls is, in my opinion, a suspense classic that is failed by people’s perception that it’s horror. No, nothing scary is happening through most of the picture, but it’s building a mood, and that mood is conveyed by the stiffness with which Hilligoss inhabits the space she’s in. It’s not a movie I regularly watch, I grant you, but that doesn’t mean she’s at all the wrong choice or that she damages the movie with her performance.
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