Carrie (Special Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Carrie (Special Edition)
Movie Review: DePalma's Demented Date For The Prom!
Summary: 5 Stars
Right on the heels of "Obsession" (1975), DePalma directed the film adaptation of Stephen King's first novel, "Carrie" (1976), the story of the girl with telekinetic powers who is the underdog in her high school, and has a very horrific date to the prom that goes horribly awry. Produced by Paul Monash and scripted by Lawrence D. Cohen.
Well, to begin with, it's neat, knowing how DePalma works, loving to tell stories in complicated ways, using flashbacks, weaving back and forth, and nonlinear fashion, that he would choose to use a very straight forward approach with this film, when the source novel itself was written in a back and forth, nonlinear fashion, with lots of flashbacks.
The film opens with an awesome crane tracking shot showing high school girls outside playing volleyball, and the camera slowly moving in on one particular girl as you hear voices in the background saying "Hit it to Carrie, she'll miss it, hit it to Carrie", and they do, and she misses the ball. Then as they are all passing by her to shower, they tease and taunt her some more, calling her vile names.
Cut to the shower room, now the film is moving in glorious slow motion, in a very erotic way during what could be concidered a very erotic scene: A girl, naked, showering, feeling her naked body with her hands as she soaps herself down, making her way down between her legs, where her hands linger for a while. Then we see blood slowly pouring down her legs from her vagina...Carrie White (Sissy Spacek in an Oscar nominated role) is having her first menstrual cycle at the age of 17. Well, every girl in the gym shower room starts hollering "Plug it up! Plug it up!" as they start throwing tampons at her. The scene has now turned viciously ugly in the blink of an eye. Miss White (Betty Buckley), the gym teacher immediately tends to Carrie, even having to slap her trying to calm her down, and a light bulb busts.?.?.
In the principal's office, Miss White is explaining to the principle how nasty the girls were because Carrie was having her 1st period at such an age, and did not know what was happening to her, matter of fact she thought that she was bleeding to death. The principle, Mr. Morton (Stefan Gierasch) calls Carrie into the office to excuse her from school for the afternoon, and as he speaks to her, he keeps calling her Cassie, and as we see Carrie getting upset, a huge marble ashtray begins to warble on the principle's desk, then go flipping through the air when she declares her name is Carrie.!.
As she is walking home, a young kid on his bicycle (Cameron DePalma, Brian's nephew) goes out of his way to ride by her calling out "Creepy Carrie! Creepy Carrie!" just as his bike flips into the air, throwing him off of it.?.?.
Carrie is utterly mystified by these occurances.
She arrives home where she lives with her crazy, deranged, religious fanatic mother, Margeret White (Piper laurie, who DePalma got to come out of retirement for this role, and she was nominated for an Oscar, too, for her performance in this). Margeret blames Carrie for the incident at school (for having her menstrual cycle), and locks her in a closet to pray for forgiveness for her sins. As the film progresses, we learn that the closet and Carrie are no strangers to one another, and that Margeret White is utterly insane. And, for reasons well understood, Carrie doesn't want to be like her mother, she wants to be normal and have people like her, something each and everyone of us can relate to; a very Human condition.
Back at school, Miss Collins punnishes the girls in Carrie's gym class by putting them in detention, HER detention, and punnishment for not showing up is 3 days suspension from school and refusal of sales of prom tickets, hitting them where it really hurts. The key members in this little scenario are Chris Hargenson (Nancy Allen, who would go on to star in 3 other DePalma films, "Home Movies", "Dressed To Kill", and "Blow Out", and then onto a few B-rate films, like the "Robocop" films, and "Strange Invaders"), a snobby b**ch who lives to make Carrie's life miserable, her two friends, Norma Watson (P.J. Soles, "Halloween", "Rock -N- Roll High School") and Helen (Edie McClurg, "Planes, Trains, & Automobiles), who all end up in Chris' scheme to sabotage the prom after Chris gets kicked out of detention and refused her prom tickets. And, there's sympathetic Sue Snell (Amy Irving (DePalma's "The Fury", "Traffic"), who feels sorry for Carrie, so she ends up asking her jock boyfriend Tommy Ross (William Katt, "House", tv's "Greatest American Hero") to take Carrie to the prom. Meanwhile, Chris is convincing her thuggish, sick/twisted/psychotic high school drop out boy friend Billy Nolan (John Travolta in his first film) to help get even with Carrie White (she blames Carrie for not being able to attend the prom). It involves pig blood and rigging the prom's King and Queen votes so that Tommy Ross and Carrie White will win.
The prom sequence has gone down in movie history as one of the greatest scenes ever in horror film and/or drama (and/or satire), for this film is all three genres.
In the meantime, Carrie starts noticing her 'power', like breaking a mirror in her bedroom just by thinking about it in anger, then placing it back together without even touching it, well, like she did with the lightbulb and the boy on the bicycle earlier in the film. We also get to learn a lot more about her demented home life with her scary deranged mother, who when learns of Carrie going to the prom starts hissing "They're all gonna laugh at you! They're all gonna laugh at you!" in almost a prophetic way. Carrie, again, has to use her 'power', which she now knows is telekinesis because she has done a lot of reading up on the subject, mentally holding her mother down as she leaves for her date to the prom...Her date with destiny.?.?.?.
DePalma's pacing during this long drawn out set piece is awesome! The way he puts Tommy and Carrie in a spinning cycle dancing to symbolize the exuberation of how Carrie is feeling will leave you breathless. They are voted King and Queen of the prom. Meanwhile, Sue Snell has snuck to the prom to see how things are going, and she is the only person to see the rope leading up to the bucket right over the stage where the King and Queen of the prom will stand, done in a great crane tracking shot in slow motion (with an awesome score by Pino Donnaggio throughout the entire film, especially here), but she gets thrown out of the auditorium by Miss Collins before she can warn anyone about what she has seen. Meanwhile, Billy and Chris are below a set of steps that lead to the stage, arguing and carrying on like nothing is out of the ordinary.
As soon as the doors close on Sue Snell, the bucket of blood falls, and then the rest is movie history! Let's just say that all H*ll breaks loose, and only Carrie leaves alive from a burning auditorium of screaming students, something that is VERY haunting...The screams as she is walking out, and the doors close by themselves behind her. DePalma's use of split screen during Carrie's revenge sequence is utterly amazing!
After going home, bathing off the blood, and thinking she is being consoled by her mother, her mother (literally) stabs her in the back.
The 'crucifixion' of Margeret White is something that has to be seen to be believed! An awesome spetacle to rival anything ever done in horror!!
And, she ends up modeled just like the plaster Jesus in the 'praying closet' that Carrie grabs her dead mother and hides in as the house burns down, killing them both.
Cut to Sue Snell, where we see her in bed, sleeping, tossing and turning a bit, then her mom (Priscilla Pointer, Amy Irving's real-life mom) on the phone talking about how the doctors said Sue would be alright in due time.
Then, cut to the most famous scene in the film next to the prom sequence: Sue Snell is walking up to where Carrie's house used to be with flowers in her hands, and she leans down to place the flowers beside a for sale sign with 'Carrie White Burns In H*ll' spray painted over it in red, and a hand comes out of the ground and grabs Sue by the arm and starts tugging.
The best part of the film, in my opinion, is the next scene, which is the end of the film, in which Sue wakes up all frantic and screaming, with her mom consoling her, and Sue is continuosly screaming as the camera, in another great crane tracking shot, starts bacing away, up toward the ceiling as mother tries to console daughter, saying "It'll be alright, Sue, it will be alright, Sue!" (the backward crane shot mirroring the opening crane shot, and the message that it will be a LONG time before Sue Snell forgets this whole nightmare).
One of the (if not the) best psychological, telekinetic, sinister, horrorfying, satiric tragedies ever filmed.
HIGHLY recommended! Happy Halloween!! ;-)
Movie Review: "It was bad, Mama. They laughed at me." (Then it got worse)
Summary: 5 Stars
You can make an argument that the most horrific moment in "Carrie" comes in the beginning when Carrie White (Sissy Spacek in an Oscar nominated performance) is in the shower of the girl's locker room at Bates High School and gets her period for the first time. Carrie is so ignorant about her own body that she has no clue as to what is happening and thinks that she is bleeding to death. Her classmates have no way of knowing that because they have largely ignored Carrie her entire life, but their reaction is that of a pack of vicious wolves attacking a wounded fawn. We do not need to know anything about Carrie in order to have sympathy for her and to despise her attacks. But Stephen King's story ups the ante because one of the young girls, Sue Snell (Amy Irving) has an attack of conscience, which makes the rest look even worse, although Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen), an original "mean girl," does not need such help.
Certainly female viewers are going to respond viscerally to this opening scene. Like the unforgettable scenes in "Psycho" and "Jaws" it is about something horrible happening when you are naked and vulnerable. But it is also comparable to the chest buster scene in "Alien" in that the initial attack is internal. That there are so many common elements between these classic horror scenes undoubtedly speaks to something significant, but we will save that for another day.
Another key element of the horror story is that Sue tries to make amends. Some find her decision to punish herself by making Tommy (William Katt), the boy she loves, take Carrie to the Prom to be somewhat unbelievable, but it works in this film because of the look on Amy Irving's face when Miss Collins (Betty Buckley) reads the riot act to the girls and Sue finally gets the depth of the wretchedness of their act. Besides, their prom tickets are in danger at that point and throwing something away before it can be taken from you is a teenage art form (one that I mastered and used early and often). This also adds an additional level to the horror because not only does Carrie's pink prom dress get ruined by all that pig's blood, so does Sue's act of contrition.
This attempt by Sue establishes a contrast with the way that Carrie's mother, Margaret (Piper Laurie in another Oscar nominated performance), treats her own daughter. A religious fanatic warped beyond the limits of caricature, Margaret is a monumentally abusing mother who wraps her attacks in the language of righteousness. Ironically, her treatment of her daughter is a twisted example of an act of contrition, as Margaret seeks to atone for what she considers to be a sin.
There is a blatant link between the blood of the shower scene and the shower of blood at the prom in that each serves as a catalyst for Carrie's telekinesis. The first time it is for her powers to become active, as she learns when for the first time in her life the dirty look she gives to someone making fun of her are no longer impotent gestures. At the prom this becomes the dam bursting, and what is key is not simply the image of the blood drenched Carrie but the wide-eyed look that Spacek gives us in one of the create close-ups in horror movie history. Her attackers have gone too far and there is a juvenile sense of justice to the fact that she responds in kind. You know that a lot of innocent kids die in that gym that night, but silence assumes assent and it can be argued that they are culpable to some degree with making Carrie's life so miserable.
But we are so invested in Carrie as a character that the bloody climax of this 1976 film produces mixed feelings. She gets to pay back her tormenters, an idea that virtually all high school students can relate to, but she goes too far, another inherent trait of the teenage psyche. It is wonderful and horrible at one and the same time. But when Carrie claims her final victim our sympathies are engaged again because the tragedy here is that what happened is not her fault. Carrie White is culpable for her crimes, but the primary responsibility is not her own and the final justice of the film is that the person who is most responsible pays. However, the final image is of another teenage girl damned for all time because of forces beyond her own control and the idea that no good deed goes unpunished is a rather horrifying final point for the movie to make.
Granted, this is not a flawless horror film. Director Brian De Palma has too much fun with the camera at times, as he is wont to do, such as when he over does the split screens during the gymnasium scene. What works well to indicate that Carrie is using her powers to slam shut the doors works well, but then it just because too much. Then again, the boys dressing up for the prom is a nice bit of levity before things go to hell, and filming in reverse Sue Snell's walk to visit Carrie's final resting place is a nice subtle effect. Whatever failings the film has, such as Laurie's way over-the-top performance and the forced symbolism of her character's crucifixion, the best moments in "Carrie" are some of the most memorable in the history of horror films. There are just too many body punches in this one to justify rounding down.
Movie Review: A Psychological Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
Carrie should not be judged as a horror movie and nothing else, in my opinion it is a psychological tragedy in which the director confounds the viewer by forcing us to bleed our hearts out for a shy helpless girl and then goes and turns her into a merciless killer. The movie itself generates a creepy aura of wrongness with every scene, the different plot elements combine fantastically. Carrie's first period being such a terrifying ordeal for her is the metaphor for the film, innocence is savaged and mocked throughout. The film is an emotional rollercoaster, we empathise with Carrie's loneliness and confusion as a victim of bullying, even when she goes home she is psychologically attacked by her depraved religious fundamentalist mother who is hell bent on making sure Carrie should not enjoy a normal life. When a well-meaning student arranges for Carrie to join a popular high school cliche and attend the Prom, the negative forces in her life (bullies/mother) each separately conspire to bring about her ruin, psychologically they depend on the existence of a shy socially handicapped Carrie and cannot stand the thought of her escaping their need.
The acting performances in this film are incredible, two performances in particular stand out, Sissy Spacek completely revels in the role of Carrie - she manages to convey extreme shyness and vulnerability without ever becoming static or dull, she is animated and withdrawn at the same time as her eyes dart suspiciously around her while at the same time managing to look like a baby deer caught in a metal snare. When Carrie eventually unleashes years of pent up rage and bitterness, everyone gets splashed, righteous and unrighteous alike, Spacek adopts a frozen grimace of madness, her eyes bulge as the tables are turned on all those who thought her fair game for abuse, she gives it all back with interest and her fury ensnares some innocents. The second performance of real worth is that of Carrie's mother, played by Piper Laurie. Laurie deserved an academy award for her stunning portrait of the witchlike religious fundamentalist who's mental disturbance is psychologically damaging her daughter, indeed we are left in little doubt that Margaret White is a prime factor in Carrie's emotional problems. Laurie adopts a weird reedy voice for the role as she rattles off lines of scripture in a chopping fashion, tossing around directives to her daughter like a KGB chief on speed. Laurie's performance is also physically impressive, she is constantly moving about, waving her arms about and generally giving a very convincing interpretation of psychosis. We even feel sympathy for her as she describes her sad past one night to her daughter. A third performance of note is that of Tommy Ross, played by William Katt, i thought he injected a much needed note of humanity into the film, his portrait of the ostensibly tough and shallow jock was also laced with kindness, smypathy and tenderness when having been placed in the position of having to pretend he likes Carrie he finds himself actually starting to love her.
This is a somewhat difficult film to watch more than once, though just as interesting and compelling the ending is so sad and tragic and the pigs blood scene so savage that knowing what comes next is torturous, particularly as the worst scene comes just after the point where it seems Carrie has triumphed over adversity and carved a normal life out of chaos. The saddest lesson from this movie is catching a glimpse of the charming, delightful and gentle woman Carrie might have been (at the prom) and then seeing this vision so mercilessly butchered immediately afterwards. I saw once that there was some criticism off the insect ile like multi-vision perspective of Carrie near the end when simultaneously she sees the many faces of the crowd laughing at her in individual 'panes' and the ghostly cracked voice of her mother in her head intones "they're all gonna laugh at you", i think this was really clever and ingenious - the strangeness of it marks Carries transformation to madness perfectly while the multiple panes of vision convey her extreme sensitivity, she is acutely aware of every single individual mocking her (even her sympathethic teacher - an interesting question is wether the teacher really did join the others in ridiculing her), so ultimately from her perspective - they all must die, a stunning way to convey paranoia. The only let down is in the final confrontation between Carrie and her mother in the house, but then it would be very difficult to trump the scene which just preceded it. The final part with the hand - makes me jump every time, even though you know it's coming it seems to catch you unawares as though you just cannot pinpoint when exactly Carrie's bloodied hand is going to emerge from the debris.
Movie Review: Carrie (1976)
Summary: 5 Stars
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Amy Irving, William Katt, Betty Buckley, Nancy Allen, John Travolta, P.J. Soles, Priscilla Pointer.
Running Time: 98 minutes
Rated R for violence, some gore, and language.
Nowadays, we have literal truck loads of books on how to deal with our tormented teenage daughters. We all know in this day and age that teenage girls are wicked bullies and the damage inflicted by their relentless bullying is often irreparable. But you don't need those books. Most of us who have watched the film "Carrie" already know the devastating effect that merciless torment can have upon us. That's why we watched the film; to see those bullies get what they deserve and to cheer Carrie on every step of the way. Carrie White (Sissy Spacek in a brilliant performance) is an abused teenager with a void where her self-esteem should be. Her mother (played by the over-the-top Piper Laurie) is a whacko religious nut who likes to violently throw Carrie around for imagined sins and lock her in the closet for days on end. Her schoolmates are spoiled rotten Clique Queens (played by Betty Buckley, Nancy Allen, P.J. Soles), who enjoy attacking anyone less popular than they are, for no reason at all other than that it amuses them. Carrie becomes their main target when her period, incredibly late, finally arrives one day in the locker room shower. Carrie, who has never been sexually educated and is under the impression that she is bleeding to death, freaks out and of course, her classmates find this terribly amusing.
With her the onset of her menstrual cycle, her dormant powers of telekinesis suddenly wake and cannot be controlled anymore than her newly awakened raging hormones can be. Unfortunately, no one is aware of this. As Carrie dares to stand up to her mother and begins to break out of her shell, her cruel and sadistic classmates have a plan to keep her in her place forever. Too bad they don't know how dangerous all that suppressed anger can be. Carrie gets her revenge on them all and the climax of the film is a bloody, fiery apocalypse as Carrie unleashes her pent up anger along with her powers and literally lets them run their ferocious course. "Carrie" is not so much a horror film as it is a psychological one. The human mind is capable of horrors that no movie camera or special effects crew can reproduce, and the abused psyche is a monster that no one wants to see unleashed.
"Carrie" is a melding of two great artists, in this case, Stephen King, who wrote the novel and Brian De Palma, who directed the film. This is a tense, exciting thriller that is also a sturdy character study. It's hard to make a film that can accomplish both, but De Palma does it. King's novel mostly dealt with a telekinetic girl who is cruelly treated by her classmates. De Palma and screenwriter Lawrence Cohen follow the novel fairly closely, with the exception of the ending, which is a great deal more sensationalistic and better (King himself liked the finale and the film, as stated in his exceptional study of the horror genre "Danse Macabre") As is the case in most De Palma films, the technical credits are superb. The cinematography (by Mario Tosi)is extremely effective; colors and shadows have never been shot more effectively in a De Palma film since. The film score is by Pino Donaggio, and it marks the first collaboration between Donaggio and De Palma. (Bernard Herrmann died shortly after "Obsession" was completed) Donaggio is among the most underrated and overlooked composers of his time. His scores for "Dressed to Kill", "Blow Out" and "Body Double" are all exceptional and all deserved Oscars. "Carrie" is no less brilliant, as it accomplishes what all great scores are supposed to do: enhance the film without giving anything away. Paul Hirsch's editing is also extremely effective as it was in "Sisters", "Obsession", "Blow Out" and "Raising Cain". But it is the performances that make "Carrie" stand out. Carrie is played by Sissy Spacek in a performance of such power and strength that she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress (the first actress ever to be nominated for a horror film; the second would be Sigourney Weaver for "Aliens"). She manages to hit all the right notes. A lesser actress would have veered toward melodrama. Spacek plays the role more realistically and the film is much more effective that way. "Carrie" is not for those who just want to see people sliced up or prefer fast-paced horror as it is presented as a heart-breaking drama with a horrifying twist. "Carrie" is very well directed, with a superb screenplay from Larry Cohen and featuring two of the greatest performances in horror.
Movie Review: A Benchmark Film
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently watched an episode of my favorite TV show, "Medium," that paid homage to "Carrie" by having Aerial become prom queen of her middle school & having the bucket of blood rain down on her head. Channel surfing, "Carrie" was also re-running on cable; so we rented the movie to see the entire film.
In retrospect, I am struck by how much talk was at the last Oscars about how Martin Scorcese hadn't won an Oscar prior to his deserved recognition for "The Departed." Quite frankly, Brian DePalma has never even been NOMINATED for an Oscar. With recent good films like "Black Dahlia" & "Femme Fetale" and classics like "The Untouchables," "Scarface," "Blow Out," & "Dressed to Kill," perhaps people should start talking about this other under-recognized director. In his 1976 film "Carrie," he builds the tension and mounts the rather simple story until its amazing climax at the prom with the house collapse at the end. While this genre is rarely recognized critically, this is an example of one that was VERY well done.
Based on Stephen King's first novel, this film is also memorable for being the first in a long line of cinema projects based on his work.
The film is also memorable because it really placed Sissy Spacek's career before the public. She had gotten good notices for the film "Badlands" with Martin Sheen as a serial killer three years earlier. But "Carrie" paved the way for her Oscar-winning performance as Loretta Lynn in "Coal Miner's Daughter," her Oscar nominations for "Crimes of the Heart" & "The River" as well as her Oscar nomination and Golden Globe win for "In the Bedroom." As Carrie, Spacek makes us totally believe how a young girl raised by this mother would be the shy retiring flower that we see. The opening sequence where she has her first period and the girls cruelly make fun of her is hard to watch, but totally believable.
Piper Laurie as her mother Margaret White entrances us as the tremendously unbalanced religious fanatic. The scene where she blames Carrie for having her period and that it is evidence that she has sinned is so hard to watch. Laurie was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for this film. Along with a Best Actress nomination for "The Hustler" with Paul Newman in 1961 & a supporting nomination for "Children of a Lesser God" in 1986, "Carrie" represents the middle of her three nominations. The final scene where she tries to sacrifice her daughter and Carrie telekinetically flings the kitchen knives across to kill her mother whose head tilts in a crucifixion-like pose takes your breath away.
The film is also memorable for Betty Buckley's first film as the gym teacher Miss Collins. Buckley had been a star of many Broadway musicals when she made this, her first feature that would be followed by "Tender Mercies." Nancy Allen plays the young socialite Chris Hargenson who hatches the plan to humiliate Carrie. Allen would later marry director DePalma. The film is also memorable because this marks the feature debut of Amy Irving. As Sue Snell, her real-life mother Priscilla Pointer plays her character's mother in the film. Pointer would later be a regular on the "Dallas" TV series.
The film is also memorable as John Travolta's second feature after a small part in another horror film "The Devil's Rain." Travolta followed this 1976 film with a string of hits from 1977 "Saturday Night Fever," 1978 "Grease" and 1980 "Urban Cowboy." In 1981, Travolta re-teamed with Brian DePalma from what has always been one of my favorite suspense films, "Blow Out." Travolta later resurrected his career with Oscar nominated performances in "Pulp Fiction" (1994) & "Get Shorty" (1995), which also won him a Golden Globe award. As Billy Nolan, Travolta is a happy-go-lucky guy who Nancy Allen leads around by his nose (or should we say pants). The scene where he kills the pig to get its blood is freaky.
William Katt played the blond curled Tommy Ross who takes Carrie to the prom. The son of Barbara Hale, known for playing Della Street on "Perry Mason," in which Katt would later star, does a good job as the handsome athlete whose poem Carrie calls "beautiful."
"Carrie" came together very well with excellent cinematography and editing. It is a classic in the horror genre, from which a TV remake has been done. It remains a benchmark film. The DVD package gives good added information and perspectives about the film. Enjoy!