| It's hard to believe that 25 years have passed since
Carrie hit theaters, scaring the hell out of audiences while jolting the
careers of young director Brian De Palma and budding horror novelist
Stephen King into high gear at the same time. From 1976 through 1981, De
Palma made a series of horror-thrillers that have remained popular and are
arguably his finest films in a wide-ranging body of work that includes
dark comedies (Home Movies, Phantom of the Paradise), erotic thrillers
(Body Double), crime dramas (The Untouchables,
Scarface), war movies
(Casualties of War) and action-adventure movies (Mission: Impossible). The
recent DVD release of
these four films is an appropriate occasion to pause and reconsider the
impressive, sometimes amazing contributions De Palma made to the horror
and suspense genres during this six-year period.
Stephen King's first published novel, Carrie is a well-crafted story of
adolescent angst, religious mania, telekinesis, and the unholy vengeance
of a perpetual outsider who is finally pushed too far. The film adaptation
retains the novel's basic plot, beginning with a brief scene of Carrie
White (Sissy Spacek) being humiliated on the high school volleyball court,
a scene that's painfully easy for many viewers to relate to, and that
establishes audience sympathy for Carrie immediately. Then it's straight
on to the girls' locker room for the infamous shower scene, which starts
with dreamy, steamy slow-motion playfulness and nudity...and abruptly
spirals into horror as the innocent, bewildered Carrie is terrified to
discover blood running down her thigh. It's the scene that sets the entire
plot in motion --revealing Carrie's psychic ability to move objects and
affect her physical surroundings, establishing Sue (Amy Irving) and Miss
Collins (Betty Buckley) as flawed but ultimately sympathetic characters,
and planting the seed of the motive for Chris (Nancy Allen) to plot
horrendous revenge later on. Carrie's "becoming a woman" also heightens
the tension between the girl and her fanatically religious mother Margaret
(Piper Laurie). Twenty-five years later, it's still a powerful scene,
touching on a strong cultural and cinematic taboo rarely broached in films
even today (the excellent Ginger Snaps is a notable exception.)
De Palma goes on to deftly depict high school as a kind of
mundane hell full of petty jealousy, rivalry, politics, sadism, and
despair. Carrie's English teacher (Sydney Lassick) ridicules her poetry in
front of the class; the principal (Stefan Gierasch, of the 1992 Dark
Shadows miniseries) cannot even bother to remember her name, repeatedly
calling her "Cassie Wright." The plot takes on gothic proportions as the
hateful Chris and her all-too-willing associates (John Travolta, P.J.
Soles) scheme to subject Carrie to one final, unspeakably cruel
humiliation. Their plan begins with the brutal nighttime slaughter of
trapped, squealing hogs...
The final forty minutes of the movie, beginning with the panoramic
opening shot of the prom sequence, comes as close to achieving sustained
perfection as any movie I've seen. Carrie has finally defied her mother;
through the assistance of Sue and Miss Collins, and the kindness of Sue's
handsome boyfriend Tommy (William Katt), Carrie emerges as a beautiful,
radiant young woman. Sissy Spacek subtly and convincingly conveys Carrie's
tension and fear slowly giving way to a kind of happiness and excitement
she has never known in her life. Expert photography (Mario Tosi), set and
costume design, and acting combine to create a genuinely magical
atmosphere, a fairy tale princess-at-the-ball quality that completely
engages us with Carrie -- and makes the horror to come all the more
devastating. De Palma
made several key changes to the final scenes of the novel. The
destruction of the town in the novel was omitted for budgetary
reasons, but the change serves the movie well, keeping the focus on
the microcosm of the high school and Carrie's house, where the drama
has played out all along. The final resolution of the conflict between
Carrie and her mother has been brilliantly translated from prose into
the visual language of cinema. (Piper Laurie has her moment of glory
here as she expresses what could be physical pain, religious ecstasy,
or orgasmic satisfaction -- or indeed all three at once -- in a
flawlessly acted moment.) And the conclusion of the film set the
standard for jump-out-of-your-seat shock. |
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