CARRIE (1976)
directed by Brian DePalma
starring
Sissy Spacek.....Carrie White
Piper Laurie......Margaret White
Amy Irving.......Sue Snell
William Katt.....Tommy Ross
John Travolta....Billy Nolan
Nancy Allen.....Chris Hargensen
Betty Buckley...Miss Collins
I saw this movie a long time ago but forgot how great it was. "Carrie" is based on a novel by Stephen King. It was the first Stephen King novel ever published and the first film adaptation of his work.
It's about this ill-adjusted girl Carrie who discovers she has the power to move things with her mind.
Sissy Spacek had to really fight for this role. Supposedly it almost went to the ex-Mrs. Spielberg Amy Irving before Spacek blew everyone away with her audition tape. The other, less substantiated rumor floating around is that DePalma and George Lucas held joint auditions for Star Wars: A New Hope and Carrie. According to rumor, Spacek was cast as Leia and Carrie Fisher was cast as Carrie. However, the actresses switched roles when Fisher refused to do the extensive nude scenes involved in DePalma's film. (Fisher has denied this rumor.)
In any case, this is one of those times when I think the gods smiled down on us and the Universe (...or DePalma...or Carrie Fisher's sense of propriety) got it right. We have Fisher's beloved Princess Leia and Spacek's perfect portrayal of Carrie. If I'd seen this movie without knowing who Sissy Spacek was, I would have sworn up and down that this was one of those rare cases where they stumbled across an unknown who was simply born for this one role and would virtually disappear immediately after it. It's not that I don't value Spacek's body of work, but I kind of wish the earth would have just swallowed her up after this movie, taking her down in a ginger blaze of glory after she fulfilled her purpose playing Carrie White.
The physical embodiment of the character is astonishing. Lank hair, big watery eyes, translucent skin...she sort of floats around the school like a ghost, willing herself to be invisible, but for these fucking assholes who keep tormenting her because she's an easy mark. She's bad at sports; she chews on her hair; she's a loner and an outcast. With the exception of Miss Collins (played by DePalma's ex Betty Buckley), even the teachers are kind of jerks. The principal can't get her name right and the English teacher plays along with the predatory pack mentality of the other students, mocking her for her concise criticism of Tommy Ross's poem.
King says he based the character of Carrie on a couple girls he knew growing up. I feel like everyone knew a girl like this at some point. They were odd looking. They never said the right thing, and even if they did say the right thing they said it in the wrong way. They might have smelled a little off, not offensively so, but maybe like that girl in Juno who allegedly smelled like soup. Maybe you never had the chipmunk viciousness of Nancy Allen going after the poor girl, but let's be honest, you probably exchanged a few meaningful, mocking glances at her expense. You didn't invite her out for a frappaccino with all the other girls. Whatever.
Lucky for you she wasn't telekinetic like Carrie. And she probably didn't have a religious nut for a mother who locked her in a closet and forced her to pray for her salvation from her 'dirty pillows.' (She deserves more than a parenthetical remark, but this is already too long so I'll just say that Piper Laurie is hysterically terrifying in this.) So you understand why Carrie is so ill-adjusted. She never really had a chance. However, that knowledge doesn't totally negate the fact that Carrie is somewhat repellant. On the one hand, she's so vulnerable you can't help feeling for her and to a certain extent, rooting for her when she goes on her prom killing spree. On the other hand, she's so vulnerable it borders on irritating. You want Vincent Cassel to swoop in just like he did in 'Black Swan' and hiss in that scathingly French way, "Don't be so fucking weak!"
I have a friend who thinks that 'The Descent' was an allegory for menstruation. I don't know. Maybe. He made a pretty convincing case. I forget the details. 'Carrie' might not be an allegory for menstruation, but in a way it does come full circle from where menstruation is the starting point. In the first scene, Carrie gets her period in the shower after gym class and freaks out because she doesn't know what a period is. She's holding up her hand that's covered in blood, reaching out desperately to the other girls in hysterics, thinking she's dying. They, of course, respond by throwing tampons at her until she's huddled, naked and crying, in the corner of the shower. In the prom scene, she's covered in blood again, this time head to toe. But instead of cowering in a corner getting tampons thrown at her, she turns the table on everyone and starts throwing shit at them. Except instead of throwing tampons, she throws live electrical wiring and large pieces of wall...and she does in with her mind. Take that, motherfuckers.
My rambling, semi-coherent point is, in the beginning of the movie she 'becomes a woman' (yeesh) in the purely anatomical-dopey-homespun-"Auntie Flo came to town" sense. But she remains a fragile girl for the most part, even as she attempts to lay down the law a little with her mother. At the end, she experiences a sort of baptism through blood that allows her to unleash the best within and make full use of her telekinetic abilities to take vengeance upon the entire school body that had tormented her for all those years. In other words, she becomes the crazy she-devil that her mother and a large chunk of medieval to modern society had warned her about. The rampaging, blood-soaked monster that is a menstruating woman. DePalma being DePalma, I suspect he's riffing off this antiquated (yet still somehow highly prevalent) conceit.
There's a wonderful nihilistic twist to the proceedings. The fact is, the school body had actually started to accept her just prior to the bloody prank, which, as we know, was perpetrated solely by Nancy Allen and John Travolta and their little minions. Amy Irving had gone out of her way to be nice to her by letting her boyfriend take her to the prom because she felt bad about the whole tampon-throwing incident. The boyfriend was a pretty stand-up guy himself and seemed to be enjoying the evening in a non-condescending way. People complimented her on her dress. They clapped happily when she was elected prom queen. Man, things could have turned out okay for Carrie White. She would have moved out of her mom's house after graduation, gotten a couple roommates, started exploring herself sexually, maybe gotten a job as a paralegal or something. She still would have used her powers, but to do things like close the blinds and summon the TV remote.
But just as this future was in sight, that bucket of pig's blood got dumped on her head and it all went to hell. Carrie hears her mother's voice in her head screeching "They're all gonna laugh at you! They're all gonna laugh at you!" And they are laughing, but I don't think it's really at her. They're shocked into silence when the blood drops on her. They only start laughing when her date gets knocked out by the falling bucket. There's a reason slapstick is the broadest form of comedy. It cuts across all cultures and age groups and high school social cliques. But no one had time to explain the finer points of Laurel and Hardy to Carrie before she took it personally. She probably thought it was some cruel, elaborate prank a la 'She's All That.' They'd all been playing a psychological game with her and the entire school was in on it, building her up to her grand moment (which DePalma plays out in exquisitely prolonged fashion) before cutting her down in the worst way possible. If this actually had been the case, then this scene would have been another bloody tale of exploitative revenge where you could throw popcorn at the screen and fist pump. But the truth is, it was all kind of a misunderstanding.
I'm ending this blog post the same way DePalma ended 'Carrie' because I have no originality and I get lazy after all this damn writing.
...
Boom! I guess you lose the shock element when it's just a picture. Because when Sissy Spacek's hand (and yes it really was Sissy's hand) grabbed Amy Irving, I jumped out of my own skin.
And finally...DePalma apparently has no originality either as this scene was directly inspired (by his own admission) by Deliverance.
(..jk Mr. DePalma I still worship the ground you walk on.)
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