Poor William Katt Gets Killed Again

Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) & Tommy Ross (William Katt) at the senior prom in Brian De Palma's 'Carrie' (1976)

Have you ever been bullied at school? At the playground? At work, or in your own home? We all have at 1 time or some other. How did it feel afterward? Like crap, right?

Carrie White is a lonely, awkward teenager. She doesn't fit in with the rest of the oversupply, especially the girls. She can't even play a decent game of volleyball — that's made clear from the start. Her mean classmates at Bates High Schoolhouse taunt her relentlessly for her failings. In this case, they badmouth and ridicule Carrie for her clumsiness in losing the game. Bullying is an everyday attribute of this loftier schooler'south lifestyle, as it was in many schools (to this day, fifty-fifty).

"Carrie White eats shit!" is the student body's rallying cry. They write these words on the inside doors of the gymnasium, which a maintenance worker tries diligently to wipe off.

After the volleyball game has ended, the scene changes to the high school'southward locker room and shower facilities. Most of the girls are in the nude, their femininity exposed to each other as the most natural, lighthearted thing in the world. Just not for Carrie White, who is out of their line of sight. She's alone in the shower — an impossibly huge shower stall for the existent world, exaggerated beyond all normal boundaries to accentuate the distance betwixt her and the other girls.

Carrie (played by 24-year-old Sissy Spacek) is enjoying some downwardly time, something she'southward rarely been immune to experience over the class of her young life. The ho-hum-move camera work focuses primarily on her hand as it reaches out for a bar of lather. She uses the soap bar to massage her body in a about pleasant, intimate mode. The music surges every bit Carrie cups her breasts in her hands. She likes the feeling it gives her, as she throws her head back in ecstasy. The water from the shower head splashes over her face and shoulders, soothing her bruised ego every bit much as it washes the sweat out of her hair.

Reaching down to her private parts, the viewer is made aware that Carrie takes pleasance in her own body, an all-too brief exercise in self-discovery. Naturally, this bit of business leads to what may exist her very first orgasm. We see her manus brushing up and down her inner thigh, which borders on the voyeuristic but does not invite a puerile involvement from the viewing audience. Notwithstanding, it leaves no dubiety every bit to what'south happening.

Minutes later, blood comes gushing forth onto Carrie's paw and down her leg. Carrie takes firsthand notice of the situation and reacts in horror at the sight. She has no thought what is happening to her.

Carrie is scared out of her wits at the sight of her ain blood

In a panic, she rushes from the shower seeking help from her fellow seniors. But instead of assistance and comfort, the girls in the locker laugh at and tease Carrie for her cluelessness. They corner Carrie in i of the stalls and throw white towels and tampons at her crouching form. Hearing the mayhem, the fitness teacher Ms. Collins (Betty Buckley) pushes her manner into the oversupply and bends downwards to calm the hysterical girl. Ms. Collins slaps her hard across the face (there is a lot of slapping throughout the motion-picture show by both boys and girls, but by and large female to female person — an early example of self-misogyny?) until Carrie gets a agree of herself.

What actually gets their attention is when the overhead lighting suddenly breaks apart. Collins, along with the other girls — and especially the heartless school principal, Mr. Morton (who keeps calling her "Cassie" past mistake) — cannot comprehend why Carrie's had no knowledge of bones female bodily functions. She's given an early dismissal sideslip, which is tantamount to having her emotional and concrete trauma dismissed as modest distractions.

Carrie's body language reveals more about her predicament than anything else. Shy and reserved, her long cherry-blonde hair combed straight down the sides of her face, which hide her raw-boned features, Carrie wears a shapeless, tiresome-gray outfit. She does this partly out of her mother's puritanical dress lawmaking and Carrie's own want not to attract attention to herself.

Her dress is equally formless and drab equally her life has been up to this betoken. Her home, a rundown 2-storey shack that's upwardly for sale, is in desperate desire of a paint job. The chips and splits in the firm's framework signify a life that's not at all what it's "cracked up" to be.

Seeking the shelter of a mother'south arms, Carrie receives nothing but physical abuse and more than holy-roller zealotry from her religious fanatic of a single parent, Margaret (extra Piper Laurie, in a frizzy fear wig). Mom spouts pseudo-Biblical passages as a mode of keeping Carrie in line. And Margaret's solution to her girl'due south queries every bit to why she never told her virtually her monthly menstrual cycle is to lock her upward in a hall closet and demand that she ask forgiveness for her "sins." Poor child …

As for the offenders, i.e., those nasty girls in the locker room, they are threatened with pause and refusal to participate in the senior prom. Notwithstanding, one of the girls, Sue Snell (played by a immature Amy Irving), has a change of heart and honestly tries to make amends. She asks her one-time boyfriend, a local jock named Tommy Ross (William Katt, in thick blonde tresses), to take Carrie to the prom in her stead. The suspicious Ms. Collins questions the couple when she learns from Carrie of Tommy's plans. They insist it's all on the level, but Collins remains unconvinced.

Earlier, in Carrie's English course, the teacher Mr. Fromm (Sydney Lassick) reads a love poem purportedly written by Tommy. This scene, which one can tell had a huge influence on the work of writer-director Yard. Night Shyamalan (see The Sixth Sense, in particular the episode with Cole Sear and his teacher, "Stuttering Stanley"), is shot in such a way every bit to frame an extreme close-upward of Tommy's face at far left, placed directly in forepart of another student, followed past Carrie's deplorable, downturned features at back and to the right. All 3 are in deep focus.

Tommy (Katt) listens to Carrie's compliment in English class

Mr. Fromm seeks the class'southward opinion about the verse form, which, to the surprise of everyone (especially Tommy) Carrie volunteers a demure response: "It's beautiful." This has a positive consequence on the jock, although at the prom he admits he did not write the poem. Withal, Tommy thanks Carrie for praising his piece. In fact, she was the but one who did.

Meanwhile, another troublemaker, Chris Hargenson (Nancy Allen), has ideas of her own. Chris refuses to take her penalisation, then she hatches a plot with her none-too-bright boyfriend, Baton Nolan (John Travolta, before donning the white accommodate in Sat Night Fever), to get even with Carrie and Ms. Collins for being denied access to the prom.

That loftier schoolhouse prom, withal, will turn out to be the virtually "memorable" gathering in the sleepy town's history. The flashing lights, the ruby-on-blue color scheme, the prepare pattern, and even the music (past Italian composer Pino Donaggio, in the best tradition of Bernard Herrmann'due south score for Psycho) foreshadow a series of supernatural events that will exist the downfall of practically everyone associated with them, including Carrie herself and the meddlesome Margaret and Ms. Collins. The tension is stretched about to the breaking point equally the slow-motility walk to the podium (calling to listen the music and mood of the shower scene at the starting time) drags out the inevitable climax advertising absurdum.

Carrie gets drenched in pig'southward blood at the senior prom

Director Brian De Palma and screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen's 1976 film adaptation of horror-writer Stephen King's fourth novel Carrie, from 1973, while deviating partially from its original conception, really enhances this coming-of-age tale by concentrating on Carrie and her obsessively-minded mother, Margaret. We larn, during the course of the picture, that Carrie was conceived by a drunken ex-begetter, in a vehement rape of her mother that permanently turned Margaret off to the sexual act (in particular, to penetration). That led directly to mom's preoccupation with religion and her use and abuse of the showtime woman, Eve, equally the architect of original sin (a favorite theme of director Alfred Hitchcock's).

Sissy Spacek, near the start of a 40-year moving-picture show career, is flawlessly cast every bit the wimpy only telekinetic Carrie. With her gaunt visage and lissome torso shape, ugly duckling Spacek is introspective and vulnerable in the picture's beginning half, who is then magically transformed into a swan by the 2d. It'south a reversal of the age-old Cinderella story where, instead of a glass slipper, Carrie is regaled with laughter (in her mind'south middle, we assume) and for which she exacts a swift and terrifying revenge.

As her female parent, Piper Laurie is utterly frightening. Her demise is a archetype comeuppance: with her arms held up between an archway by kitchen utensils, her body is pierced (cheers to Carrie'south listen-angle abilities) with knives and other sharp instruments in a St. Sebastian-like pose. Martyrdom comes to Margaret in a most disarming way. Bookending Carrie'southward first orgasm from before in the moving-picture show, nosotros see Margaret getting her jollies out of finally being "penetrated" for keeps. Her writhing decease rattle, which sounds similar extended moaning and groaning, is pure camp just nevertheless constructive.

Although the story takes place in New England, she and Spacek speak in a perceptible Southern twang. We wouldn't be surprised if they were in one case expelled from their identify of origin for their antisocial habits. For a horror flick, the flick is laden with nuances more than subtle than one would look in your average "horny teenager movie," as the late critic Roger Ebert once termed these pictures.

A girls' best friend is her female parent? Margaret White (Piper Laurie) in a prayerful mood

I first saw Carrie in the theater when information technology came out back in 1976-77. I was impressed by the tautness and compact quality of its screenplay that emphasized character development and plot over special FX. Yes, there's gore in that elaborate prom sequence, merely again information technology's non what one would expect. Carrie gets a bucket of pig'south blood spilled on her (telegraphed beforehand, we should point out, by that initial scene in the girl's shower!), too as on her revealing, self-made party dress. And the tuxedoed Tommy Ross gets knocked unconscious by that same bucket (in the novel, he too is bathed in the blood and instantly killed).

Seeing the moving picture again after, oh, 40 or then years, I proceed to praise Carrie as an exemplary horror pic, one of the all-time screen versions of a Stephen King novel anywhere. More than that, this is an exceptionally well-made characteristic. Director De Palma, who came from the same generation that spawned such filmmakers every bit Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Joe Dante, and John Milius, has been unfairly neglected for his by efforts non simply in the horror and psychological thriller categories (Sisters, Body Double, Blow-Out, Dressed to Impale, Obsession, Raising Cain) but for his financially lucrative ventures (Scarface, The Untouchables, Mission Impossible). Though not as highly touted as some of the to a higher place-named artisans, De Palma nonetheless has been widely acknowledged as a chief of his craft.

While it's true his earlier features were oftentimes considered bastardizations of better piece of work by others (some say his "adoration" for Hitchcock led him to outright false, the then-termed "sincerest grade of flattery"), in the case of Carrie De Palma'due south genuine power for getting the audience to identify rapidly with the protagonist literally carried the film through to its unexpectedly shocking finish — a conclusion that today has get a standard horror platitude. Back so, in 1976, it was a bold and fresh move.

Sissy Spacek equally Carrie with director Brian De Palma

Few directors from his perspective, working in any genre, have and so successfully captured on screen the awkwardness and alienation that teenagers feel when faced with unsettling changes to their makeup. Indeed, body horror as a moving picture genre has long been the province of Canadian filmmaker, actor, and author David Cronenberg, whose own series of nightmarish variations on this theme (The Brood, Scanners, The Fly, Expressionless Ringers, Naked Luncheon, K. Butterfly, et al.) have outflanked De Palma'southward output by a gene of 10.

In that sense, and in many others, I've gained renewed respect and tolerance for De Palma'south brand of filmmaking than I take ever had for Mr. Cronenberg's. Mind you, it's a personal matter with me, and not meant to undermine the talents of either of these fine artists who go along to work at the absolute elevation of their course. Along with Roman Polanski's atmospheric Rosemary'due south Babe (1968), William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973), Spielberg'due south Jaws (1975), and Richard Donner'southward The Omen (1976), De Palma's Carrie is a welcome add-on to any horror buff's expanding library shelf of shockers.

Experience these classics for their superb visual style and inventive casting and craftsmanship, say, around the end of Oct. During Halloween, or anytime, for that matter. You'll be pleased and surprised at how well they have held up over time.

Copyright © 2022 by Josmar F. Lopes

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