CARRIE

This horror classic from Brian de Palma is so good I felt I had to rewatch it even though, as someone who hates bullying, I find some scenes hard to watch.    

After a short scene that establishes that Carrie (Sissy Spacek) is useless at sports and derided by her classmates, we switch unexpectedly to a borderline soft porn sequence wherein the camera pans lovingly across the girls' changing room as they move in slow motion in varying states of undress.  

This lulls us into a false sense of security before the girls bully Carrie unmercifully when she freaks out as a result of experiencing her first period - it's a brutal scene to watch.

Carrie's mother hadn't forewarned her daughter about periods and the like, because she (the mother) is a religious fanatic who regards anything to do with sex as sinful.  Poor Carrie's homelife seems to consist of being on the receiving end of diatribes about sinful boys, and whenever she offends her mother (a frequent occurrence one imagines) her punishment is to be sent into a small closet/shrine to pray for forgiveness.  

As if Carrie doesn't have enough to contend with it seems that the onset of puberty has coincided with the emergence of telekinetic powers which can erupt at any moment, especially if she becomes stressed or angry.  

Besides the mother, the only adult character of any significance is the gym teacher Miss Collins, who is so appalled at the bullying incident in the changing room that she imposes a harsh punishment on the class, physical workouts every day after school.  Failure to attend means being banned from attending the Prom, which is coming up soon.   

Even so, one of the girls, Chris (played very effectively by Nancy Allen) does walk out and gets banned.  Being thoroughly obnoxious and self-centred Chris naturally blames Carrie for this state of affairs.  

On the other hand one of the other girls, Sue, feels guilty about how Carrie was bullied and persuades her boyfriend Tommy to take Carrie to the Prom.

Thus the stage is set (in every sense) for the prolonged suspense sequence at the Prom, which takes up most of the second half of the film.  We are on tenterhooks because we know going into it that Chris, with the help of her emptyheaded boyfriend, Billy (an early role for John Travolta), has an evil plan to ruin Carrie's big night.

Things start off gently enough though, because rather surprisingly Tommy and Carrie are having a good time.  There's a nice interlude when Miss Collins gets to chat with Carrie.  Tommy and Carrie share some good moments at their table, before they get to dance together, which is beautifully shot.

These scenes are heartbreakingly sad on a rewatch, knowing what is about to come.

From the moment that everyone starts voting for the King and Queen of the Prom, de Palma ratchets up the tension.  

There's a marvellous 2-minute continuous take, which starts at Carrie's table and which ends with a crane shot looking down on the bucket filled with pig's blood resting precariously above the stage, before zooming back in on Carrie's table.

Sue, who has snuck in to see how Tommy and Carrie are getting along, has the opportunity to avert the impending disaster but Miss Collins, thinking Sue is up to no good, yanks her away, after which all hell breaks loose, as Carrie gets covered in blood, hallucinates that everyone is laughing at her, and then unleashes the full range of her telekinetic powers, killing virtually everyone present.

It's a weird irony that it is Miss Collins, who tries throughout the film to help Carrie, who is inadvertently the cause of what happens, first through her heavy-handed punishment of the class, and then by stopping Sue from intervening.  Even so, she doesn't deserve the death that Carrie hands out, being crushed by a basketball backboard.

Chris and Billy, on the other hand fully deserve their death when Carrie causes their car to go out of control and to burst into flames.  

Whilst we're still trying to get over all that we're then into a grotesque confrontation between Carrie and her mother.  All poor Carrie wants is some love but instead mother, now totally convinced that her daughter has been taken over by Satan, tries to kill her.  Inevitably it is the mother who ends up dead, being impaled by flying knives and ending up in a pose that replicates that of the statue of Saint Sebastian in Carrie's 'prayer closet'.  

It's a much more cinematic death than Carrie simply stopping her mother's heart, which is what happens in the source novel by Stephen King.  

When I first watched this film in the last 1970s at a college film society, the final scene had everyone jumping out of their seats.  Second time around it still comes across as an effective and neat way to round things off, even if it has been copied many times since.

This picture doesn't have a big budget but it doesn't matter because de Palma is firing on all cylinders, and the cast give uniformly fine performances.  Spacek, and Piper Laurie (as her mother), were both worthy recipients of Oscar nominations.

RATING: ✓✓✓ Absolutely Fabulous