CARRIE A film review by Andrew Hicks Copyright 1998 Andrew Hicks
(1976) **1/2 (out of four)
I'm convinced CARRIE has become regarded as a classic merely because it depicts what everyone would like to do -- go to the prom with the best-looking person in high school, then kill all the students and teachers with your mind. Well, I wouldn't have minded it at MY senior prom...
CARRIE set the stage for most future adaptations of Stephen King books -- cut most of the plot out, melodramatize the rest and fill it with B-grade actors. This isn't always the case; for every "Starsky and Hutch" star in a vampire flick, there's a Nicholson yelling, "Here's Johnny" or, here, John Travolta slaughtering a pig. Usually, though, King's novels don't translate well to screen, as in this threadbare tale of a misunderstood teenager who just happens to be telepathic.
The title character is played by Sissy Spacek, who is probably one of the strangest looking actresses in movie history. In the famous opening sequence, she's in the locker room shower after gym class, scrubbing away at her pert breasts, when she gets her period. It scares the crap out of her, this unwarranted blood flow (those last three words would be a good name for a punk band, by the way), so she goes running through the locker room. Naked and screaming, blood on her hands. I'd say that's a good way to never, ever be popular again.
We soon find out why young Carrie is so shocked. The principal and gym coach send her home, where she encounters her Crazy Christian mom (Piper Laurie). There are a lot of religious whackos in Stephen King movies, but Laurie creates one of the most memorable, house full of candles and decked out with a prayer closet that has a giant cross-bound Christ. Mom tells Carrie her period is surely a sign of sexual sin ("First comes the blood, then the men") and locks her in the closet.
It's no wonder she's ostracized at school, but it gets worse after the gym coach punishes the other girls for pelting her with tampons. The tampon pelting (another good name for a punk group) earns them a special after-school gym practice, where they have to jiggle their way through jumping jacks and push-ups. Revenge is the first thing on the minds of the popular crowd; one of them orders her Frampton-looking boyfriend to ask Carrie to the prom.
No surprise, the boyfriend ends up with an appreciation for Carrie after she makes herself up for the first time, damning her mother's advice through a little telepathy. Without her mental abilities, there would have been no chance for retaliation after the horrific prank pulled on her at the prom. It may seem an overreaction to eliminate your entire school, but then again, there's really no proper etiquette for what to do when someone dumps pigs' blood on you at your prom. Someone should write Miss Manners about that, I guess.
CARRIE is certainly one of the more memorable Stephen King adaptations and, as the first, worth watching. Still, there's not much to the movie. The "creepy girl gets humiliated, peers laugh, get in trouble and decide to get revenge, after which creepy girl gets better revenge" plot could be told in a "Tales From the Crypt" episode. The climax, filmed through a blood-red filter and split-screen, is more hokey than scary viewed 21 years later. We don't see much motivation behind the people who ally themselves with Carrie -- the boyfriend and the gym coach -- only capsulizations. I haven't read the book, but there has to be more to the story than that.
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