Carrie (1976)

 

Carrie

This weekend my wife joined me to watch “Carrie”. This was only the second time she watched a List movie with me, but she is a lot more into horror movies than me and likes the remake. Neither of us had ever seen the 76 version by Brian De Palma and we were curious to see how that was holding up against the later version.

“Carrie” is one of the famous horror stories and one of the earliest from Stephen King. It is about a high school girl, Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), who is an outcast at school. Her life and sanity has been pretty much ruined by her zealously religious mother (Piper Laurie) and in school she is the shy weirdo everybody picks on. This we see a good example of right in the opening where Carrie is getting her first (but late) period in the gym shower. She panics as nothing had prepared her for this and is in return mocked and ridiculed by her peers. Only her gym teacher can see this is wrong and stands up for her.

It is prom time and one of the girls, Sue (Amy Irving), wants to make amends and asks her boyfriend Tommy (William Katt) to ask Carrie to the prom. Reluctantly she goes. Chris (Nancy Allen) is an entitled bimbo who did not take well to the penalty for harassing Carrie. Her vengeance includes arranging Carrie to be crowned Prom Queen and then get doused in pig’s blood. To this end she enrolls her boyfriend Billy (John Travolta). Unfortunately for everybody Carrie has mysterious superpowers and faced with ultimate humiliation she rains vengeance on everybody.

The core of the story of course is a victim pushed too far. I am thinking that 20-30 years later this could well have been a school shooting rather than witchcraft. In that case very few would have sympathized with the mass murder and destruction, but the interesting thing with “Carrie” is that we do, or at least I do, sympathized with her and cheer her on in her rampage. She becomes a monster but a righteous monster.

There is the religious motif, which ruins her, but also prepares the ground for her. It makes her see the world in that strange light of intense religious indoctrination. This is then closely linked to the sex and blood theme, the unclean woman with her period and the special powers ancient beliefs gave menstruating women. Sex, blood, religion and school harassment. Somewhere in that mix it is not difficult to understand why Carrie blows a fuse.

No doubt this is a great horror movie, but if I should dare to criticize it, then I do not really see the need for her magic powers. They seem unnecessary for the story, and it would not have been that difficult to have found a mundane way to wreak havoc on her tormenters. I do not think it would have been less juicy, but I guess there needed to be a link between sex, blood and witchcraft.

My wife’s verdict was that the remake is better. It is certainly clearer in its message. Only the bad guys die there, whereas the original Carrie makes no distinction. Everybody goes down with her, friend and foe. I am not certain which version I prefer. Sissy Spacek was pretty awesome in her bloody dress and with bulging eyes.

A solid recommendation from me.