CARRIE. (1976) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

CARRIE. (1976) DIRECTED BY BRIAN DE PALMA.

BASED ON THE BOOK BY STEPHEN KING.

MUSIC BY PINO DONAGGIO.

STARRING SISSY SPACEK, PIPER LAURIE, JOHN TRAVOLTA, NANCY ALLEN, WILLIAM KATT, AMY IRVING AND BETTY BUCKLEY.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘I can see your dirty pillows…’

Oh boy. This one is a corker. A genuine, bonafide honest-to-goodness corker of a horror movie. A high school that gives new meaning to the phrase ‘first period,’ if I may be flippant for a moment. A lot of peeps consider this to be one of the finest Stephen King book-to-film adaptations, and I definitely agree.

I love the story behind its being King’s first novel, which he decided wasn’t any good and so he threw it in the trash, where it was fortunately rescued by his devoted wife Tabitha. Imagine if she hadn’t found it, if it had really ended up in the back of a garbage disposal truck! The world of horror writing would be a poorer place.

Anyway, Sissy Spacek plays the eponymous Carrie White, the plain, poorly-dressed sixteen-year-old daughter of a religious nutter of a single mom. Piper Laurie plays the mom, and both women were nominated for Academy Awards for their parts in CARRIE; Sissy Spacek for Best Actress and Piper Laurie for Best Supporting Actress. Strangely enough, Piper Laurie died only two weeks ago at the tender age of ninety-one. May she rest in peace.

Carrie’s crazy Momma, Margaret White, thinks that sex and anything to do with the human body is dirty, so when Carrie gets her first period in the showers at school, she not unnaturally thinks she’s dying. She freaks out big-time.

The girls at school have a right old laugh at her expense. So much so that poor Carrie is left terrorised and traumatised and has to be rescued by Miss Collins, the gym teacher. The angry teacher puts the offending girls in detention and even puts a question mark over their upcoming prom, for which the nasty teenage brats naturally blame Carrie.

My adult daughter and I re-watched the film on Halloween Night, 2023, and we are both agreed on the following: teenage girls conscious of their bodies do not wander naked and un-self-consciously around the school changing-rooms, no matter how much men might like to think of them so doing. It’s purely a shared fantasy on the part of the male writers, heh-heh-heh.

Like the way guys think that women have pillow fights in their underwear while on sleepovers with each other. We just don’t do it. Oh no, guys, don’t cry, please don’t cry. I was only messing with ye. Of course we bounce around in our underwear and hit each other with pillows when we have sleepovers. And then we whip off our bras and panties and dance the can-can.   

Anyway, one of the girls, Sue Snell, develops a bit of a conscience about the whole ‘first period/ plug it up’ thing and makes her boyfriend, class heart-throb Tommy Ross, invite Carrie to the prom in her, Sue’s, place. Carrie is flabbergasted but thrilled when Tommy, blessed with a full head of flowing golden curls, issues his invitation.

Momma, however, goes ape-s**t at the news and starts carrying on something terrible, but Carrie sticks to her guns. She tells Momma straight that she’s going to the prom and that’s that, even refusing to let the crazy lady lock her in her darkened ‘prayer-closet’ with only a freaky-ass statue of Jesus for company. You go, girl. Finally, Carrie is standing up to her awful mother, who clearly has experienced sexual trauma in her lifetime that has turned her into the hysterical, repressed woman she is today.

Carrie and Tommy finally make it to the prom, but things are not as they appear. The nastiest of the bitches- there’s no better word for these malicious harpies- in Carrie’s class has planned to ruin Carrie’s night with the help of her lowlife boyfriend, played by a young John Travolta. I won’t tell you how they do it, but let’s just say that their actions push an already strung-out Carrie over the edge…

By the way, did I mention that Carrie has telekinesis, the power to move objects with the force of her mind…? If I didn’t, I should have. It’s kind of the point of the whole film. When her dream prom night turns into a nightmare, Carrie uses this power on a scale on which she’s never used it before. The nasty little prom queens get a whole lot more than they could ever have bargained for. I reckon they’re sorry they ever messed with poor little Carrie White.

Just when you think the film’s over, Carrie goes home to Momma, who by now has become completely deranged. The final scenes are shocking and powerful. Then, when you think the film’s over again, there’s one more little twist to enjoy before the credits finally roll.

I’d like to hope that horror maestro Stephen King, on whose phenomenally successful book the film is based, was happy when he saw this movie adaptation of his work. I know I was, anyway. It’s a film about bullying and about revenging oneself against the bullies.

When the bullies are your school peers, it’s bad enough, but when your biggest bully is your parent, and your only parent at that, things can become very tricky. It takes a lot of courage on Carrie’s part to stand up to her mother, who genuinely believes that Carrie’s magic is sent from the devil. It’s a film we can all learn a few lessons from; that’s if we’re done laughing at Tommy’s crowning glory…