Carrie (1976)

Carrie might be a film about high school, but it wasperhaps Brian De Palma's first completely mature film, at least equaling thenearly-concurrent release Obsession in gothic pathos. Based on StephenKing's first novel, famously written in near-poverty as the future bestsellingmogul tried to make ends meet by teaching English to high school kids, Carrieturns a fairly contemptuous source text (in the book, Carrie is nearly as unappealingas her tormentors) into, as Pauline Kael said, a "teasing, lyricalthriller." It brought both De Palma and King into mainstream visibility,kick-started the careers of nearly everyone involved (or, in Piper Laurie'scase, provided an unexpected return to form playing horror cinema's ultimatemom from hell), won two acting Oscar nominations and earned fantastic reviewsand word-of-mouth. Surely this represents De Palma's first great selling out,right?

Absolutely not. Carrie, a profoundly sad horror comedy about adumped-on, telekinetic outcast whose late-blooming menstrual cycle and sexualmaturation react violently with her fundamentalist mother's psychologicalchastity belt, is the film in which De Palma discovered that his destructivesense of humor could be synthesized with his graceful visual sensibilities in amanner that would accentuate both. The linearity of King's storyline (actually,the linearity of screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen's version of King's novel,which was told via a fussy collage of news articles, testimony, and Reader'sDigest memoirs) has the preordained momentum of Greek mythology; some ofthe shots of a pig blood-soaked Carrie standing above her peers at the fatefulprom were lifted from the theatrical performance De Palma shot of Dionysus.
But De Palma's technique reaches a new volatility here. Half Phantom ofthe Paradise, half Obsession, Carrie is hysterical inevery sense of the word. Laurie said while filming that she took the entirefilm to be a satire, even claiming it was difficult for her to film herperverse death scene—being pinned to a doorway by flying knives until sheresembles the Christ-as-pincushion shrine she keeps in Carrie's punishmentcloset—without busting out in laughter. She later admitted to beingdisappointed that the film wasn't inherently a comedy, not realizing it was.Maybe the comedy isn't always as broad as Mrs. White heaving and moaning inecstasy as her daughter gives her the vaguely homo-incestuous gift of martyrdom,but it's always there, and usually bittersweet.
The scene in which Carrie realizes she likes Tommy Ross, for instance. DePalma begins by showing Carrie sitting in class with pencil eagerly poised totranscribe Tommy's poem as their tweedy teacher reads it aloud to the class.The camera swirls around to show the entire class slacking, yawning, exchangingjocular smirks to indicate they know the poem's true author was Tommy'sgirlfriend Sue. Tommy ends up in severe close up while a split diopter shotputs Carrie in the background behind Tommy's impressive blond mane. "It'sbeautiful," she murmers, her hair like bundled hay in front of her face.Even the teacher piles on, sensing the emotional vulnerability as anopportunity to attain camaraderie with his indifferent students. "Yousuck," Tommy says, even more covertly than Carrie, before the teacher'srequest for a repeat begets the response "I said 'aw shucks.'"Tommy's chiseled features melt into a triumphant cackle. A perfectly realizedscene in the midst of a hundred (many of which have little to do with thehorror of mind-controlled fire and everything to do with the horror of teenageresponsibility), Tommy's social triumph under the wire stands in mockery ofCarrie's inability to do the same. And when Tommy silently demands "What'sthat?!" in slow motion after the bucket tumbles down on Carrie, thefulfillment of that disparity comes to pass and the resulting inferno must becarried out.
Whether intimate or flamboyant, Carrie's style is insistently sensual:Carrie running her finger along the definition of "telekinesis" insuper close up, Miss Collins's gym class doing detention calisthenics to theaccompaniment of a blaxploitation-esque "Baby Elephant Walk," Carrieand Tommy swirling in rapture courtesy De Palma's Tilt-O-Whirl cam, PinoDonaggio's tempestuous chamber music leading up to the bucket drop, Carrieseeing red in kaleidoscope as her sanity burns. It's as passionate, erotic andclumsy as the descriptor "sensual" implies. Maybe because it's the firstDe Palma film that it could be said belongs decisively to women. (Those Oscarnominations don't lie, and it's a shame both Spacek and Laurie lost to thevirgin and whore in Network's boys club.) The would-berevealingly-titled Sisters may seem a volley between MargotKidder, Jennifer Salt, and an insane woman with her can of Lysol, but all threeare tamed and controlled by Kidder's effete creep husband. Carrie, onthe other hand, is frighteningly feminine, a slap in the face of those chargingDe Palma with misogyny as fierce as the one Betty Buckley whales across NancyAllen's face.