Carrie (1976) [Pt. 2]

[Welcome to Part Two of our discussion regarding Brian De Palma's filmed version of Carrie. In the previous edition we discussed some of the changes De Palma made to the source material, along with some of the casting and directorial choices made along the way. But it seems like we only scratched the surface in our discussion of this film, so follow along as we finish up talking about that famous finale (both of them!), Brian De Palma's career in general, and Aaron demonstrate his ignorance of Judeo-Christian beliefs.]

Rik: We can get more into the actors and the screenplay or score and any other element of this film all we want, but when it comes right down to it, the real reason this film is as well-remembered as it is now, is the involvement of its hugely famous director. This film is prime Brian De Palma, and its success is, in my opinion, pretty much because he simply kills it throughout this film. I am saying this knowing full well that I am not as big a fan of De Palma’s as some people might think. I pretty much closed the book on being interested in his films following Carlito’s Way (which I loved) in 1993. Yes, I know he directed Mission: Impossible as his next film three years later, but I had to look up his credits to even remind myself of that. That is how far off my radar De Palma has fallen, and I watch at least 500 films a year on average (a low average, that is). I have not even seen De Palma’s last two films, though I did watch the four that followed Mission: Impossible, up through The Black Dahlia, which I found immensely disappointing given that I have been obsessed with that murder case for much of my adult life.

Luckily, Carrie falls right into that golden De Palma age (in my opinion), a period that runs from about 1972-1987: Sisters, The Phantom of the Paradise, The Fury, Home Movies, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Body Double. The Untouchables. I left out a couple of films on that chronological list for that period: Obsession (1976), because I did not see it until a few months ago (I felt it was more intriguing than it was successful as a film), and Scarface (1983), because I am actually not a fan of what I feel is a greatly overrated film (thanks to MTV Cribs for that!), but I will never say it is uninteresting or worthy of appreciation on certain levels. Oh yeah, and Wise Guys (1986), because apart from Dead Heat, Joe Piscopo roles don’t age all that well.

It’s funny, because I have recently begun talking to fellow film fans on the internet in various groups who all seem to worship every single frame De Palma has shot. I recognize that he has made some really cool films and a few truly great ones, and I used to be a drumbeater for De Palma around the same age as the guys of whom I am speaking. But I am sorry, not everything turns to gold once he films it. He has some real duds, and it will take some incredible heavy lifting on someone’s part to convince me that Mission to Mars or The Bonfire of the Vanities are worthwhile efforts.

Aaron, before we continue on with more Carrie, where are you in the Brian De Palma Appreciation Society?

Aaron: Well, it’s hard to say, actually. I haven’t seen a lot of his movies, including some of the big ones that you list as favorites, but of the films I have seen I enjoy most of them. Several I count as personal favorites, or at least films I return to frequently. The Untouchables, Carrie, The Fury, Raising Cain, and above all Phantom of the Paradise, which I adore. There are also several films in his oeuvre that I am somewhat less than enthralled with. Like you, I don’t get much enjoyment from Scarface or the first Mission: Impossible film. Mission to Mars was a film so dreadfully awful that when some friends and I went to see it theatrically, it prompted one of my buddies to say “that was so bad I want to punch someone” as the credits began to roll. And then there are some films that fall somewhere in the middle, as I tend to find something interesting concealed within almost everything he’s done. Take The Black Dahlia, which disappointed you, while I found the operatic explosion of gothic melodrama and grand guignol violence during the finale to be quite thrilling (even if the 90 minutes leading up to it were a tad dull). Or Passion, a somewhat recent remake of a French film about a professional rivalry with lesbian overtones. Amazingly, De Palma deemphasizes the sexuality in the film, which is completely against his nature, yet the film also includes one of his signature bravura split-screen sequences, and that made the film worthwhile for me.

So yes, I guess you could say I’m a fan of De Palma in general, though not one of those people on discussion boards you mention, who worship every frame he films. I feel like this resurgence in critical support is a bit of a recent phenomenon with De Palma, as only a few years ago I remember reading a lot of discussions where popular opinion seemed to consider him an overrated one-trick pony, too in love with the cleverness of his own stylistic tics. Certainly his Hitchcock obsession has been the constant source of some contention, as his critics tend to view it as creative theft while his fans see it as a thrilling integration of cinematic styles. I suppose I’m in the latter camp, as it’s clear that De Palma’s occasional aping of Hitchcock is not a sign of creative bankruptcy, but the result of De Palma thoroughly internalizing the work of a master he fervently admires, and using those techniques to probe at his own obsessions.

We’ve approached the finale of this film a couple of times so far, but I think I’d like to postpone that discussion for just a little bit. There’s at least one more bit of casting and characterization that I’d like to get into, and that’s William Katt in the role of Tommy Ross, Sue Snell’s boyfriend and Carrie White’s doomed date to the prom.

At the time I first saw Carrie, I knew Katt exclusively from his television show Greatest American Hero, which I loved as a kid. Over the years I’ve always enjoyed seeing William Katt whenever he would pop up. He has a likable presence, goofy and nerdy in a blonde, all-American way. In some ways, though it’s almost as odd to see him portray the popular jock as it is to see Travolta play the bad boy greaser. It works, however, and for me it fits better than the Travolta casting, because of a few minor changes to the Ross character. In the book there’s a bit of a cypher quality to Tommy Ross, as he’s clearly a good guy, but we see him only through the eyes of others. Always in relation to either Carrie or Sue. There’s enough of an unknown element at play that after the fatal events in the novel, people debate whether Tommy was in on Chris Hargensen and Billy Nolan’s plan to humiliate Carrie. Of course, as readers we know that Tommy’s intentions were pure, but he also seems as easily led as Billy is, though in a much more decent way.

In the film version of Carrie, Tommy gets less scenes but also seems, to me, to be more fleshed out. Take the English class scene in the beginning, where the teacher is reading a poem written by Tommy Ross, while he sits and stares ahead in good natured embarrassment. When the teacher asks for criticisms, Carrie says, almost as if she doesn’t know she’s speaking aloud, “It’s beautiful.” The teacher begins to mock Carrie for not having an actual criticism, much to the general amusement of the class. The scene is framed interestingly, with Tommy Ross in closeup along the left side of the screen, while behind him we see Carrie, sitting at her desk and never once looking up from her book. She doesn’t even seem to notice the teasing, so used to it is she. But Tommy notices, and we see the good cheer drain from his face as he’s clearly bothered by the teacher’s reaction to Carrie, culminating in a muttered “you suck” which the teacher picks up on. In this early scene we’re given to understand that Tommy is a decent guy, smart and soulful, and even at this early stage he understands that Carrie is somebody special. Or at least somebody people worthy of kindness.

One other slight change in the character that I think is noteworthy; we only see Tommy and Sue together a couple of times. In the book they spend much more time together, including a couple of romantic getaways. There is a moment when Sue believes she may be pregnant with Tommy’s child, though this turns out to not be the case. In the film, however, Tommy spends much more time on screen with Carrie, and I always got the impression that there may have been some real feelings between them. Maybe not romantic feelings – Tommy was probably never going to leave Sue for Carrie – but I always felt like Tommy did have some affection for Carrie outside of just going along to appease his girlfriend. What are your thoughts on that, Rik?

Rik: I just felt he was a decent guy who, even with that, would possibly have gone along with the joke like everyone else (because that is basically what you do to get through school and even life sometimes) if it weren’t for the interference of Sue Snell. I think he understands what Sue is trying to do, even if he is a bit reticent, but once he gets into the date, I think he does start to feel something for Carrie. And I honestly think that he could possibly leave Sue for Carrie. I don’t see why it would be so out of bounds. There is the bit with the poem, and the fact that he admits that he didn’t write the poem that she liked. There is the kiss during the slow dance, and if there is a point where you have to decide whether he is playing her or not, it is that moment. When she finds out they are on the ballot for King and Queen, he is pretty open about how stupid the whole affair is, and his approach is  “why not go for it?” (the prophetic words are actually, “To the devil with false modesty”), keeping in mind that he knows nothing at all about what is being planned once Carrie is on the stage. I think Tommy is just a good dude, and honestly, as attractive as I found Amy Irving in those days, Spacek looks pretty damn gorgeous in her prom dress, and I think she looks far better than many of the girls who are mocking her at the prom. (P.J. Soles, definitely a cutie in most guy’s books, is wearing a goddamn baseball hat to the Senior Prom!) I don’t see it as a big leap to think that Tommy might actually have a thing for her, given that they did make a connection earlier in the film.

As for Katt, this was the first time he really made an impression on me in a role, as The Greatest American Hero didn’t come on TV for a few more years (in 1981). I had obviously seen him in guest roles on numerous shows, because I watched The Rookies, M*A*S*H, Kung Fu, Emergency!, and Kojak (for examples) as a kid, but except for having seen his M*A*S*H episode in reruns recently, I don’t remember him from those shows. His role in Carrie did make an impression on me, and when Hero came on, I remembered exactly where I saw him and who he played. More than Hero, I am fond of him from his role in the wacky horror-comedy House (1986). I feel Katt never really broke as huge as he should have. He was a good actor with an appealing personality, who had some pretty sharp comic timing. I still like seeing the guy when he shows up here and there. (I think the most significant recent role I remember was The Man from Earth in 2007.)

Getting back to that dance, whatever else he does in the film, De Palma really serves up a masterpiece of timing, tension, and suspense-building in the prom sequence. (First question I have: with so many people pouring into the gymnasium for the dance, how do Tommy and Carrie get such a prime parking spot, two cars from the front door?) De Palma’s use of his entire toolbelt is astounding in this sequence. The quick cutting between the multiple characters involved in Carrie’s humiliation, or the attempt to thwart it is stunning and almost hypnotic, as De Palma and editor Paul Hirsch juggle slow motion clips of Sue Snell discovering the plan and then being expelled bodily from the dance with closeups of Chris’ eyes and the licking of her lips as she plots to drop the pig’s blood, along with shots of Carrie living (for her) an almost unrecognizable and surreal fairy tale dream come true as she is crowned Queen of the Prom.

When the blood rains down and douses Carrie on the stage, the film stops cold. Except for Soles’ character, Norma, who laughs openly (but in complete silence; thankfully, De Palma never grants her a wild braying moment) and a couple of others in the crowd, everyone else stands stunned by what has happened. Tommy reacts protectively, but is killed by the metal bucket falling from the catwalk. Through Carrie’s eyes, though, everyone is laughing maniacally at her as she remembers her mother’s words that “They’re all going to laugh at you!” Her vision is a kaleidoscopic view of the entire room with closeups of laughing faces, even Ms. Collins, who tried to intervene on her behalf. Carrie loses herself completely, or from another view, finally becomes her true self, and is overcome by her supernatural powers. She wills the doors closed and locked, we get the trademark De Palma split screen with a simultaneous closeup of Carrie’s wild staring eyes and dour countenance next to her upper torso, caked in blood and red light against the starred, blue backdrop of the stage. It is a thrilling image.

When she unleashes her powers and all hell breaks loose inside the gym, and scores of kids and teachers are killed, for me, there is both horror at what happens and also a feeling of retribution at those that truly deserved it. Most don’t realize it is Carrie performing these acts, but some clearly catch on, including Ms. Collins, whom Carrie murders without a flinch and for whom we truly feel sorry. It is the scene where Spacek leaves the stage where her casting becomes the wisest decision they made on the film. The angularity of her body, combined with the cold stare she is able to invoke, while covered in blood and gore as she wades through the bodies surrounded by fire is a moment worthy of the reveal of the Bride of Frankenstein in my mind. Hers is a haunting visage through his segment, which continues through her doing away with Chris and Billy out on the road by flipping and then exploding Billy’s hot rod.

It’s funny that, as many times as I have seen Carrie, the prom destruction seems to go on for about a half an hour in my memory even though it is really only a few, tight, well-constructed and conceived minutes. As you mentioned, Carrie goes on a rampage and destroys much of the town in the book, but De Palma is clearly more interested in making the big finale of this film a confrontation between her religion-crazed mother and the daughter whom she considers to be of the devil himself. I feel the mother-daughter confrontation is a wise decision, even if I don’t agree with how literally he chooses to send to Carrie and her mother to hell. Maybe this is just the monster-rampage lover in me – but I would have loved to see Carrie go after the entire town in the movie version.

I am sure you have a lot to say about the prom scene, but please carry on into that final clash and the Irving “jolt” epilogue if you would.

Aaron: I have the same reaction as you; in my memory, the prom scene is much longer than it actually appears on film. That’s a testament to how perfectly De Palma captured and distilled the essence of that scene, but it’s also a bit of a shock every time I rewatch this film. I hate to say this, because it sounds like I’m criticizing the film when I’m actually doing the opposite, but the prom scene is sometimes a letdown to me, because I remember it as being much more epic and, for lack of a better word, brutal. But as you say, the scene is really only a couple of minutes long, and a very tight couple of minutes at that. We may not get the widespread destruction of the novel, or the gory explosion of viscera I seem to hold in my mind sometimes, but we get a perfectly brief flurry of action and violence, exploding outward from Carrie once she reaches her breaking point, and then ending just as quickly when her rage is spent (though not entirely gone, as there are a couple more outbursts ahead).

That isn’t meant to downplay the effectiveness of the scene, however. If anything I feel like it speaks to how well De Palma built tension prior to this climax, and how effectively he provided a release. The prom, for Carrie, is a dream come true; everything is shiny and and bright, Tommy’s friends are all nice to her, and she has a romantic dance with the most popular boy in school. De Palma gives us only a couple of reminders that something horrible has been planned for this night, until Tommy and Carrie are voted prom King and Queen, at which point De Palma really begins to lay on the Hitchcockian suspense. I really enjoy the connections that are made here in the editing. Sue Snell has snuck into the prom to see how Carrie’s night is going, and she notices an oddly swinging rope which she traces back to a bucket of blood perched over Carrie’s head. Ms. Collins notices Sue as Sue follows the rope back to Chris’ hiding place and has her ejected from the prom. Tommy notices Sue being ejected from the prom and gives an odd laugh, presumably believing Sue is suffering a brief bout of jealousy.

This scene so far has been entirely in slow motion, but while the video slows the editing gets faster and faster, and the signifiers of who we’re cutting between become briefer. Sue and Ms. Collins arguing, a shot of a hand on a rope, a bucket of blood, Carrie smiling, a tongue darting out between Chris’ lips, Tommy smiling, an eyeball, a gym door closing, a rope being pulled. The activity builds to a manic pace, and then the blood falls, and everything stops. Applause dies down, the music cuts out, and all audio is removed apart from the creaking of the rope and bucket as everyone tries to process what has just happened. The reactions here are heartbreaking; the choked sob Ms. Collins gives, the pity visible on the faces of even those who had teased Carrie throughout the movie. P.J. Soles is the only one who begins laughing, to the clear disgust of everyone around her (also of possible note: Soles is the only one laughing, but also the only relevant character that Carrie does not focus on when she hallucinates everyone is mocking her). De Palma gives a minute of silence here, to document these reactions, and then the silence is broken by Margaret White’s warning that “they’re all gonna laugh at you!” which begins circling around in Carrie’s head. I haven’t seen this film nearly as many times as you have, but I’ve watched it frequently over the years, and I still feel a thrill when that first usage of split-screen occurs. I am not surprised De Palma worried over this scene for weeks in the editing room; the final product is as perfectly timed and orchestrated a slice of film as I’ve ever seen.

I mentioned in our discussion of the novel that I felt the proper end would be the confrontation between Carrie and Margaret, and that the scenes after that event felt a little oddly placed because of it. But, of course, I was allowing the De Palma film to influence my reaction to the book. In the book the carnage spreads out from the prom and overtakes almost the entire town, while in the film the carnage is confined to the high school, Billy and Chris, and Carrie’s mother. As much as I would have liked to see Carrie really go all out in exacting her revenge, I’m glad De Palma opted to not go there. Whether the decision was made from a conceptual level to narrow the focus of the story, or whether it would have been a logistical nightmare for them to try and shoot the scene, I believe it turns out to be the proper decision.


When Carrie returns home, seeking to apologize to her mother and seek comfort from her, she finds the house apparently empty. After bathing herself of the pig’s blood, Carrie dresses in a white nightgown and finds her mother, who at first seems to forgive her daughter, only to stab her in the back while they embrace. At this point Carrie uses her telekinetic powers to drive every nearby blade into her mother, killing her and effectively leaving her in the same pose the statue of Jesus being crucified that adorned the closet Carrie was locked into as punishment. This is quite different from how the scene plays out in the book, where Carrie returned home with the intention of killing her mother, and does so by using her powers to slowly stop Margaret’s heart (but not before being fatally stabbed). I find the confrontation in the book, and Margaret’s death, to be much creepier and more uncomfortable, while I think the added religious reference in the film elevates the movie to religious parable, in a way. It turns the film into one of those frightening bible passages, like Abraham being commanded to kill his son.

I don’t think I ever had a problem with how Carrie meets her end in the film. Since you’ve brought it up, I can see what you’re saying about the descent to hell being too literal, but I also don’t think I’d ever call De Palma an entirely subtle filmmaker. I think it fits with the outsized religion and hellfire we’ve been confronted with through the film, and I think Carrie’s implosion of grief makes a nice counterpoint to the explosion of rage we saw at the prom. The scene I did have a problem with, for many years, is the final shock of the film, as we catch up with the film’s lone survivor: Sue Snell.

Some undetermined point of time after the tragic events of the film, Sue Snell walks along a residential street and turns into an empty lot, a lot with a square of burnt ground in the middle and a ‘for sale’ sign sticking up out of it. This is the lot where Carrie’s house once stood, and if we didn’t understand that yet, it’s made clear by the message left there by some vandal. “Carrie White burns in hell,” someone has scrawled. (I always imagined it was a kid, maybe still in elementary school, possibly with an older brother who died at prom, sneaking onto the property and writing the message out of anger but also getting a thrill from the transgression. I have no idea why I ascribed such a detailed backstory to a person whose existence is only hinted at.) Sue Snell leans down to place flowers by the sign, and as she does, Carrie White’s hand shoots up out of the ground and grabs Sue by the wrist. But it was all a dream, and Sue wakes up screaming while her mother tends her, opining that she’ll never quite recover from the tragedy.

This scene never really worked for me the first handful of times I watched the film. I had always heard the scene referred to as one of the scariest, most infamous shock endings ever filmed, but I could never understand what people saw in it. It felt cheap and meaningless. The equivalent of one of those internet videos where you try and trick someone into finding some hidden puzzle in an image of an empty room, only to suddenly have a screaming skull pop onto the screen once they’ve pushed their noses to the monitor. I didn’t see the point of it; it was a dream sequence, and so not real, and therefore it didn’t matter at all. While reading the book I had this ending scene in my head, and when Sue was thinking she might be pregnant with Tommy’s child, I flashed forward and wondered if maybe the novel’s ending used a similar device to imply that Carrie had somehow imprinted herself on the unborn child. But then of course, Sue turns out to not be pregnant, so my outlandish notion was thrown out. As an adult viewer, I finally came around to the scene when I saw what it was doing. The fires have been put out, the funerals held, the site of Carrie’s death has been razed and cleaned up, and yet the sickness still remains. This event will never remain buried for Sue, who is going to be carrying these dreams with her for a lifetime.

This is a moment that actually feeds into our upcoming discussion of the sequel, but I’ll save any further explorations for that piece.

Rik: Since you have given us a pretty thorough recounting of the end of the film, I will just touch on a couple of points, and also my reactions to those moments.

First, I must jump in and say that the statue that is shown in close-up in Carrie’s closet is not Jesus on the cross but that of St. Sebastian, a martyr in early Christendom who was, in many depictions, tied to a tree and shot through with arrows. There are very clearly arrows in the figure in the statue, which was not a feature of any representation of the crucifixion of Christ, who was pierced in the side of his torso by a spear. (I thank Nick Cave for keeping knowledge of St. Sebastian and the arrows in my head.)

There is a moment, while Carrie is still out on her prom date, just after she and Tommy have been checked on a ballot as King and Queen, that Margaret White is seen nervously pacing around her kitchen table in a shot from above the ceiling light. In the last scene where we saw her, Carrie had used her power to force her mother to the bed helplessly, and as Carrie left, Margaret spit out scripture from Exodus 22:18, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch a live.” It was already clear at that point, and even at earlier points, that she felt her daughter was wicked and cursed by the devil, but in this scene, we see her leap to sheer madness as she actively makes the switch to committing to murder her own child. With the camera still looking down from the same vantage point, she selects a carrot from a collection of vegetables, most likely planned for a soup or stew originally, and places it on the cutting board. She picks up a large knife, and without holding the carrot in place for accurate cuts, she holds her arm up almost in robot-like fashion and brings it down on the carrot several times, each cut more wild than the last. One cut finally sends the remainder of the vegetable off the cutting board, and she makes a final series of hard chops at the cutting board, in which we clearly see that the object of her violence doesn’t matter. She just means to do damage, and she is most definitely focusing her mental attention only on stopping her daughter however she must. For me, this was a most frightening scene, that a parent can commit to turning on their child so suddenly and sharply (no pun intended).

Of course, when Carrie returns home, she is going to run to the arms of her mother, because no matter what has happened in her life to that point and no matter how much her mother has been the cause of much of it, mama has always been there to comfort her. Even though she and her mother left each other on bad terms before the prom, after what Carrie has been through (and who knows how much of it she really remembers), Mother is all she has left. I am only saying this in defense of years of having friends and other people say things like, “I wouldn’t go back to that bitch!” Assuredly, were I Carrie, I probably wouldn’t either, but I am not Carrie. We can only go with the person we have met in the film (not the book, because it is the film under discussion here), and that person goes back to her mother after all this. There is no way around it. She goes back, and her story ends the tragic way it has to end.

As for the jolt ending, I always rather dug it when I was younger, but I totally get what you are saying about equating to those cheap computer scares on YouTube. There is certainly a parallel here to the “jump scare” brand of horror that is far too popular these days. As I said, I really liked the Carrie jolt when I was younger, and so it probably points up that were I of a similar age today, I would actually enjoy “jump scare” horror. But I don’t like jump scares now; I find them as cheap and meaningless as you describe them. The weird thing, though, is that I still like the Carrie jolt. It may be because it was one of the purest, earliest versions of such a shock in a big budget film, not just the scare, but combined with a dream sequence ending. Regardless, I find it still works as well as De Palma intended, and even if I didn’t like it much, the film would feel much less without it. Carrie wouldn’t be the same.

Aaron: For years I’ve been of the opinion that in order to make a good movie out of a Stephen King book you have to be willing to drastically alter the text. King is one of my favorite authors, and I clearly have spent a lot of time in the company of his creations, but what works on the page has a habit of not working on the screen. This is why Stanley Kubrick made an all-time classic film out of The Shining by keeping the setting and character names while throwing everything else out the window. Mick Garris tackled the same material in 1997, but allowed King to write the slavishly faithful screenplay, ensuring no one would remember it. In that regard, Carrie is a bit of an odd duck.

Carrie is basically the exception that proves the rule; it’s one of the most faithful adaptations in terms of plot and tone, but it also knows when to stray from the text. Most noticeably, the film version of Carrie features none of King’s signature weird slang (to be fair, the book didn’t have that much of it either). But beyond just the dialogue, De Palma’s interpretation of Carrie (with the assistance of screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen, who would basically make a career out of adapting Stephen King) makes only minor alterations to the story. Minor alterations that make a big difference.

The relationship between Chris and Billy is softened, and we see less of their interactions than we do in the book. Tommy and Sue’s relationship is given only a couple of scenes, while we get a new wacky scene of Tommy shopping with his friends. We lose a lot of minor scenes, like the one with Chris’ dad threatening to sue the school, and we even get a little less of Carrie. The film not only cuts back on Carrie’s rampage at the end, and cuts out any references to worldwide events after prom night, but it downplays Carrie’s telepathic abilities in general. Sure, she tests her powers with the mirror in her bedroom, and she goes to the library and discovers the word for what she’s been doing, but we don’t get any of the scenes of Carrie “exercising” in her room as she learns to control her powers. This effectively narrows the story’s focus and turns it into a story about the life of this tortured social misfit, with the telekinesis stuff as the powder keg the audience knows must eventually go off.

Carrie is a great lesson in how to adapt a book to the screen; you focus in on the heart of the matter, and disregard any of the small details that don’t speak to that heart. I think anyone reading this piece will immediately understand that Carrie is a film that means much more to you than it does to me, but I do think this is a great film, and one I will continue to return to in the future.

Rik: Since I am just getting back into reading Stephen King regularly, I am going to withhold judgment on how best to adapt a King book to the screen. I feel that you are more able to speak on that subject than I am. But having just read Carrie and then seen the movie version again a couple more times, I would have to agree that De Palma made most of the right decisions in both streamlining the main text for the screen, and in expanding or altering certain characters for the movie. Carrie the movie is remarkably economical in style and storytelling sense given how grandly horrific and bigger the film gets as it moves towards its conclusion. It is about as tightly edited a film as you will ever see in the genre, and I never get bored seeing it again and again over the years. It is always a pleasure.

[Well, that about does it for our discussion of Brian De Palma's Carrie adaptation. We hope you found it entertaining and enlightening. Please check back in a few days as we delve into The Rage: Carrie 2, the belated 1999 sequel to this film.]

Carrie (1976) [Pt. 1]

Rik Tod Johnson: Welcome once again to We Who Watch Behind the Rows. As part of our Countdown to Halloween celebration for October, Aaron Lowe and I are concentrating on Stephen King’s first published novel, Carrie (1974), and all four filmed adaptations of the book thus far.

In our last edition, we did indeed discuss the novel Carrie, but had some difficulties continuing any further with the talk as the 1976 film version of Brian De Palma looms very large over everything. It was decided at that point to cut bait, and just move on to the next part.

The Film: Carrie (1976)[1976, MGM; directed by Brian De Palma; screenplay by Lawrence D. Cohen]

Rik: The film version of Stephen King’s Carrie came out less than two years after the hardcover version of the novel was published. King’s hardcover was not a success, but the book was optioned to Hollywood (for only $2,500), and found its way into De Palma’s hands. Production began as the book was released as a paperback, and then suddenly sold over a million copies, giving King his first big hit. Despite the fact that the book was suddenly a bestseller, De Palma made several key changes to the plot, all of which we will undoubtedly go into moving forward because they are quite significant in most cases.

As we did with the first part of the Carrie discussion, a sort of shorthand was performed in describing the plot, since the story of Carrie White and the film that resulted from her story are so widely known today. Aaron even pointed out that if you are on this website, then you are probably already a King fan and know the story full well. So, I will make the shorthand even briefer: the wrong teenagers pick on the wrong girl with the right superpower at the wrong time. Sure, there are other details that may be important, like a wack-a-doodle fundamentalist mom, but otherwise, that is the story in a nutshell.

I mentioned last time that I watch Carrie quite frequently, guessing that I have seen it at least twenty times (if not more) in the past thirty years since I last read the book all the way through. It is part of my regular Halloween rotation, and I probably visit it at least every other year. My best estimate is that I have probably seen the film around fifty times, counting showings in the early days of home video. And now that I have read the book again, I have also watched it again (and probably will at least once more before this discussion is done).

But my first experience with Carrie goes back to its premiere showing on CBS in October 1978 after I had turned fourteen years old. At the time, I had no idea that anything was cut for television, apart from some language, but naturally they had removed the nudity in the shower scene and in the locker room, and the blowjob scene between John Travolta and Nancy Allen. For me, it was just a good, scary movie with some obvious dirty words taken out for television. I didn’t know what I was missing until I saw the VHS. And once I saw it, I watched it a lot.

Aaron, what was your first experience with De Palma’s version of Carrie like?

Aaron: Well, prepared to be underwhelmed, because I don’t actually remember my first viewing of Carrie. I can make a pretty educated guess about the circumstances surrounding my discovery of the film, of course. It was probably while I was in Jr. High, between 1990 and 1992, and I probably rented it from our neighborhood Video City. But even that may be incorrect, because I don’t know if my mom would have let me rent Carrie, an R-rated film, at the time. Perhaps, like you, I first caught the film on late night television in a much-edited form. I don’t know why I can’t recall the specifics of watching Carrie for the first time, when I can remember my initial viewings of many of the other films we’re going to cover, or have covered, even the ones of significantly lower personal importance. Carrie just seems to be a film that’s always been in my life. That isn’t to say that Carrie is a film I have a really personal connection to, as seems to be the case with you, it’s just that the specifics of the movie seem to have always existed in my memory. Certainly it was a part of my pop culture lexicon, and widely quoted, by my freshman year of high school.

And yet, even in those same high school years, when I was quoting this movie, and when the film should have at least spoken to my burgeoning misanthropy and occasional desire to see my own school burn to the ground, I never had more than a general appreciation for Carrie. I did like the movie, enough to see it multiple times, but I don’t recall ever feeling a great affinity for it. I have no solid explanation for this, but I suspect I might have come to the film a bit too early. I was a bit of a late bloomer, I guess, sheltered and naive about a lot of things, and I believe I saw Carrie before the concepts of sex and femininity and the biological functions of reproduction were anything more than something we might have discussed once or twice in health class. It was certainly before my own teen angst really blossomed. That might give some explanation for why the film didn’t make a really strong first impression, while also sticking with me over the years. However, unlike you, this film has never entered my annual (or even semi-annual) Halloween rotation. There is a film we’ll cover eventually that I believe fulfills the same function for me as Carrie does for you, but this has always been a film I just happen to pop in every couple of years or so.

I must say, I am shocked to hear that you saw this on network television in 1978! And on CBS, of all places! I guess CBS back in the seventies wasn’t quite the “grandparent’s network” that it is today, as that would have been within Norman Lear’s reign as king of socially conscious television, but I’m still having trouble imagining this in an edited form that excises not only the nudity and naughty language, but also, I presume, much of the film’s inciting incident. I’m also imagining what that locker room scene must have been like without any nudity in it, and I’m picturing a flurry of editing that pushes that scene into the realm of the abstract. No wonder catching up with the uncensored VHS deeper into your teen years was such a memorable discovery.

And that locker room scene. Seeing as how 

it’s the first scene in the movie, we might as well just dive right in. Even as a teenager, without much capacity for critical thought when it came to movies, I recognized the washed out, fuzzy, overly sentimental manner in which De Palma films teenagers cavorting around in their underwear, or fully nude in some cases. The locker room is filled with steam, the music is something soft and airy, the girls are running around in slow motion, and the lens seems to have been smeared with vaseline to make the scene look like a romantic closeup in a movie from the 50s. Watching it with modern eyes the scene has the look of something mocking trashy, “serious” European erotic films, but it all just forms the basis of what De Palma does in this picture. Of course, that serves to make the other parts of the film, especially the scenes between Carrie White and her mother, feel all the more dark and claustrophobic. But at times he overplays the sentimentality of the high school scenes so much that I imagine the film felt nostalgic even when it was new.

Rik, as someone who was conscious and aware at the time this movie was produced and released, what’s your take on the time capsule feel of the film? Am I off base in feeling like De Palma set this in a sort of timeless postcard version of middle America? Did you get the feeling, as a kid, that this was a movie set in a recognizable present day?
Rik: I will answer your question in a second, because it is a subject that I feel is important to the discussion. But first, I want to clarify that the showing of Carrie I saw was a prime time premiere of the film on CBS, not a late night viewing. It seems hard to believe in these days, but while cable TV was around at the time, it did not have even a smidgen of the reach it does today. Without the secondary market of VHS in full flourish yet either, feature films frequently jumped to network television, albeit in drastically edited form, pretty quickly. It is interesting to note that on the day after Carrie premiered on CBS, the very next night they premiered an R-rated film of a very different sort: Network, the one that prefigures much of the bullshit we are in today.

To get a glimpse into just how they handled the editing of the shower and locker room sequence in the television version, check out this video that I found on YouTube, that shows clips from the airing on its premiere night on October 3, 1978, including that sequence. 

Pretty ably handled – it is clear they had alternate takes planned for other types of viewings – though it is shocking to realize the tampon-throwing scene made it on television, but hell, that might have appeared on an ABC Afterschool Special in those days. They do, however, cut out every drop of blood from the scene, so you have to just kind of “know” what is going on with her (until the tampons are thrown, that is…) I do find it funny that CBS, as you noted, has a rep as a “grandparents’ channel” (I call it that as well) especially when it has the CSI shows on it, which can often be just as gory as many supposedly notorious horror films that I have seen. And right in prime time. Just as a side note, I recall when CBS premiered Caddyshack in prime time. When it got to Rodney Dangerfield’s big closing line in the film – “Hey, everybody, we’re all gonna get laid!” – the powers that be saw fit to alter it to “Hey, everybody, we’re all gonna take a shower!” Sure, I suppose after a sporting event, you might want to go home and wash off, but it still sounds to me like Rodney is insisting that everybody is going to hang together and do this as a group. Different strokes for different folks.

Here is what I get from that opening sequence. I don’t take it as trashing European erotic films so much as I take it as giving easily led male viewers (who would probably make up a bulk of the audience at the time for this film) a glimpse into what is for them a world of mystery and fantasy. Yes, the music is almost ethereal in its loveliness, the camera pans slowly across the lockers and the semi-nude and nude girls cavorting about snapping towels and teasing one another. What straight male in the 1970s and even ‘80s didn’t have the fantasy of girls flirting in the locker room somewhere on the list of erotic daydreams? Films after Carrie would play with variations on this fantasy, such as Porky’s, but De Palma’s goal is one of subversion. The camera, music, and steam set up the fantasy, and then we get the sight of Sissy Spacek in the shower. At first, her time under the water keeps the erotic fantasy mood bubbling along. The image of the water spraying in slow motion from the spout is entirely phallic in composition, Pino Donaggio’s music continues along in angelic fashion, Spacek is seen nude from behind and rubs her breasts and other areas while maintaining an almost orgasmic look upon her face, and eventually she drops the soap in her reverie as she rubs around her pelvic region. The fantasy seems complete.

And then, with a closeup on her thighs… 

the blood comes. The scene is slow to shift at first, as the 17-year-old Carrie doesn’t have an understanding of what has happened to her, sheltered as she is from information regarding her womanhood, but the scene is supposed to represent an awakening. It is a double awakening for Carrie, who will find she has grown up after all, despite her mother’s wishes, but it will also increase the pain of her existence as an outcast amongst her schoolmates. She will grow from this point more assured as her supernatural power, and thus her independence from her mother, both increase throughout the film. She will still be ruled by the doubts and fears that have shrouded her life to this point, but she will finally learn to fight back against them, ultimately, to tragic consequences for many, including herself.

And for the viewers, who entered into this film cloaked in an extreme fantasy dominated by male wish fulfillment, they are now awakened roughly and sneakily into the very personal horrors of feminine hygiene (a world in which most men, even the most mature ones, still find discomfort discussing), as blood gushes between Carrie’s legs and she screams in a panic, believing she is dying. The lovely high school girls of the locker room, whom we had ogled so graciously but gratuitously with our eyes minutes before, have now been turned into nothing but horrid, raving monsters, as they throw tampons at Carrie White and chant at her to “Plug it up! Plug it up!” as poor Carrie cries, not understanding what is happening to her at all.

So, my answer is “No,” I don’t find the shower scene nostalgic at all. I find it completely intentional in its effort to throw the viewer a curveball from the very beginning, and that its look is chiefly attributable to De Palma’s desire to perform such a misdirection. I don’t think he overplays it all. I think he is showing exactly the amount of deftness that he needs.

Now, having given that answer, I must now say, “Yes, sometimes I think the film does feel like it is in a time capsule” but for reasons other than the ones you quoted. There is a scene with Billy (played by John Travolta) and Chris (played by a quite gorgeous Nancy Allen – the future Mrs. De Palma) are riding around in Billy’s souped-up hot rod, drinking beers without getting caught by the cops, causing minor trouble, and doing what we used to call “cruising the Strip” back in Anchorage. There are almost no songs outside of original music used in the film (even the music at the prom is original material by a band performing in the film called Vance or Towers), but one song that is highly recognizable is Heat Wave by Martha and the Vandellas. Since the song was a #4 monster hit back in 1963, you may think that this is the reason that I might attribute a nostalgic feeling to the film. Nope. Hold on there, little buckaroo…

At the time that Carrie was being made, George Lucas’ American Graffiti had blown up all over the place, and with it came a huge wave of early 1960s nostalgia. “Where were you in ‘62?” was a catchphrase from the movie’s promotional campaign that caught on all over the place, even with a kid like me who was born in ‘64. I distinctly remember people saying it when I was a kid and seeing it on posters. Post-Graffiti, Happy Days (and its many spinoffs) took over television for a few years, and I listened to as much oldies radio as I did current Top 40 stuff (I wasn’t into rock quite yet). I finally saw American Graffiti when it was reissued earlier in 1978, before I saw Carrie on TV. I have no clue if De Palma meant for the street scene with Travolta in the hot rod while Heat Wave plays in the background to be an intentional nod to Graffiti or not, but what it does to me is trigger a connection. (For the record, Heat Wave is not a song that is used in Graffiti, being a year too late for the soundtrack.)

Apart from Piper Laurie as Carrie’s mom, the rest of the costuming and dress in Carrie is pretty much of the time of its filming. Even hoodlum Billy, listening to oldies radio, looks like guys I had to deal with in 1976 in style and attitude. Because ‘60 nostalgia was a thing when I was a kid, when this film was made, and because everyone’s look is so tied to how it was then, the film will never have a timeless feel to me. It is a film tied to the year of its making, making it a time capsule piece, and yet, because it gets a certain detail or two concerning nostalgia within that time frame (not of that time frame, mind you), that it does have an odd feeling about it.

Aaron: Watching that video you posted up above, I think it’s clear that an alternate opening was filmed for use on television. This is something I should have thought of, but I guess I was just using modern thinking, or at least the thinking of my own youth. I also find it interesting that the intro not only excises the blood and obscures what is happening to Carrie, the TV edit also seems squeamish about even showing the tampons. You get some “Plug it up!” shouts in there, but it’s much briefer than the theatrical version, and the camera never gives us a good look at what is actually being thrown. By this point it’s clear to the audience what is going on, but it’s interesting to think about the discussions that went into this scene. How much could they get away with cutting out while still keeping the scene coherent.

At this point I feel like I’m going to be defending my words even though we seem to be in pretty much complete agreement over all the points you made. I certainly didn’t find the shower scene nostalgic, but I just noticed a lot of retro-seeming touches to the film, and I couldn’t quite tell if all of them were period-specific or if De Palma was intentionally making the daylight high school scenes look a little old fashioned. It’s a product of my age, I suppose, as my entire knowledge of the seventies has come secondhand, through movies and family photos. I did not become consciously aware of the world until the ’80s, after all. You bring up American Graffiti, which is where my mind went as well, and that could possibly explain some of the connection my mind was making. I’m not quite sure if De Palma was aware of that scene’s similarities to the earlier George Lucas film, but it is quite possible, considering pre-production for Carrie shared some resources with Star Wars. (De Palma reportedly handled all or most of the casting interviews for Star Wars).

If anything, I agree that the male-fantasy style of direction provides for a nice reversal of expectations a few moments later. I think that’s what De Palma does throughout the film, and where I said “overplayed,” I really meant “heightened”. In a statement that could very well be used to describe most of his career, De Palma heightens every aspect of this film. The daylight scenes have a gauzy, ethereal brightness, like a soap commercial. The darkness is stained and pervasive, all the more imposing for the light that preceded it. In a way you could say every scene in the high school represents a fantasy vision.

That tendency to heighten the emotion in everything he does isn’t always successful for De Palma, but here it turns out to have been a canny decision, as this has the effect of making the truly outlandish elements, like the telekinesis or Margaret White, feel somewhat believable. Margaret White is still a monstrous character, horrific and grotesque, but the fact that everything in this film exists at such extremes means that she at least feels like a part of this world. The film goes from the erotic fantasy of the opening credits, to the body-horror of a girl’s first period (not that I think the menstrual cycle itself is horrific, just that it is presented as such in this scene) and the outlandishly cruel teasing, to the bumbling bureaucracy of the high school principal, and finally to the oppressive, yellowing decay and punishing religion of Carrie’s home life. That’s a wild range of tonal shifts that still feel connected and of a piece with each other.

In Carrie, the jocks are blonde and blue eyed, the nerds are awkward and bespectacled, the bad girls are bad and the bad boys are worse. De Palma almost turns these characters into flesh and blood cartoons, including the villains of the piece, Chris Hargensen and Billy Nolan. In this film version a lot of their relationship, which in the book is abusive and ugly, is played at times for laughs. Perhaps it’s just the fact that it’s hard to take John Travolta seriously at this point in his career, but Billy never seems threatening. Even when he slaps Chris a few times in the car, the slaps are half-hearted and don’t seem to cause her any pain, and we laugh at her repeatedly referring to him as “you shit.” But then, I’m able to take Travolta seriously in his other De Palma film from just a few years later, Blow Out, so I tend to think this was a conscious decision on Travolta or De Palma’s part. Almost like a slightly more sinister Vinny Barbarino. It’s odd, that in a movie of such extremes, the one thing that’s softened is this relationship.

Do you think I’m correct in my reading of the Chris/Billy relationship? Do you think it’s been softened for the movie, or is it just John Travolta’s goofiness in general?
Rik: Travolta as Billy Nolan was really hard to accept when I first watched the film. Physically, you go, “Of course, he is Billy!” But at the time, I was a Sweathog fan because I had watched every season of Welcome Back, Kotter (with and without him) and The Boy in the Plastic Bubble and Grease. I had not seen Saturday Night Fever yet when I first watched Carrie on television, so I did not know if he had any range, and Blow Out was still around the corner (and Pulp Fiction was eons distant). We (my friends, brothers, and I) kind of loved Travolta at the time like an errant cousin, so describing him as “doofy” is entirely apt, because frankly, that is exactly how we saw him at the time. We were still walking around imitating Vinnie Barbarino making fun of junkies going “Gimme drugs! Gimme drugs!” with grasping hands, and aping his “Wha-? Who? Where?” catchphrase bit from Kotter.

Travolta could play what looks on the surface like a hoodlum in a leather jacket in Grease, but that character is never menacing at all, and is all bark as far as toughness goes. So would Travolta of that period really have been able to embody the increasingly violent and ill-tempered Billy Nolan from the book of Carrie? Not really, but it is a bit unfair given this was only Travolta’s second film role (he did The Devil’s Rain with William Shatner previous to this). Still, people are cast because other people believe they can play the part. I agree the part must have been drastically rewritten, however, to make him less of a cad onscreen. Whether this was to match up with Travolta or not, I don’t know. Maybe they found they had the perfect guy physically for the part, but he was too much of a cupcake at the time. In the end, they toned Billy down, just as they toned down Carrie’s ultimate destructive rampage (though it is still pretty impressive in the film).

What they have done with the Chris and Billy relationship is to allow Billy to be blustery and almost casually violent in his reaction to his girlfriend, but of course, oral sex wins out in the end. Despite the fact that the weapon she holds is one of pure sex, Chris is the one who ultimately rules their relationship. She can turn him on a dime in most cases, and knows it fully. I think you are reading the way they are portrayed correctly. They are more cartoonish in their characterization, like most of the kids, but they are no less hateful for it. I think we see in the slaughterhouse scene where Billy has to take over the butchering of the pig for its blood that he can be a true monster when the moment presents itself. I do recall that was rather a shocking moment for me when I first saw it, thinking sweet but dopey Vinnie Barbarino was capable of such senseless harm upon an animal.

You brought up Carrie’s mother, Margaret White, and mentioned how she seems to be fully a part of this world that has been rendered to the extreme at all corners by De Palma’s vision. I am not going to argue that point, but Margaret still stands out completely apart from the other characters for the fact that she (as she is in the book) is still somewhat otherworldly in nature, look, and behavior due to the fact that she purposefully sets herself apart from it with her relentless spouting of biblical scripture and her hardcore sheltering of her own daughter in a quite misguided attempt to protect the girl. In seeing this film as a teenager, encountering Margaret White for the first time was an affirmation that I was on the right path, for this was the type of villain I had been battling since I was a child, a holier than thou, interfering parent with her own built-in god complex. Sadly, I at first thought that Piper Laurie, who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playing Margaret, was actually a horrible actor simply because I hated the character so much right out of the gate. It’s an effect that I had to learn to shake off as I got older, that the people who essayed truly despicable characters in films were often marvelous at their jobs, but I just could not get past how much I wanted to trample that character to death to enjoy the role or the actor within it.

I, of course, think Piper Laurie is more and more marvelous in the part every time that I see it, and I honestly think she is far better than eventual winner Beatrice Straight in Network. She also has heavier lifting to do in this role as well. So, it was surprising to learn in several resources that Ms. Laurie thought she was doing a comedy role from the start, albeit a very dark one, and so played it purposefully over the top to fit the part as she saw it. I can totally see this in watching her performance now, but I wonder how she must have felt in discovering that other actors, especially Ms. Spacek, and even her director, possibly didn’t approach the film in the same way.

While Carrie does not have any shortage of villains tormenting her, it is pretty apparent that her own mother is the true “Big Bad” villain of both the book and the film. Because most of Carrie’s problems stem directly from the alternating mistreatment/overprotection provided by her mother, she more than anyone is who Carrie is going to need to get past to either get freedom or release from her hell. In circling back to the Chris/Billy relationship, perhaps this is why those two characters were softened to an extent and at least made a little more silly and pathetic, so that Margaret would not get upstaged as the Big Bad in the end. What is your approach to the Margaret White character, Aaron?

Aaron: I do remember finding her comedic when I was younger, and not in a good way. I enjoyed the performance, but I always ascribed to it a “so bad it’s good” label, a label I’ve since come to loathe. But as I got older and my appreciation of the film deepened, I came to respect what Ms. Laurie was doing in the film. I never knew that she found her role a comedic one, but after reading that, I realize that’s absolutely correct. It’s easy to see, in her outsized accent and her continuous wailings. The performance is entirely over the top, and would have been ruined by deciding to play everything straight. I mean, how do you tell your daughter you can see her “dirty pillows” unless you think you’re in some sort of twisted comedy? Not only that, but it does give her that feeling of “otherness,” of not belonging with the rest of the people around her. I had said that she felt of a piece with the movie’s world, and I still believe that, but I believe she fits into the tonality of the film, even while standing apart from every other character.

Margaret gets one scene in this film that I think was intended entirely as comedy, and that’s when she attempts to sell a bible to Sue Snell’s mother. There’s a little bit of proto-cringe humor in this exchange, where Margaret silently stands outside the door until being invited in, and the other woman visibly tries to figure out how much time she has to spend in Margaret’s presence before it’s socially acceptable to kick her out. This scene is new to the movie, as Margaret in the book doesn’t seem to have the urge to evangelize; she’s happy to just publicly hold everyone around her in contempt. Strictly speaking I have a feeling this scene was included to give Margaret a chance to act with someone other than Sissy Spacek, and to make it clear that she lives within this world. The older characters are all familiar with Margaret and her, ahem, peculiar religious views.

That’s not the only purely comedic moment in the movie, and it’s not even the most obviously comedic moment. For me, the most purely comedic moment comes when Chris begins to give Billy a blowjob, and she keeps repeating his name while he reacts the way most movie teens react to oral sex: with wide-eyed confusion and immediate orgasmic intensity. After repeating his name a good half dozen times (not to get too graphic here, but the clarity in Nancy Allen’s clearly ADRed voice in this scene always bugged me a little), Chris finally goes all the way with the line “I hate Carrie White,” which elicits a moment of silence from Billy before he looks down at his lap and utters a confused, “Who?” before the scene quickly cuts away. So yes, in the film, Chris clearly has complete control over Billy, while that wasn’t quite the case in the book. Still, despite being easily swayed by promises of sex, Billy is a violent young man capable of great cruelty. That slaughterhouse scene was a shock to me as well, the first real sign that truly terrible things could, and would, happen. That may be why Travolta was given the job in the first place; we both consider him a bit of a goof at this point in his career, so when he finally, fatally swings that hammer down at the slaughterhouse, the shock hits home. Adorable little John Travolta just killed a pig for kicks... anything can happen!

Now that I’m consciously thinking of the comedy in the film, it puts a lot of Carrie’s wackier moments into a new context. Like the scene where Tommy Ross goes tuxedo shopping with his friends. Right in the middle of the scene, mid-conversation, De Palma begins fast-forwarding the film. Not for very long, but the conversation between the three friends is suddenly sped up to a half intelligible squeak for a few seconds before dropping back, in mid-sentence, into normal speed. As a kid I thought this was a defect in the VHS copy I had (shameful admission: I used to make copies of almost every VHS I rented), but of course it was a stylistic choice on De Palma’s part. I’ll admit I’m still a bit stumped on this one. Did he do it just because he sometimes loves to throw some stylistic wackiness into his films? Did he do it because he realized the scene was really boring, and it was a compromise between cutting it out entirely and keeping a scene that further humanizes Tommy Ross?

I have more to say about Tommy Ross in this film, and his relationship to both Carrie and Sue Snell, especially in comparison to the book. But for now I’ll throw it back to you. I think it’s clear so far that you’ve internalized this film to a far greater extent than I have, and I’m curious as to your opinions regarding some of the film’s comedic moments.

Rik: I do not want to get anywhere close to making someone who is not familiar with this film believe that they are sitting down to a comedy. Piper Laurie may have felt it was – and it may have been just how she needed to approach her admittedly out-there role to be able to embrace it – but I do not see Carrie as a comedy, dark or otherwise, nor do I believe that De Palma approached it in that manner. I think it is from all angles first a horror film – very much so – but that in handling its wide array of human characters, it has a few terrific comedic moments, just as there are a variety of other well-turned moments touching on the rest of the emotional spectrum.

I do agree with you for the most part on many of the scenes you mentioned as to their effectiveness in a comedic sense, especially in the oral sex scene. (The ADR does not bother me at all though.) The tuxedo scene, which ends up with a tux t-shirt, of course (whose popularity was just getting going in those days, and I remember a lot of my friends had them, though never me), is just one of De Palma’s stylistic flourishes, an attempt to mix things up a bit by being squirrelly with editing.

Another one of his common effects is the use of split screen to show simultaneous action in different areas or different characters. We get a taste of it in a couple of places (especially the murderous prom sequence), but I had read an interview with De Palma where he said that the entire destruction sequence was completely shot using split screens. He spent six weeks editing it together, but it just wasn’t working out the way he wanted and was running far too long. So he scrapped that plan and just used split screen shots here and there for added effectiveness and when they seem to work best in a timing sense.

[That's going to do it for today, join us Friday morning for Part 2 of our discussion of Brian De Palma's Carrie, where we'll be going deeper into the plot, that infamous finale, and our thoughts on Brian De Palma's filmography. See you soon.]