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.
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 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.
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.]
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.
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.
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.]
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