[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.
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.]
[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.]
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