Brian De Palma’s Carrie may be about high school, but it was perhaps the director’s first completely mature film, at least equaling the nearly concurrent release Obsession in gothic pathos. Based on Stephen King’s first novel, famously written in near-poverty as the future bestselling mogul tried to make ends meet by teaching English to high school kids, Carrie turns a fairly contemptuous source text (in the book, Carrie is nearly as unappealing as her tormentors) into, as Pauline Kael said, a “teasing, lyrical thriller.” It brought both De Palma and King into mainstream visibility, kick-started the careers of nearly everyone involved (or, in Piper Laurie’s case, provided an unexpected return to form playing horror cinema’s ultimate mom from hell), won two acting Oscar nominations, and earned fantastic reviews and word of mouth. Surely this represents De Palma’s first great selling out, right?
Absolutely not. Carrie, a profoundly sad horror comedy about a dumped-on, telekinetic outcast whose late-blooming menstrual cycle and sexual maturation react violently with her fundamentalist mother’s psychological chastity belt, is the film in which De Palma discovered that his destructive sense of humor could be synthesized with his graceful visual sensibilities in a manner that would accentuate both. The linearity of King’s storyline (actually, the linearity of screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen’s version of the novel, which was told via a fussy collage of news articles, testimony, and Reader’s Digest memoirs) has the preordained momentum of Greek mythology; some of the shots of a blood-soaked Carrie standing above her peers at the fateful prom were lifted from the theatrical performance De Palma shot of Dionysus in ’69.
De Palma’s technique, though, reaches a new volatility here. Half Phantom of the Paradise, half Obsession, Carrie is hysterical in every sense of the word. Laurie has said that she saw the film as satire, claiming that it was difficult for her to film Margaret White’s perverse death scene—being pinned to a doorway by flying knives until she resembles the Christ-as-pincushion shrine that Margaret keeps in Carrie’s punishment closet—without laughing. She later admitted to being disappointed that the film wasn’t inherently a comedy, not realizing that it was. Maybe the humor isn’t always as broad as Margaret heaving and moaning in ecstasy as Carrie gives her the vaguely incestuous gift of martyrdom, but it’s always there, and usually bittersweet.
Take the scene in which Carrie realizes that she actually likes Tommy Ross (William Katt). De Palma begins by showing Carrie sitting in class with pencil eagerly poised to transcribe Tommy’s poem as their tweedy teacher, Mr. Fromm (Sydney Lassick), reads it aloud to the class. The camera swirls around to show the entire class slacking, yawning, exchanging jocular smirks to indicate that they know the poem’s true author was Tommy’s girlfriend, Sue (Amy Irving). Tommy ends up in severe close-up while a split diopter shot puts Carrie in the background behind Tommy’s impressive blond mane. “It’s beautiful,” she murmurs, her hair like bundled hay in front of her face. Even the teacher piles on, sensing the emotional vulnerability as an opportunity to attain camaraderie with his indifferent students. “You suck,” Tommy says, even more covertly than Carrie, before Mr. Fromm’s request for a repeat begets the response: “I said ‘aw shucks.’” Tommy’s chiseled features melt into a triumphant cackle.
A perfectly realized scene in the midst of a hundred (many of which have little to do with the horror of mind-controlled fire and everything with the horror of teenage responsibility), Tommy’s social triumph under the wire stands in mockery of Carrie’s inability to do the same. And when Tommy silently demands “What’s that?!” in slow motion after Chris Hargensen’s (Nancy Allen) revenge is fulfilled at prom and Carrie is splashed with blood, the realization of that disparity comes to pass and the resulting inferno must be carried out.
Whether intimate or flamboyant, Carrie’s style is insistently sensual: Carrie running her finger along the definition of “telekinesis” in close-up, Miss Collins’s (Betty Buckley) gym class doing detention calisthenics to the accompaniment of a blaxploitation-esque “Baby Elephant Walk,” Carrie and Tommy swirling in rapture courtesy De Palma’s Tilt-O-Whirl cam, Pino Donaggio’s tempestuous chamber music leading up to the bucket drop, Carrie seeing red in kaleidoscope as her sanity burns. It’s as passionate, erotic, and clumsy as the descriptor “sensual” implies. Maybe because it’s the first De Palma film that it could be said belongs decisively to women. The would-be revealingly titled Sisters may seem a volley between Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt, and an insane woman with a can of Lysol, but all three are tamed and controlled by Kidder’s effete creep husband. Carrie, on the other hand, is frighteningly feminine, a slap in the face of those charging De Palma with misogyny as fierce as the one Miss Collins whales across Chris’s face.
Image/Sound
“Hey, you’re beautiful,” Tommy tells Carrie at prom just before convincing her to check off their own names for prom king and queen. You might well find yourself repeating the phrase as you gaze upon the rush of greens, blues, and reds swirling around the pair as they waltz into their grisly fate. Given a fresh 4K scan from the original camera negative, Carrie still often shows its age—or rather, its relatively tightly budgeted production realities. But given the film’s ample use of slow motion and number of process and split-screen shots, that it even looks as good as it does here is a miracle. Which is to say, you can see just how much benefit the 4K format has to offer grainy, New Hollywood-era films. It’s not that the colors aren’t sometimes blotchy or artifact-ridden; some shots, like the one in which Chris and Billy are seen scooping the loop at night while slurping beers, still appear borderline inept. But when it truly counts—the film’s final 40 minutes, more or less—this baby soars in full red, white, and blue menace.
The uncompressed sound, which remains the same from the prior Shout! Factory edition of the film, comes in both surround and mono varieties, neither of which will peel the paint off your walls or Margaret White from her heathen neighbors’ doorsteps. But despite the crushing of Pino Donaggio’s Bernard Herrmann-esque efforts against occasionally shrill dialogue tracks, it’s a perfect complement to the visuals—all flaws faithfully rendered.
Extras
Ever since MGM pulled out nearly all the stops for their still-exemplary 2001 DVD, Carrie has been one of the titles that keeps on collecting deeper and richer bonus content with each subsequent release, to the point that you couldn’t ask for anything more. Well, just that one thing: Brian De Palma still refuses to sit for a commentary track, or maybe people have just learned to stop asking him. (His interview clips from 2001 do remain, thankfully.)
Still, Shout! offers a perfectly acceptable substitute, as Joe Aisenberg, author of Studies in the Horror Film: Carrie, saddles up to lecture on a film he’s spent a considerable amount of time studying. His track is balanced nicely between production details gleaned from his interviews with cast and crew, and critical observations about the film’s form (taking great care to point out any moment that De Palma’s staging expresses the shifting power dynamics without underlining it). I haven’t heard Lee Gambin and Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’s commentary recorded or the Arrow Video edition to know if it’s on the same level, but I wasn’t disappointed.
Beyond an also brand-new newspaper ad gallery, the remainder is ported over from the prior Shout! edition. Foremost among those highlights is more interview highlights from Laurent Bouzereau (all shot for the MGM edition) that collectively run longer than Jeanne Dielman and are, for fans of the film, just as hypnotic. (There’s admittedly a slight bit of redundancy, especially from the film’s cast members, but if the tradeoff is finally hearing venerable sitcom standby Edie McClurg talk about her underrated mean girl Helen, so be it.) And some of the prolix participants could’ve benefitted from a little bit of pruning, sometimes more is more. Also included is a tatted metal dude wandering around the film’s locations today, as well as a not-quite-absolution for the once-upon-an-all-time Broadway flop Carrie: The Musical.
Overall
For nearly a half century, girls have been telling their real-life Carrie counterparts to “plug it up.” But at least we know now that Edie McClurg is contrite.
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