31 Years Later, and I Still Shudder

Rating: Null/10 (12 April 2007)

Brian DePalma's Carrie is a defining-moment movie for me. I saw a lot of movies when I was in my upper-classman years of high school and I don't think I ever saw anything like Carrie to date, gory to the point of gasping, filled with high school viciousness and pubic hair, and with a heroine as repulsive as the stuff inside the zits on your forehead. I saw it just six months after graduating from high school, when kids often go into a blue funk because they miss the structure of, but not the culture of high school, and I felt as if I was watching home movies of some of the people I hated in school.
Carrie was shocking and horrifying, dirty and very, very sad.
But more than that, it's a great little supernatural flick, with fine performances, zesty pacing, and a lot of heart. To this day, I enjoy Sissy Spacek's work, because she was able to pull off Carrie White (although the girl in Stephen King's book is a lumpy mess of protoplasm and DePalma had to work to make the pretty, wholesome, and curvy Spacek look bad). Travolta can be taken seriously, too. Piper Laurie scared the Holy Water out of me.
I could go on listing the cast members who were very impressive, but I'm running out of time here, and you know it was a great cast.
I remember seeing Carrie at the State Theatre in Spokane during a November snowstorm. My best friend and I exited after the movie and I still recall feeling blue. Not because I was one of the popular kids at Shadle Park High School (I wasn't), but because there was so much I had missed. For some reason, this horror movie about a horse-face of a girl with a late menstrual cycle and telekinetic powers made me sad, made me miss high school.
Great movie, strange frame of mind. 31 years ago on a snowy night.