The casual viewer of the first hour or so of Brian De Palma's Carrie(1976) might be forgiven for thinking they are watching some variation of the 'teen makeover romance' subgenre, where the ugliest girl in the school only needs a new dress and a visit to the beauty salon to suddenly date the prom king and find out her high school isn't such a bad place after all ("She's All That" and "The Princess Diaries" being recent entries). After a voyeuristic opening, where terminal misfit Carrie White find herself naked, in the shower, menstruating for the first time, being pelted with tampons by her classmates shouting "Plug it UP! Plug it UP!", the film takes us through the familiar territory of the headmaster's office, the ballpark, the classroom, the suburban living room and the all-important question of a teenage girl's career:"Who shall take me to the Prom?" Carrie's world isn't really so weird - her telekinetic powers mean she is able to knock an ashtray off a desk and an irritating brat off his bike. Big Deal - but really she just wants to be loved. Sure her Mom is an embarrassing nutcase who stalks the sidelines flashing fire and belching brimstone, but then whose Mom doesn't?

In the opinion of sickly-sweet Sue (Amy Irving), and good-hearted PE teacher Miss Collins (Betty Buckley), all Carrie needs is a decent haircut and the sanction of top jock Tommy. In the opinion of our binary opposite Chris (Nancy Allen) and her greasy sidekick, JD-wannabe Billy Nolan (John Travolta) what Carrie needs is public, gruesome and spectacular humiliation. Let the conflict begin. It seems like Sue & Miss Collins might triumph, as Carrie brushes up well and gets to go to the prom with angel-haired Tommy Ross. They even get elected prom king and queen. For one moment it looks as though Carrie might put her weird background behind her but just when it's all got too romantic and soppy for words, Chris and Billy disrupt the carefully laid genre paradigms of high school romance with a well placed (on Carrie's head) bucket of pig's blood. The final third of the film is grotesque to the extreme - gallons of blood, fire, destruction of ALL characters (even the ones we thought were quite nice), chaos, flying knives and of course the oft-copied-never-equalled final shot. It's a film where you can't really hate the monster, where you want the underdog to come out on top, and where the cataclysmic closure provides little satisfaction for the viewer. It's a very brutal film, made to seem more so by De Palma's use of split screen to extend action sequences, tracking shots to create uneasiness and the VERY seventies red filters to symbolise blood. It owes a great debt to Psycho, and together with Hallowe'en marks the genesis of the teen slasher movie.

Carrie was a great success at the box office, tapping in to teenage fears about what happens when you don't fit in with the in crowd, and more adult preoccupations with What Regan Might Do at senior prom. Like The Exorcist before it, Carrie garnered Oscar nominations (for Spacek and Laurie) and Spacek won the Golden Globe for her iconoclastic portrayal of an unwilling and very female monster. Horror seemed to be back at the forefront of popular consciousness.

Carrie Links

Carrie 2: The Rage (1999)