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CARRIE The only movie ever made to have a menstrual cycle become a catalyst that sets a wave of destruction in motion. Carrie is a classic horror film: part psychological drama, part a statement against religious fanatical people, and of course, part down and out trash death fest perfect for anyone who was fucked over in high school and wants to see a bunch of stuck-up high school assholes die. Carrie is the rare trash film that not only is well made and original, but it will scare the fuck out of you even on repeat viewings. The whole mood of the film is surreal and disturbing. Just as creepy as Sissy Spacek’s Carrie White is her religious nut mother, Margaret White (Piper Laurie), who is so hung up on the “sinfulness” of the female body that she neglects to tell Carrie about menstruation. When Carrie gets her period in gym class, her hysteria is ridiculed by trash film greats PJ Soles, Nancy Allen, and Amy Irving, who pelt her with tampons and Kotex. The girls who threw the tampons get in trouble, thereby triggering a series of events of revenge that will become a mass slaughter. Great B-movie star of the ‘70s, PJ Soles of Rock and Roll High School fame shines as one of the mean girls but it is DePalma regular Nancy Allen who is the supreme bitch nemesis out to get Carrie. They enlist the help of a pre-Grease John Travolta to plot the ultimate revenge on Carrie. Because the menstruation episode involves blood, the attack on Carrie involves blood…lots of it. However, fucking with Carrie White proves to be a mistake; all those years Carrie spent locked up in her mother’s closet being forced to pray, she has developed telekinetic powers. Powers you don’t want to fuck with. Besides an excellent plot, superb acting, direction that makes us sympathetic to Carrie, and a memorable prom sequence, Carrie is filled with trash elements us trashaholics all love: slow motion naked girls in the gym locker room, Allen and Soles being evil, child abuse, attack by Kotex, death by sharp kitchen utensils, a loaded bucket of fresh pig’s blood and an ultra-violent death rampage including nasty, long painful death by electrocution. Add a bitchy PE teacher being cut in half by a table and you have the prom I wish I’d orchestrated control over. (For the record, the Oakmont High Class of ’82 in Roseville DESERVED what Carrie’s classmates get for calling me a Satan worshipper because I listened to Black Sabbath and gasp…AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells”…I was lame in PE too, which drives the mean girls to cruel comments. There’s a little bit of Carrie White in all of us who were treated like shit by the jocks and cheerleaders, which make the inevitable fate of the mean kids all the more orgasmic to watch). The prom sequence that is central to the movie is filmed in split screen to add to the intensity. DePalma grew as a filmmaker between his trashy campy Phantom of the Paradise and the chilling Carrie. Whereas Phantom’s split screen is a little cheesy, with Carrie, the technique is a toe curler. A classic Halloween movie that never gets old on repeated versions. The BEST movie ever made about how fucked high school can be on loners. Carrie is a freakin’ masterpiece. -Zzilly Gutbuckets (aka Lizz Fisher)
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