Directed by Brian De Palma
U.S. | 1976 | Fiction | 98 min | English
Thursday, October 22 | 9:00 PM | FH
Sponsored by A Friend of VTIFF
50th Anniversary Screening The world is currently overrun by unaccountable bullies, so what a perfect time to revisit Brian De Palma’s classic adaptation of Carrie, where every last person who tormented poor Carrie White (an iconic Sissy Spacek) gets theirs in diabolical, merciless fashion. Carrie was both the first Stephen King novel to be published and the first to be adapted into a feature film, and give or take Kubrick’s blasphemous Shining, it remains the best page-to-screen take on the prolific fright-master’s work. Before (and after) Carrie, De Palma had a reputation as a sardonic pastiche artist with a penchant for Hitchcock mashups—the New Hollywood director that other New Hollywood directors revered, if not the masses. But in this film, certainly one his finest, he locates a newfound tenderness and sympathy for the trials of this outcast heroine—beset by her peers’ (Nancy Allen, John Travolta) cruelty and her mother’s (a no-holds-barred Piper Laurie) fanatical abuse—even as he indulges the surface pleasures of the high school movie, as well as his own voyeuristic tendencies. De Palma submerges his reverence for the Master, but of course, Carrie begins with an unforgettable shower scene that interpolates Psycho to brilliant and devastating effect, setting the stage for one of the boldest climaxes in all of film, a Grand Guignol of the highest order. Happy Halloween from VTIFF. ~OO