Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Directed by Brian De Palma
• Written by Lawrence D. Cohen, based on the novel by Stephen King
• Starring
  • Sissy Spacek
  • Piper Laurie
  • Amy Irving
  • William Katt
  • Nancy Allen
• Produced by Brian De Palma and Paul Monash

It’s hard to talk about Carrie the movie without considering Carrie the book. Stephen King’s first novel, it was a runaway bestseller, but even a casual reading will show that this is not the Stephen King we’ve all come to know and love/hate/whatever. He was a writer unsure of his voice, and covered it in time-honored fashion by instead using a variety of voices, delivering whole sections of the novel as excerpts from other works written after the events of the story, adding a patina of documentary feel to a very dramatic tale.

The script by Larry Cohen, one of King’s most dedicated adapters, doesn’t try to mimic that multi-voiced technique, and streamlines much of the action, as is necessary for the condensed cinematic version. Much is regrettably lost in the process, but the movie still packs a visceral wallop, especially in the two scenes which everyone remembers from both the screen and the page.

The first such scene is the beginning of the novel, the movie, and the internal storyline: Awkward and friendless Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), panicking as she has her first period in the high school girls’ shower, wholly ignorant of the facts of menstruation. (Try to imagine a movie opening with such a scene today and getting an “R” rating. Go ahead, try. All right, I can’t either.) Her uncomprehending horror, coupled with the brutal reaction from her classmates as they throw pads and her and chant, “Plug it up!” sets a theme not only for the movie but for the whole of King’s writing career: that savage cruelty is never hard to find, even among the most ordinary people.

Jesus Christ, as envisioned by Charles Band.

The reason for Carrie’s ignorance, and for her social ineptitude, is found in her mother (Piper Laurie), whose introduction I found, frankly, more than a bit disappointing. By the end of the movie, her performance has certainly earned the Oscar nomination it picked up, but the initial scene which introduces her as one of those loud, sing-songy, rapturous Christian fanatics is so infused with stereotype that it’s almost an impediment to accepting her character later on. No, I’m not denying the existence of those “Jesus people” out there; in fact, it’s the existence of such people who so fit the cliche, right down to the pseudo-southern “televangelist” lilt to her diction, which makes the characterization seem lazy and off-the-shelf.

If Mrs. White’s mannerisms seem stereotyped, though, her rapidly-enunciated theology is more than a bit off-kilter. In her own private version of the gospel, intercourse in any form or relationship is the preeminent sin, menstruation is the curse put upon Eve for her sinful weakness, and the onset of Carrie’s menses is prima facie evidence of a sinfulness on her own part. The entire White house, bedecked with candles and kitschy Jesus pictures, is a testament to religion gone wrong, where a literally unfulfillable list of “shalt nots” crowds out whatever good was preached in Judea two thousand years ago.

“Nah, I like the other suit better. You know, the bulletproof one.”

But Carrie’s humiliating public period is life-changing even beyond the imaginable emotional trauma involved; from that point, things start happening around her, when she shows her agitation: Lightbulbs burst. Ashtrays flip. Mirrors quake and shatter. As with a Marvel mutant, Carrie’s adolescence is uncorking an inner power which responds to her angst, and both frightens and empowers her as she becomes aware of it.

Where her story would have led from there is anyone’s guess but for the kindnesses and cruelties of near-strangers. Her classmate Sue (Amy Irving), a participant in the earlier mob reaction to Carrie’s shower panic, shows a streak of conscience rare among her peers; she accepts the detention punishment that the gym teacher Miss Collins (Betty Buckley) imposes on the class, and seeks some way to lift Carrie up. In contrast, self-absorbed uber-bitch Chris (Nancy Allen) refuses to admit to any wrongdoing in her actions, and when her attitude in detention gets her barred from the upcoming senior prom, she immediately blames Carrie for all her troubles and begins plotting revenge. (Wow — teenagers have been operating under the delusion of unearned entitlement for the last thirty years? And yet our civilization hasn’t regressed entirely to the Stone Age? There’s a miracle right there.)

The two teen girls thus form an odd parallel in their actions for the second act of the movie. Sue appeals to her good-natured trackstar boyfriend Tommy (William Katt, sporting a mop of hair that looks like a blond poodle pelt) to play Boy Scout and take Carrie to the senior prom. On the other side of the tracks, Chris persuades her own braindead boyfriend Billy (John Travolta) to join her revenge plot by… um… I can’t really say it here, but I can tell you I was mystified that she could speak while doing the persuading. Billy’s character is one of the more profound casualties of the transition from book to screen; we see enough of him and Chris together to tell that their choices of romantic partner each evidence a deep self-loathing, but Billy never has enough time to come across as more than a badly pussywhipped Sweathog.

“Excuse me… have you seen my poodle?”

What makes the revenge most heartbreaking, of course, is that it is enabled by Sue’s and Tommy’s best intentions. He persuades her to go to the prom with him, and Carrie finally breaks out of her shell, defying her mother for the first time and experimenting with makeup. The two of them honestly enjoy themselves so much at the prom, that their election as King and Queen seems more the culmination of a single perfect night than the result of Chris’ machinations, to position her where a bucket of pig’s blood can fall on her.

That’s the powerful image that most viewers take away from the movie with them: Carrie, drenched in blood humiliated and enraged, as her telekinetic powers break free and assault the prom attendees. Having read the book first, I will admit that I half-considered the twenty-six-year-old Spacek miscast for the first half of the movie; unlike the heavy, dull, beaten-down Carrie of the novel, Spacek seemed coiled too tight, possessed of the unpredictable energy of a whipped dog which still might try to bite. But here at the prom, first in portraying a shy and vulnerable girl coming out of her shell, then in becoming the shamed and traumatized victim giving form to her frustration and rage, she makes the part her own. Especially impressive is the restraint she uses as Carrie wreaks havoc in the flame-filled high-school auditorium; instead of trying to compete with the blood covering her and the mayhem around her, Spacek limits her physical performance to her rigid stance and her wide, bird-like eyes, and arrests our attention as the eye of the storm around her.

And I never want to hear about YOUR teen angst trauma again.

It’s no accident that both of Carrie’s public embarrassments involve blood, and the movie would be stronger if what everyone remembers as the climactic scene really were the climax of the movie. Unfortunately, events continue to unfold just a little too long after the visual spectacle, as Chris and Billy get their comeuppance separate from their classmates, and then Carrie returns home for a last confrontation with her mother… and when the movie still doesn’t end, we get a taste of the aftermath, complete with a nightmare sequence. I can see where De Palma may have felt the need to show that this isn’t a movie whose events should be assumed to have no repercussions beyond the closing credits; the fact that the book contains long excerpts from accounts supposedly written after the events depicted may have made that kind of real-world grounding seem necessary. However, forced by linear storytelling to the end of the movie, such additions serve to mute the impact of the prom scene.

De Palma also makes a couple of other attention-getting decisions, both in his choice of visual presentation. At least twice, he shoots scenes with a dual-focus lens, allowing characters in both the foreground and the background to be in focus at the same time. The idea may have seemed better on paper than in practice, though, as the technique leaves a blurry area in the center of the frame which can easily break the viewer’s suspension of disbelief as he considers the mechanics of the effect. The prom night scene is the second example, in which split-screen effects are used creatively, giving audiences both Carrie’s performance and the mayhem around her without necessitating too much rapid-fire editing. Given that the technique may have been familiar to audiences from its use in Woodstock (1970), this may have also been a subtle attempt at introducing a hint of documentary feel.

Ooh, I loves me the subtlety!

Of course, whatever flaws I point out are visible only because the movie on the whole is very good. Despite the radical departures from the the storytelling style of the book, Carrie set a high-water mark for Stephen King adaptations that few later attempts, at least of his horror stories, managed to approach. It also remains a striking, compelling, and very memorable motion picture.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 7 seen directly, plus references to pretty much the entire senior class being “gone”
• breasts: 14 (group shower scene, remember?)
• explosions: 5
• dream sequences: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Stefan Gierasch (”Mr. Morton”) played “Dr. Hal Moseley” in the TNG episode “A Matter of Time”