Summer of Stephen
Title: Carrie
Release Date: 1976 Length: 1 hour 38 minutes Start Date: May 26, 2017 End Date: May 26, 2017 Director: Brian De Palma Starring: Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Betty Buckley, John Travolta First things first. I love this movie. I’m also planning to point out a lot of issues I have with it, but I truly do love it. I originally caught the 1976 version of Carrie on television when I was too little to really comprehend what was happening, so all I really retained was Carrie covered in blood while her classmates laughed. My second viewing was in high school, right after reading the book, so I did the whole reading snob “that’s not how it was in the book” thing. (In all fairness, I was doing my book report over the differences between the book and the movie, so I wasn’t just being obnoxious.) I’ve watched bits and pieces on tv in the years since, but hadn’t really sat down and focused on it until the other night. Warning to those of you who haven’t watched Carrie, but plan to eventually: I’m going to spoil pretty much everything that happens. So if you want to view the movie with fresh eyes, stop reading this post and come back to it later. The film opens with what is possibly the sorriest excuse for a volleyball game I’ve ever seen. Now, I’m no athlete, but even I could completely crush these girls in a match. Despite the fact that they’re all lacking in the basic skills of “bump, set, spike” (opting instead for the “flail your arms in the general direction of the ball and hope you make contact” method), the girls on Carrie’s (Sissy Spacek) team decide that she’s solely to blame for their loss. They insult her on their way into the locker room. Which leads us to what is, hands down, my least favorite scene in the whole movie. Since it’s been awhile since I watched Carrie, and I usually watch it on tv, I had completely forgotten how the locker room scene starts. I literally yelled, “Gratuitous nudity!” at my computer. Yes, I get that they’re in a locker room after PE, but they’re also supposed to be teenagers. And since this film is rated R, the main audience in theaters would have been dudes too old to slobber over high school girls. After the camera weaves through a parade of unabashed nakedness (which is definitely not the norm in any locker room I’ve ever been in), we catch up with Carrie. At this point, the film becomes what I can only imagine was a rejected opening for a 70’s porno. Carrie stands under the shower’s blast, slowly rubbing a bar of soap over every part of herself (taking a few extra moments to closely examine her breasts), while vaguely romantic music plays in the background. The lighting and the music are equally soft and Carrie is so enthralled in making sure she doesn’t miss an inch of skin with that soap that I half expected Squints from The Sandlot to pop up out of nowhere, crying, “Oiling! Lotioning!” But I digress. Carrie’s reverie is interrupted when she discovers blood dripping out from between her legs. Having never been taught about menstruation, she understandably believes that she’s dying. Unfortunately, her desperate pleas for help only lead to ridicule, and her classmates mock her by throwing tampons at her and instructing her to “Plug it up!” Carrie is finally saved by her gym teacher, Miss Collins (Betty Buckley), who slaps her, forces her to get a grip, and allows her to go home for the day. We’re soon introduced to Carrie’s mother, Margaret White (Piper Laurie). She is insane. As a religious fanatic, she believes that Carrie must have committed some horrific sin, as that’s apparently what triggers girls to start their periods. She spews Bible verses as means of chastisement, but none of the verses can actually be found in the Bible, so she’s actually just exposing her daughter to religion-adjacent word vomit. According to IMDB’s trivia section, Piper Laurie found her character so over-the-top that she was positive the movie was a dark comedy, not a horror movie. This might explain why she seems like she wants to laugh at herself in some scenes. Other than thumping a bible she probably wrote herself, Margaret’s favorite method of punishing Carrie is to lock her in a closet filled with candles and a statue of St. Sebastian, who is pierced with several arrows and has hair that somewhat resembles Margaret’s. (I’ll take “Foreshadowing” for $1000, Alex!) What follows is one of my new favorite scenes in all of cinematic history, and I honestly don’t think I would enjoy it as much if I hadn’t been a teacher. We return to school, where Miss Collins is punishing the girls for torturing Carrie, informing them that if they don’t spend every day in detention with her, they have to forfeit their prom tickets. Chris Hargensen, the instigator of Carrie’s abuse, tries to talk her way out of detention, but Miss Collins is not having it. She tells Chris to get rid of her gum and line up with the rest of the class. When Chris asks what she’s supposed to do with the gum, Miss Collins instructs her, “Choke on it, for all I care.” Later, when Chris is getting particularly snippy, Miss Collins hauls off and slaps her. Now let me ask all of you teachers, in all honesty, haven’t you had at least one student that you really wish you could pop in the face? Just once? Of course, we’d never do it, because this isn’t the 1970s, and none of us are looking to face a lawsuit. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t dream. Anyway, let’s fast forward to prom night. Carrie is going with Tommy Ross (and his beautiful, bouncy, blonde curls) because his girlfriend, Sue Snell, set them up to assuage her guilt for her involvement in the locker room incident. Carrie looks lovely, which she is told by several people, including Miss Collins. Tommy finally convinces Carrie to dance, and they share a sweet (though somewhat awkward and totally unnecessary since he has a girlfriend!) kiss. While they’re having a lovely time, Chris and her boyfriend Billy Nolan (John Travolta) sneak under the stage, where they have a pulley system hooked up to a bucket filled with pig’s blood. Quick sidebar: Can you leave blood sitting around at room temperature for 24 hours or more? Wouldn’t it congeal? Because, I mean, it falls over Carrie like water, and that just doesn’t seem accurate. If anyone knows the answer to this, please let me know, because it’s been bugging me. Sidebar to the sidebar: I really wish Chris had been the one who killed the pig instead of Billy. I believe that she’s a truly evil person, and he was mostly just caught up in the ride of wanting to have sex with her. So I think, if this happened in real life, it totally would have been Chris who did the dirty work. Okay, we’re back on track now. It’s time to crown the prom king and queen and, wouldn’t you know it, Tommy and Carrie are the winners. Which is not surprising, since two of Chris’s friends stuffed the ballot box. Tommy and Carrie get up on the stage, receive their crowns, and smile at the crowd. At this point, Sue has sneaked in to check out how things are going, and notices a rope wiggling along the side of the stage. She investigates, only to spot the bucket perched above the stage, which leads her to look underneath where Chris and Billy are hiding. Before she can do anything about it, though, Miss Collins sees her and drags her out of the gym, assuming she’s there to disrupt the evening. This is fortunate for Sue. Not so much for literally everyone else. With Sue out of the way, Chris follows through with her plan, pulling on the rope and unleashing a waterfall of blood upon Carrie’s head. Though her classmates and teachers are mute with shock (with the exception of Chris’s friend), she imagines that they are, as her mother warned her, all laughing at her. Another sidebar: Margaret White yelling “They’re all gonna laugh at you!” is one of my favorite things, and I say it to people all the time. Unfortunately, they rarely understand the reference. So, positive that everyone is again mocking her, Carrie goes ballistic, using her telekinetic powers to lock the gym doors, and turn the fire hoses on her tormentors. Slightly longer sidebar: Oh, my goodness, I forgot to mention that Carrie has telekinetic powers! That’s the basis for the whole movie! How have I made it this far into the post without bringing that up? Well, for those of you who are, for some reason, reading this despite knowing nothing about Carrie, the titular character possesses telekinetic powers, so she can move stuff with her mind. This causes endless amounts of trouble for her, because she’s never learned to properly harness this ability. And now, back to our regularly scheduled rambling. I love the prom massacre scene in the movie so much more than the one in the book. In the book, Carrie’s powers are completely out of control, and her emotions are contributing to all of the chaos. She doesn’t seem to understand why the gym is catching fire around her and people are dying, and she just wants to get out of there. But in the movie, Carrie is focused. She darts her head around the room, as though her eyes are instructing each object to cause as much destruction as possible. She doesn’t even notice poor Tommy, dead at her feet after being hit in the head by the blood bucket. And she’s so intent on revenge against those who’ve hurt her, that she doesn’t even hesitate to also take out those who’ve tried to help. (I’m referring, of course, to Miss Collins, who is possibly cut in half by what I assume was a falling basketball backboard.) In both the book and the movie, Chris and Billy die when Carrie uses her powers to crash their car as she makes her way home. However, in the movie, we are delighted by the absolutely terrible special effects of the car rolling multiple times. Upon Carrie's arrival at home, things go down very differently between the two versions. In the book, Margaret confronts Carrie and stabs her. Carrie then uses her powers to visual Margaret’s heart before slowly crushing it. This is a nice scene and all, but not nearly as satisfying as the movie. In the film, Margaret still stabs Carrie, but the revenge is so much sweeter. Carrie uses her powers to fling knives at her mother, stabbing them into her hands, chest, and stomach. (Remember that foreshadowing I talked about earlier, with the statue of St. Sebastian?) The result is one of the greatest/creepiest images in any film. It’s truly fantastic. Both versions end differently, as well. The book ends with Carrie running away from her house and eventually dying in the arms of Sue Snell, who had gone looking for her after discovering that most of the town was on fire. The book is also frequently interrupted throughout with excerpts from fictional books documenting the “Carrie White case,” and interviews with the few survivors. I do like these additions, but I understand why they wouldn’t have worked in the movie. The movie ending, on the other hand, I have to admit that I hate it. It involves Carrie’s house falling in on itself while burning to the ground, trapping Carrie and her mother inside. We then cut to Sue Snell who is bedridden with grief, as all of her friends are dead. Then, we see Sue visiting the site of Carrie’s house, which is now completely leveled and decorated with a cross informing us that “Carrie White burns in hell.” As Sue reaches down to place a bouquet by the cross, a bloody hand pops out of the rubble, grabbing her arm. Sue wakes up, screaming, and that’s the end. As I said, I hate the ending. It’s just such a cheesy jump scare that was absolutely unnecessary. And, I mean, if you’re going to go with the “hand coming out of the grave” trope, at least fully commit to it and don’t use the “it was all just a dream” cop out. So anyway, in conclusion, I love the 1976 version of Carrie. Stephen King loves the 1976 version of Carrie. Other than the ending (and a few weird, random bits throughout), it’s one of the better book-to-film adaptations. If you’ve already seen Carrie, go watch it again and tell me what you think. And if you haven’t seen it, what are you waiting for? It’s on Hulu for only one more day. Get to it. Final sidebar: There’s a movie called The Rage: Carrie 2?! What is this? Do I want to watch it? I’m sure it’s terrible, but I’m kind of tempted to check it out. I don’t know. I’ll let y’all know if I decide to watch it.
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Title: ‘Salem’s Lot
Publishing Date: 1975 Length: 451 pages Start Date: May 7, 2017 End Date: May 22, 2017 I realize this is only the second undertaking of my Stephen King-filled summer, but so far ‘Salem’s Lot has been the most difficult to track down. I had to visit four different libraries before I finally found a copy, and even then it was shelved under “Fantasy,” which doesn’t really make sense to me. Librarians, can you explain that one to me? Like Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot was a re-read from high school, but I honestly think it creeped me out more the second time. I have a rule against the reading the back-of-the-book synopsis, so everything I encountered during my first reading was a complete surprise. But I think that knowing the basic plot points and twists for this reading added a sense of dread that kind of hung over the book. In an unintentional case of dramatic irony, I knew every move the antagonist would make before the protagonist was even aware of his existence, and that made everything that much more exciting. It’s similar to watching a horror movie and screaming at the ditzy white girl to run outside instead of going into the basement, knowing the whole time that the tropes of horror dictate that she must venture down the stairs and into the arms of the killer. Reading this in my mid-twenties also presented me with an opportunity that would have been impossible for my 17-year-old self. I have a whole new appreciation for Ben’s relationship with Mark. As a teenager, I’m sure I was initially invested in the romance between Ben and Susan. Actually, that can’t be true. I’ve been anti-romance since I was 13. Regardless, I now have a baker’s dozen of nieces and nephews, so I completely understood Ben’s instinct to protect Mark, even if that required dragging the boy through several difficult situations. Even though ‘Salem’s Lot was only Stephen King’s second book, I believe it’s one of his best. Maybe I’m biased because of my obsession with vampire literature (and I mean real vampires, not those sparkly abominations who control their impulses because, you know, love; gag me with a spoon), but it’s likely that ‘Salem’s Lot will sit toward the top of my list when I rank all of King’s books at the end of this adventure. One thing that bugged about this one, though, was some of the language. I realize that it was written in the 70s, but it seemed unnecessary for people to call others “fags” and “queers” as often as they did. Title: Carrie
Publishing Date: 1974 Length: 181 pages Start Date: May 1, 2017 End Date: May 5, 2017 My reading of Carrie was actually a re-read, as I originally read it as a junior in high school. The first time I read it, I was doing a joint book report with my best friend and we wanted to compare and contrast the book and the movie. Anyone who knows my best friend from high school will not be surprised to hear that I was in charge of reading the book while she took care of tracking down a copy of the movie. When I read Carrie as a 16-year-old, I was appalled at how Carrie’s classmates and teachers treated her. I also thought her mother was absolutely insane. Reading it as a 26-year-old, I still have a lot of the same feelings, with one exception. When Carrie’s PE teacher becomes frustrated with Carrie’s inability to function like a normal teenager, I totally get it now. Having been a teacher, I’ve worked with students who, while undeserving the bullying they receive, also do nothing to prevent themselves from being victims. At my current stage in life, I can look back at being Carrie’s age and wish she’d tried just a little harder to not ostracize herself by regurgitating her mother’s sentiments that everyone was going to Hell. Having read several Stephen King novels, I know that Carrie is definitely not his best work, which is unsurprising since it was his debut. However, I really love this book. It captures the awfulness of being a teenager, and perfectly captures the dangers of becoming a religious fanatic. There’s a good chance I’ll read this one again in the future, and I’ll likely force my future children to read it. Also, I know that Carrie has already been made into two feature films and a made-for-tv movie, but how has no one ever thought to cast Kate Burton as Carrie’s mom? I pictured her the whole time I was reading it. |
Jacinta M. CarterProfessional Book Nerd Archives
July 2019
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