There
are now three cinematic versions of Stephen King's first
novel, Carrie (1974), each with a different slant on the
telekinetic high schooler who wreaks havoc. The first,
called Carrie (1976), directed by Brian De Palma, followed
the story fairly carefully. Katt Shea directed The
Rage: Carrie II (1999), which is based in part on a true story
about Lakewood High School boys assigning points to girls
and then competing to lay them. The most recent version,
directed by David Carson and again called Carrie (2002),
begins as a murder mystery, with Detective John Mulcahey
(played by David Keith) interviewing suspects and witnesses
in the small town of Chamberlain during 1979. The film,
originally made as a television miniseries, cuts back and
forth between the sequence of events in the novel and police
interviews. When the film begins, Carietta White (played
by Angela De Bettis) is growing up with a single mother,
Margaret (played by Patricia Clarkson), who quotes the
Bible to control her daughter, hoping to keep Carrie pure,
as she defines sin. One afternoon, as a little girl, Carrie
has a conversation with a teenager living next door, whereupon
her mother so disapproves of the neighbor girl's partial
nudity that she order Carrie into the house, where she
is to go into the closet to pray for forgiveness. The impact
of the mother's stress on innocent Carrie brings about
her first telekinetic feat, which involves lightning-like
bolts hitting the ground and house. Later, at age 17 or
18, Carrie is a graduating senior at Ewen High School;
she has never had a period. When blood flows in the girls
locker room at school one day, she is terrified, especially
when the rest of the girls taunt her outside the shower;
later, she finds thousands of tampon in her hall locker,
a prank that provokes student laughter and more telekinesis
from Carrie. In response, girls gym teacher Rita Desjarden
(played by Rena Sofer) demands disciplinary punishment,
resisted only by the ringleader, whose lawyer father goes
to school to protest. However, the most negative reaction
comes from Carrie's mother, who had been hoping that Carrie
could be kept so free from sin that she would never menstruate;
she informs Carrie that her sin has caught up with her.
Later, fellow student Sue Snell (played by Kandyse McClure)
decides that something should be done to be nice to the
unfortunate Carrie, so she asks her boyfriend Thomas Ross
(played by Tobias Mehler) to take Carrie to the Senior
Prom, to be held in the school gym. Christine Hargensen
(played by Emilie de Ravin) and her boyfriend William Nolan
(played by Jesse Cadotte), however, plot to further embarrass
Carrie. First, they rig ballots so that Carrie and Tommy
are voted Prom Queen and King. Then, after placing a bucket
of pig blood in the rafters of the gym, they topple the
bucket so that Carrie will be drenched. After the blood
falls on Carrie, she goes into a trance, and her telekinetic
powers result in a fire at the school that causes a chain
reaction in the power lines around the town. As Carrie
walks home, everything in her path is upended, including
a car with Chris and Billy, who escaped from the gym to
go home before the fireworks; they die as the car rotates
upside down. Upon reaching home, Carrie goes into the bathtub
to wash off the red paint, but her mother tries to drown
her. Carrie then causes her mother to die by telekinetically
impacting her heart. Sue soon arrives at the White house,
revives Carrie with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and drives
her out of town. When the film ends, the police cannot
find Carrie and may possibly charge several students with
conspiracy, but we are left in suspense, so a TV sequel
was doubtless contemplated at one time. Once again, the
tyranny of peer pressure is the main theme, and the story
may perhaps encourage teenagers to be a little kinder to
oddball students. The oddballs of the 1970s were ethnic
minorities, then gays and Lesbians in the 1980s and 1990s,
so the message seems a bit old-fashioned after two re-runs.
Indeed, in 1988 the musical Carrie flopped in New York
after a five-day run.
MH
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want to comment on this film
