Notes on…

Carrie(1976)

Dir. Directed by Brian De Palma


One of the many fucked up things in Carrie is because of Chris Hargenson's vote-tampering shenanigans, we never learn who really won king and queen of the prom. Judging from the honest reaction of their classmates, it's entirely believable that Carrie and Tommy could have legitimately won without Chris' vote tampering.

— Quentin Tarantino (Cinema Speculation)


In my view, [a] personal unpleasantness marks [John MIlius] films – he wrote Dirty Harry – whereas De Palma’s are simply fatuous: enjoyably fatuous when the schlock is whipped thick enough, and unendurably fatuous when it isn’t. Pye and Myles’s interview [in The Movie Brats] catches him exquisitely unhappy that he has not yet had a monster hit like the others. He feels he needs it as a passport to power within the system. But in his case the power seems purely for its own end. He wants to fashion objects which are more successful than other people’s objects, but I can’t see, at least from the evidence of the heavily menstruating Carrie, that he has much idea what the power might be for.

David Hare (London Review of Books)

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Synopsis: An awkward, telekinetic teenage girl's lonely life is dominated by relentless bullying at school and an oppressive religious fanatic mother at home. When her tormentors pull a humiliating prank at the senior prom, she unleashes a horrifying chaos on everyone, leaving nothing but destruction in her wake.