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By BILL COSFORDKnight News WireCarrie White is a high schoolgirl, a very unhappy one. To begin with, she s not so pretty. And she lives in the creepiest house on her street - maybe in her whole, small town But that's hardly the worst part. Carrie's mother is a Bible-totin' religious fanatic. She makes the rounds of the other kids' houses, badgering their parents to bear witness to The Lord, flashing those wild. Holy Roller s eyes like a creature possessed Which, of course, she is -but not by demons Her mother has been careful to build into Carrie a great wall of fear concerning the sins of everday life; sins like makingfriends, like dating, like laughing When the child is ornery. Mrs White throws her into the “prayer closet.' where she can ponder the terrors of her inherited faith for just as long as it takes to repent And when Mrs White confronts the sure signs of her daughter's succesful emergence from puberty, it's into the closet witn her one more time, for the worst sin of all Carrie's incipient woman-altng of a woman with an en-tire kitchen cutlery set Though he may be making cinema history - first to dis patch a character with a carrot peeler De Palma need not have used the scene at all The horror comes from other corners altogether the wounding of the psychic girl, the dread in her new-found talent, her pitiless revengeStill, this is the year's scariest And that counts for a g»-eat deal in a time when somuch of the screen violence Me is without any emo t;onui coloration at all. merelyhung ou as a reminder thatperversity still exists. As the raving mother. Piper Laurie is intriguing She brings her beauty to an uglv role and the combination works. There areothers w the competent cast- notably teen personality John Travolta (from TV s “Welcome Back, Hotter ), acquitting his supporting rolewith unexpected humor But itis Spacek who humanizes the proceedings - the criticalperformance Like the Western, the norror-film has fallen on badt mes in recent years. Thegenre has lacked humanity,which was always the key tosuccessful filming of themacabre But it is here, in■ Carrie You will caresomething about tms film.even as vou cringe R at1NG “CARRIE'’ israted R It contains consolerable violence and some scenesof female nuditv.so long She takes her own revenge, using her “giftIt is one of the most effective plot devices for a horrorfilm used in a long time, just effective enough to redeem the film s occasional, violentexcesses Director Brian De Palma has made a film about as dif-ferent from his last(“Obsession • as possibleThe moodiness, the layer by plotting and heavy dependence on the score o the latter are all missing heie So is the relentless heavy handednt of his gruesome ' Sisters In their place De Palma ha used a slick contemporarystvie. full of tricks and gim-pucks and camera angles that seem to be competing for • most novel honors But De Palma knows h»6materiai in this case, knows a horrifying story wnen he findsone and iets hs taste tor tnemacabre run free Tne result is at times uuile stunning, at others mindlessly violent In the end though. Carrie isthe horror movie of tne year, of tne iast several yearsAs the unstable teiekinetic.Sissv Soacek i. a perfect com-s •binaUO oi inart.culate loser and g tied endd. wallflower and demon She becomes — so rare for tnis kmd of melodrama a character of some deoth When, a« the bene* ko a rv of a classmate's | svmoaih' she comes up with■f' —*.| a Cinderella date to the highschool prom w** are involved, no matter how noKey the prospect.The prom scenes are oddly ! poignant, searching out our I sentimental wea* Minis aivdtwanging at hear' strings, ailI gau/v and soft Bui the horror is inevitable, and we can only squirm in prospect it is not a film one wants to translate fully - else where s the horwror' - so suffice to say that among the shock scenes i one guaranteed to propel you from your seat with very little ef fort - there has been none I like it since the fabled WaitUntil Dark Ultimately, we are scaredjust enough to forgive De Palma his excesses m particular the wholly gratuitous impBut what's hardest on Carrie is that she dresses funny, and that she is easily thechampion wallflower in theentire history of Bates High School It is hard to tell who has more contempt for her -the Bates High boys or the Bates High girls - hut it is the girls who finally pushthings too far, launching thetale of horror that is Car% *neFor Carrie is a teiekinetic She can move things With her mind She just thinks, and things move. Not so well at first, but she practices and it becomes more smooth. morepowerful The bullying of the Bates girls and a bi/arre act of vengeance committed at theclimax of the high school prom act to puh Carrie ov er the edge she s stood near forPLAZA ON£ A rwoTUSTIN - 544-1696MURDER * BY DEATH8:00ROBIN and MARION6:00 - 0-42mtoMA* 5: AO nr AtKXkft 28 m ArOC**0*00M-F 6:30*10:00 S-5 3:1 5-6:30*10tr C/TY CENTERTHEATRESIN THl CITY ORANGE)LEBACKTORO RDKXKFttLO1-5880GARDEN UHOVF «t jhF CITv lt;)WVEM-F 6:15-9:30S-S 3:00-6:15-9::MUSTANGCOUNTRYM-F 8:00 S-S 1:30-4:50-8:0BOTH DNtMASU2S Tit 2:30 RM.tWPAYTuesday, Nov. 23,1976FILM REVIEW
Newspaper Details
Orange County Register
Orange, California, US
Tue, Nov 23, 1976
Page 17
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