Vintage Review
By Julie Johnston
IV Leader Columnist, Oct. 16, 2008
With Halloween fast approaching, horror film rentals, purchases and premieres tend to boost more than any other time of year.
These days, there are as many horror and scary movies available at your local video store as there are romantic comedies. But how does one weed through all of the Disney inspired ghost stories and Rob Zombie inspired gory gruesomeness?
It’s simple really; you settle for the happy medium.
The 1976 horror flick “Carrie” contains all the scare you may want for a night, without giving nightmares to last for few weeks.
Based on Stephen King’s novel, “Carrie” is the story of a troubled, high school misfit subject to cruelty and ridicule by her classmates. Little do her classmates know, Carrie subjects them to lasting revenge on Prom night.
The movie opens with a high school locker room shower scene where Carrie White has an innocent adolescent experience that really floors her female classmates.
To subject her to further ridicule, than simply being a plain Jane with no friends or social skills as she is, Carrie’s classmates make a fool of her in the locker room and the movie really takes off from there.
After the girls’ gym teacher witnesses their menacing taunting of Carrie, she punishes them with a week of military style detention. When after school detention becomes too much for the popular girls in school to handle, they find Carrie White a handsome Prom date and plan to get her elected as Prom Queen.
For a girl like Carrie, who lives with a sadistic, Christian, god-fearing, single mother getting out of the house for a night, especially to attend the Prom is like a dream come true.
After repeated threats of damnation and sending Carrie to her closet for simply acting like a normal teenage girl, Carrie’s mother is a character that nearly makes you want to hit fast forward on your remote control.
But once simple and shy Carrie realizes that she has telekinetic powers, she stands up to her unstable mother and gives her classmates a rude awakening.
It’s unbelievable to see what Carrie’s cruel classmates have in store for her on Prom night but even more shocking to witness Carrie’s retaliation on the her classmates and teachers to silence them once and for all.
“Carrie” isn’t just another teen angst movie that ends at the Prom — it’s the story of a girl, who with her special telekinetic powers, gets fed up with being bullied and humiliated and single handedly takes down her entire school.
Like the book, the film version of “Carrie” starts off a little soft and slow for a horror flick but it really just prepares you for the movie’s ultimate ending.
So, if you like mild horror that won’t scar you for life and handsome hunks of a vintage era, like John Travolta, go pick up a copy of “Carrie” for your Halloween viewing pleasure.