Carrie

31 Horror Movies I Own #20: Carrie (1976)

Almost everyone is probably familiar with the blood-soaked fiery Prom at the end of Carrie. But I’m hear to tell you, if you haven’t seen the whole film in its entirely, you’re missing out.

In a scene that reminds me exactly why I hated high school, the film opens on outcast Carrie White being tormented by her entire gym class when she discovers her period, with the mean girls throwing tampons and pads at her and taunting her with cries of “Plug it up”. Unfortunately for the girls, teacher-with-a-conscience Miss Collins sentences them all to detention in the form of strenuous gym class after-school, or they’ll all miss Prom.

Of course missing Prom is tantamount to burning in hell (see what I did there?), so they all oblige, except snooty bad girl Chris (played by Nancy Allen), who rebels and is subsequently banned from Prom. Chris’s friends plot a terrible revenge: make Carrie Prom Queen and cover her in a bucket of pig’s blood the second she’s on stage in front of he everyone—obtained from a farm by a big-haired John Travolta, AKA: the bad-boy.

Also unfortunately for them, Carrie has quite a temper, accompanied by some intense telekinesis. Her mother, Margaret, is a religious freak to the ‘nth degree who locks Carrie in closets for days and prays for her to be saved (even with the gruesomeness of Carrie’s retaliation, the scariest thing in this film is actually Piper Laurie. I’m not kidding).

This movie is not without humor, and of course you’ll get a few laughs out of the clothes and William Katt’s amazing blond fro, but man-oh-man is it a good one. The end scene is designed to cause nightmares, and when I first saw it, it succeeded.

The sequel, The Rage: Carrie 2, is pretty cheesy and unbelievable, but I do appreciate Emily Bergl as the lead, and the fact that Zachery Ty Bryan from Home Improvement plays one of the douche-bags who gets it in the end. I can barely talk about the made-for-TV 2002 remake with my beloved Angela Bettis, which is horrible for SO MANY reasons, but mostly because they changed the entire damn ending. WTF, guys? Skip that one for sure.