DRIVE-IN SATURDAY

Carrie to Classmates: "Nya Nya"

by Edouard Dauphin

For pure horror, few experiences in life can rival the senior prom. So what could be more exciting than a horror film that takes place at the senior prom, right? Wrong. If the movie in question is Brian De Palma's Carrie, you'll probably have a more thrilling time if you stay home, brush up on your glass-blowing, and listen to Tir Na Nog's Greatest Hits.

My own senior prom started peaceably enough, to the music of Lester Lanin and his orchestra. But a few minutes into the Last Slow Dance, I provoked a fist fight with a gatecrashing undergraduate and the brawl that followed turned the ballroom of the Hotel St. Regis into a bloody shambfes. To this day, when going crosstowhln Manhattan, I have to avoid 55th Street.

The prom in Carrie takes place in a much more conventional setting—the school gymnasium. The title character is a sensitive, bashful student who does not care for the gymnasium, especially since it has been the scene of a traumatic experience, which happens to open the picture. In the shower following gym class, Carrie menstruates for the first time and her classmates react to her confusion by ^ pelting her with a barrage of sanitary napkins. Good thing she didn't have hemorrhoids. (Those silver bullets can sting.)

Carrie has another big problem. Her mother is a religious fanatic who looks like a middle-aged Piper Laurie. In fact, that's who's playing the part and in case you've been wondering why Piper hasn't been doing films for the past ten years, well, wonder no more. Like an open bottle of wine, she has not improved with age.

Mom's idea of a pleasant evening is to light a few hundred votive candles, scream verses fro. athe Book Of Revelations, and throw Carrie around the living room. When Carrie tries to get in a word about the upcoming prom, Mother orders: "Goto your closet!" Carrie slinks off to her tiny cubicle wondering what Patty Hearst was bitching about.

Enter the supporting players:

William Katt (on his way to becoming the poor man's Jan-Michael Vincent) as the school jock who invites Carrie to the prom; John Travolta (rhymes with Revolt-a), who makes his big screen debut with a presence that continues to be small screen; and Betty Buckley as a sadistic gym teacher, under whom I would gladly study.

The person they're supporting is4h a class of her own. Sissy Spacek, who was so touching as the baton-twirling murder accomplice ift Badlands, a few years back, turns in another remarkable performance as the shy, tortured Carrie. She makes you sympathize, even identify with Carrie, but the inept script and De Palma's heavy-handed direction undercut her efforts and leave her stranded for a finale that looks like a split screen version of a fire department training film. The theme of the prom is "Love Among The Stars" and Carrie is feeling overjoyed. She's just turned the tables on mom and left her cowering on the floor like a bowl of junket. See, Carrie possessed telekinetic powers and she's tired of nudging ashtrays across a desk. In fact, she's ready to audition for William Morris.

Her school chums have prepared a surprise. They've fixed the prom queen election so that Carrie will win. As she stands in the spotlight, holding a bouquet of flowers, and listening to the tumultuous applause, they overturn a bucket and pour a gallon of pig's blood down from the ceiling on her unsuspecting head. Carrie yells: "Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce!" but the damage has been done, so relying on her powers, she retaliates by unleashing a torrent of destruction that will have you riveted to your wristwatch checking to see how soon the second feature comes on.

Shortly before Brian De Palma was born, his mother must have been -frightened by an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Because De Palma's career is filled with cinematic homages to the Master Of Suspense. In Carrie, these take the clever form of a high school named after Tony Perkins" motel in Psycho and an outright steal of the Bernard Herrmann soundtrack, from the same film . One of these days, Hitchcock is going to walk up to De Palma at a cocktail party and diddle him to death with his stomach.

Thirty secohds before the end of Carrie, there's a surprise ending. A bloody arm reaches out from the grave to suggest that something really horrible—perhaps even a sequel—is still to come. Let's hope not. Carrie is either the least frightening horror film of the year or the least funny satire of the decade. Either way, that arm should be going for De Palma's throat.

Somebody's gotta stop this guy before he films again! ^