NEW AT THE MOVIES CO-HOST ON THE "GOTCHA!" ENDING
Michael Phillips, the new co-host (with A.O. Scott) of At The Movies, posted on his Chicago Tribune blog a couple of weeks ago about going to see Carrie in 1976:
Best scream therapy? Seeing Jaws in the summer of 1975 and Carrie in the fall of 1976, when my high school-addled hormones were screaming every second of every day to begin with. Late show, Capitol Theatre, West Racine, Wis.: Some friends and I are on the sidewalk, in line for Carrie. The 7:30 show’s about to break when, from inside the theater, we hear this freakish roar, hundreds of people shrieking in terror and then laughing at their own screaming, and then the doors open and everybody comes out and some of them are still screaming, because the ending of Carrie—the gravesite visit finale, with the little flute melody playing on the soundtrack as Amy Irving leans down with the flowers—is the “gotcha!” ending to beat, still.
Well. By the time we got into the 9:30 show and began watching Brian De Palma’s maliciously manipulative classic (I love it still) we’d forgotten all about whatever was coming at the end. Until the end came. And the screams were louder than they were the summer before, when Jaws played for weeks and weeks and weeks.
Steve Wiener also commented on Phillips blog, saying, "I saw Carrie first run in a large Hollywood theater and vividly remember lifting up out of my seat simultaneously with hundreds of others besides and in front of me at the finale."
Updated: Thursday, September 3, 2009 12:05 AM CDT
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