On your way up, what movie or series did you watch that was so good, it made you question whether you could ever rise to that level?

Stephen King: Probably later on, it would have been a film like Duel, where you saw that and you said, I can't do this yet. Okay. That was the Spielberg film where Dennis Weaver was being chased by a psychotic truck driver. You never see the driver at all. There's a little bit of that feeling of Duel in a novel I wrote called Cujo, where I wrote the book, and I said to myself, "This is good, but you're going to make it better. You're going to make it something like Duel, where you don't necessarily have to have a lot of backstory or a lot of motivation. You just want to make it like a brick that hits people in the head." And that's the way that film was. Stripped to the bone.

Whether it was your own work, or approval from someone who mattered to you, what first gave you the confidence that you belonged?

Stephen King:I'm not a movie maker, per se, and that's taken a lot of the pressure off me. You know, Ernest Hemingway once said, the best thing that a writer can hope for is that a studio pays a lot of money for something you wrote, and then never makes the movie. And I never felt that way because I've always felt like you see interesting filmmakers - like when Paul Monash optioned Carrie, and he said he knew a director who had done a number of small films named Brian De Palma. I knew Brian De Palma's work from Sisters, and I thought, "This is the perfect guy for this film." I mean, I've got a film background. I love movies, and I watch a lot to this day. I don't think they make the same sort of impression on anybody that they did when they were young, when they were kids. You never get the kind of scare that you get in Psycho, when the shower curtain goes back and that knife starts to plunge back-and-forth. That never happens again. But you see a lot of filmmakers that you say to yourself, "This is interesting." And then sometimes, somebody will come along who is not part of the film community that you know about. Like Frank Darabont. And you say to yourself, "I want to see what happens." It's curiosity. It's pure curiosity. But as far as making films myself, I've written for film, and that's been an education. And it's an earn-while-you-learn deal. So, little by little I've learned about that end of it. And it's a different job, but I used to look on screen work as work for people who weren't really talented. And when I was able to change my mind about that, I was able to do better work.

Brian De Palma’s Carrie is considered one of the greats of the horror film genre. However, for Salem Horror Fest director Kay Lynch, catching it on late TV one night it was more than great, it was life-changing. “It was one of the first films I can remember ever feeling validated by,” she recalls. “The body horror in the shower, the insecurity, and rage. I felt so connected to her... I’ll never forget the palpitation in my chest. It was an emotional catharsis. That’s when I realized that horror could be a healthy way to face my darkness.” And for Lynch, the film festival, which is celebrating its fifth year this October, offers audiences an opportunity for that same kind of emotional outlet.

The festival, which screens a mix of repertory and independent premieres, first began as a response to the 2016 election. “I was angry, hurt, and scared. Knowing that there were millions of others who felt the same way, I wanted to devote myself to something that would foster community, creativity, and critical thinking,” Lynch, who saw it as an opportunity to fulfill the need for a specific kind of catharsis, said.. “[It’s] for anyone who reads the news and needs to scream bloody murder in a safe environment.”

At once a searing supernatural shocker and a sensitive portrait of high-school loneliness, Brian De Palma’s Carrie shows that for a film to be truly terrifying, it helps if we actually care about its characters. And it’s impossible not to connect emotionally to burgeoning telekinetic Carrie White (a brilliantly affecting Sissy Spacek), a shy, repressed girl bullied by her classmates at school and abused by her religious-fanatic mother (Piper Laurie) at home. Faithfully adapted from Stephen King’s novel, the film focuses less on Carrie’s emerging supernatural powers than on her painfully awkward desire to fit in. Less visually extravagant than many De Palma films, Carrie is still stylish without being obtrusive. When the film finally explodes in climactic violence, the effect is both cathartic and horrifying, a teenage tragedy worthy of Greek myth.

In a repost from their "Female Monsters" series, The Final Girls podcast last week posted an episode in which host Anna Bogutskaya and film critic Kelli Weston go "for a deep, deep dive on the inimitable classic of horror cinema, Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976). We talk about the monstrous feminine, otherness, Sissy Spacek, period horror, who's the real villain in the film and so much more."

Five years ago, Bogutskaya and her Final Girls co-founder Olivia Howe hosted a screening of Carrie:

Flashback

Sunday, September 25, 2016

PANEL DISCUSSES 'CARRIE' IN LONDON
FINAL GIRLS U.K. EVENT AT SCALARAMA
The Final Girls (Anna Bogutskaya and Olivia Howe) hosted a screening last night of Brian De Palma's Carrie at the ICA in London. The screening, which was part of Scalarama film month, was followed by a panel discussion made up of Michael Blyth (BFI Festivals Programmer), Catherine Bray (Film4 Editorial Director and Producer) and Dr. Alison Pierse (Lecturer at York University). The discussion is summarized by Smoke Screen's Owen Van Spall:

Brian de Palma's films and his own statements have been controversial to say the least, something the Carrie panel tackled right from the start of their conversation. This is a film that begins with a tracking shot that has become somewhat notorious; the camera journeys through a steamy changing room as Carrie’s high school gym class are seen in various stages of nudity. This is far from the last time in the movie de Palma’s camera will linger on female flesh either: with female cheerleaders on the pitch and high school bad girl Chris’s bra-less torso getting plenty of screen time. This is also one of many de Palma films that put their female characters through the wringer, to put it politely.

Thus the panel agreed that at some point they had all been driven to ask themselves: “Is it cool to like Carrie [and de Palma]?” But the consensus was that, after repeat viewings and after taking a few steps back to reconsider de Palma’s career as a whole, rejecting Carrie entirely as mysoginistic felt too much like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Alison Pierce for example praised the way the film - largely through Sissy Spacek’s intense performance - effectively transmitted the desperate sadness of the plight of this hapless but incredibly powerful young woman. You empathise with Carrie as almost a Frankenstein-like figure, a victim created by monstrosity. The panel also noted how both De Palma and King explored her victimhood in interesting ways - with the narrative and characterisation of Carrie seeming at times to provoke the viewer to almost want this pathetic figure to get tormented. De Palma arguably manipulates viewers to effectively swing between delighting in seeing Carrie suffer, and yearning to see her inflict terrible vengeance on her tormentors turn. The bucket of blood sequence, with its long, almost gleeful build up in slow motion, was much discussed as an example of this. Viewers might want to ask themselves; do you maybe sneakily want that rope to be pulled, and the bucket to fall, knowing both what the immediate humiliating result will be, and what will happen next?

Author Stephen King and de Palma also have an interesting kingship, as Catherine Bray noted: they are good at “serious fun” - taking a ludicrous concept and imbuing it with genuine terror and emotional weight. Of course, Carrie can simply be enjoyed as campy, shlockly fun, with Michael Blyth half-joking if you could convert this film easily into a musical given its tone and setting. Regardless, the panel noted that the film remains very striking from a cinematographic perspective, with a visual approach that teeters on the deliciously overblown at times. De Palma throws in a tonne of tricks that he would become well known for, including diopter lens shots, and the use of montage which really works well in the prom terror sequence, as Carrie starts to come apart, her attention and powers jumping to various points as she singles out her enemies for destruction. The Smoke Screen in particular was struck by the deliriously bold lighting throughout the film too. Much of the film’s early sequences seem drenched in a warm, apple pie glow, but in the prom night sequence sees de Palma start us off with a dreamy kaleidoscopic mix of purples and yellows that highlight how carried away Carrie is by her one moment of bliss, only to drench the entire affair in an insanely deep red shade once the psychic assault starts.

The final days of summer are here, and with spooky season just around the corner, Fathom Events is getting ready to celebrate the season with Fright Fest 2021. Lasting from September through November, the eight-week event will bring some of the most iconic horror movies of the past back to theaters nationwide for a limited time just in time for those Halloween film binges.

This year's Fright Fest will kick off on Sunday Sept. 26 with a night celebrating the 45th anniversary of Carrie, the 1976 Brian De Palma-directed horror film that is based on Stephen King's novel of the same name. The film has become a cult classic in the decades since its release and is notably a must-watch spooky season movie. Fright Fest will continue with more nights celebrating the anniversaries of other favorite horror flicks, including The Evil Dead, Scream, and The Silence of the Lambs. There will also be several nights dedicated to Studio Ghibli Fest 2021, as well as several other popular titles returning to theaters, before Fright Fest 2021 wraps on Tuesday, Nov. 16 with Paranorman, a family-friendly viewing option.

“For two weeks, we worked at [De Palma’s] apartment in Hollywood. I remember [Travolta, Allen, Irving, Spacek, and myself] would all go there and work. At the time, we were using a reel-to-reel tape-recorder because video had not yet come about,” said Katt.

“Brian’s entire apartment was filled with these 3-by-5 cards with all the scenes on them. He would get up periodically and move cards around for his shot list and what not. It was a fun experience. He really sculpted those scenes to fit the actors he was working with. By the time we’d got to the set… he was really all about the camera and the components of filmmaking. I just thought he was a terrific director.”

After that George Lucas/Brian De Palma casting session, we had three more casting sessions that pretty much everyone who ended up in the movie went to. It was three weekends in a row at Brian’s apartment. We all sat around the coffee table; we all took turns reading the script from beginning to end, and his dining room had storyboards of practically every scene of the movie. I thought, Wow. He was so invested in this film. And Sissy was never there. I think Amy Irving was up for the role of Carrie [at that point]. She was the one who got Sue. And I think Nancy was up for Sue but then she got Chris Hargensen and I was up for Chris but I got Norma. So it was very interesting.

Here's more from Pond's review:

The film’s star, Wendy Chinchilla, is also making her feature-film debut; she’s a Costa Rican dancer with no experience in film but a powerful presence that speaks volumes through stillness.

Chinchilla plays Clara, a 40-year-old woman with a spinal condition that keeps her in pain. She spends her life, it seems, communing with her horse, Yuca, and bowing to the demands of her mother, who tells the townspeople that Clara is a healer who has seen the Virgin Mary and has cured cancer. She trots Clara out for healing rituals in their small home, but otherwise keeps her daughter under her thumb, going so far as to refuse a local doctor’s advice that Clara get an operation to fix her spine.

“God gave her to me like this,” her mother says. “She stays like this.”

Clara, for her part, submits to the restrictions that have been placed on her; she’s too meek to challenge her mother, or too beaten down to resist anymore. She has no agency in her own life, a fact that is presented simply, with relentless understatement.

When Clara rebels, she almost seems to do it unconsciously, with small signals that she may be experiencing a very belated sexual awakening. She absently touches herself as she watches TV, until her mother freaks out, grabs Clara and rubs her fingers in hot chiles; Clara complies, passive and still.

At first, the movie connects with that stillness; it sits back and quietly observes, with little or no music for long stretches. When the music does come in, it’s usually spare: plucked strings and little else. The look and feel of the film is grounded in earth and mud and bugs and rain, but there’s also a gentle mysticism at work that’s familiar to lovers of South and Central American cinema.

Clara’s mother demands that her daughter never change, that she live in plainness and in pain and care only about healing others, or at least convincing others that she can heal them. But slowly, we see Clara’s rebellion begin to manifest: At first she simply declares that she wants a blue dress, a prospect that shocks her mother – but it’s clear that what she really wants is to be touched, to embrace the physical in a way she’s never before done.

As Clara’s passion begins to awaken, so does “Clara Sola.” When she sees her young niece having sex with her boyfriend, she masturbates in the woods and is immediately surrounded by fireflies. At a certain point, it does seem that she has powers – but do those powers come from the religious shrine in the living room, or from emergingn sexuality?

You won’t necessarily find the answer in Álvarez Mesén’s film, but you will find a movie that itself becomes more aggressive along with its heroine. And when things comes to a head at her niece’s 15th birthday party, it’s hard not to think of the climactic prom scene in Brian DePalma’s “Carrie” – not in the sense of buckets of blood or anything like that, but in the way both films suggest that repressing female desires via religion or anything else can end very, very badly.

That sequence, and the enormously evocative but ambiguous one that follows to end the movie, are nothing like what you might expect during the opening stretches of “Clara Sola.” Álvarez Mesén may be a first-time feature director, but she has enough control to take an austere, unsettling drama with a touch of magical realism and turn it into a wild ride, all without losing its complicated heart.