1976 - CARRIE, DePalma's high school nerd revenge/horror fantasy

Brian De Palma's film operates on a number of levels, a wanna be soft core teenage porn flick, a horror film,  a commentary on the depressing nature of high school life, a critique of Christian fundamentalism and most importantly a meta high school nerd revenge fantasy.

Carrie was the film that De Palma had been moving towards since he started making films.  It mixed his fascination with Hitchcock,  a very dark sense of humor and his obsessions with women which seem to border on the shall we say the creepy side.  De Palma is probably a guy you might want to have lunch with but probably not go camping with.

The film was certainly well cast, Sissy Spacek was Carrie the nerd girl with the psychic powers, Nancy Allen the nasty high school tramp and Amy Irving  the do gooder trying to do the right thing but inadvertently causing the whole mess.  But none of them could equal the magnificence of Piper Laurie as Carrie's mother Margaret White,  the crazy Christian fundamentalist and the real horror of the film.  Laurie knew just how far to take this over the top character.

Brian De Palma was always a director who wore his technique on his sleeve.  He had been experimenting with split screen and slow motion since he started making films.  With Carrie he managed to restrain himself until the high school prom sequence and then he went all out with his bag of cinematic tricks as if burning down a high school with the senior class wasn't extreme enough.

De Palma worked on a small budget, apparently the studio had no faith in the film, but he had been making low budget films for years so he knew how to stretch a buck.  The film made a lot of money.

98 minutes.