The most tragically beautiful horror movie ever made? I think so. That said, I find the more I watch it, the less it even feels like a horror movie and more like the saddest, most painful high school movie that just happens to be punctuated by blood and the supernatural. The only part that always really chills me is Piper Laurie’s eerily joyous performance, and the piano theme that plays at the White house (currently on the playlist on my front page radio thing), most particularly when Carrie falls down the stairs. That music cue just feels completely like death – or rather, the draining of life.

Piper Laurie and Sissy Spacek were deservedly (if bizarrely – would it happen today, one wonders?) nominated for Oscars for their roles. I’m always just as taken by other performances, though: Amy Irving and Betty Buckley are particularly noteworthy. I love the way Buckley imbues Miss Collins with this real bug up her ass – I forget if her backstory is detailed in the novel, and I know she tells the story toward the end about taking the leader of the basketball team to her prom but I’m always torn between whether she was the Sue Snell of her time – a reluctant “popular girl” who sympathised with the Carrie Whites – or even worse the Carrie White of her time. There’s a real sense of triumph as she watches Carrie crowned as prom queen; of hope when she talks to Carrie about Tommy’s invitation; an instant confrontational attitude when she talks to the “popular” girls; instant doubt when asking Tommy and Sue about the illfated invitation. Intended or not, she does the all-grown-up bullied girl very well.

Then there’s the music. Pino Donaggio’s themes (far-too-obvious Psycho references notwithstanding, lol) – in addition to the two beautiful songs at the prom (“I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Love Someone Like Me” probably the best love song ever) are almost if not more than half the movie for me here. They carry you with Carrie to the depths with her mother at home and the horror of school to the tentative acceptance of the dream of having that final prom dance – and then the nightmare aftermath of even that seemingly impervious dream being shattered like all the rest.

BTW, the DVD of this is much better than I originally thought whenever it first came out. There are no commentaries or anything and the features list reads like just a bunch of promotional featurettes – but the “Acting Carrie” thing combined with “Visualising Carrie: From Words to Images” is really more like a decent behind-the-scenes documentary. Unfortunately it doesn’t actually contain the screentests they talk about … but it’s still really good hearing from most of the cast members years later.

... aka a lot of other things, lol. I had three of these things lined up and as I started to read about all the alternate titles and versions etc I realised, crap – I’m gonna end up with three versions of the same movie here, aren’t I? But thankfully that wasn’t the case.

Anyway … this one is wonderfully cheap, wonderfully gorey, and most of all I was happy to find I haven’t seen it before. I’m just not sure I find the idea of cannibalism as terrifying as I once did (I’m sure they used to be up there with Gorgons for me or something). If the idea of cannibalism in itself doesn’t send chills down your spine, all you’re left with in most of these movies is a bunch of indiscriminate killing of people usually ultimately proven to be practically deserving of their fate through some form of idiocy. Since there are certainly gorier cannibal movies than this one and this has little else to offer, I’m afraid I really can’t recommend it unless you’re an obsessive of the genre.

Well I didn’t think it’d take me 2 years to update this with notes on “The Version You’ve Never Seen”, lol. I’m sure it can’t be that long since I last watched it.

And it’s always the way – my Halloween schedule always gets changed … apparently even when I start a week early, lol. This was meant to be watched a week from now, but I actually wanted to watch it yesterday – and today Sarah made my mind up for me.

Anyway … volume up and lights down ...

“I think the point is to make us despair …
... to see ourselves as … animal and ugly …
... to reject the possibility that God could love us …”

I begin with that line because it’s the point this umpteenth time around where I remembered in a burst of emotion out of nowhere why I continue to call this one of my favourite movies. I just totally lost it on that line.

I don’t think I need to say, “it’s still a great movie”. It’s one of the few movies I know for a fact will always be great movies. They’re beyond the context you view them in – they always work. It’s about what William Friedkin has said time and again – “What you take from The Exorcist is what you bring to it.” I’ve brought lots of things to this movie and I can say that he is 100% right. It works every time because it works on whatever is plaguing you, or even perhaps what’s pleasing you. I’ve come out of this movie both suicidal (when the incredible phrase, ”... negative – in other words, normal,” probably leapt out at me the most) and practically a Christian. It’s amazing the spectrum it covers.

“The Version You’ve Never Seen” is, as I’ve said before, my preferred version, and the version I watched tonight. What’s added is without exception, as far as I’m concerned, essential. The hospital scene – “I don’t feel anything,” and the weird humming dance thing … sure, you don’t miss them in the shorter version? But they add an unbelievable other dimension to the creeping fear, the gradual transformation of Regan. The conversation between Chris and the doctor: their expressions following the c-word line priceless. The subliminals added before Burke’s death is announced seem like a cheap shot, but I have to say, I even like those – then of course is the spider-walk, which is scary in itself but also worth it for the reaction shot of Ellen Burstyn, just truly a portrait of terror.

But it’s in the second half where the VYNS additions really start to be something else entirely. The tape of Regan’s voice, it’s just heartbreakingly necessary; the extra stuff with Merrin … the beautiful line about drink, “the doctors say I shouldn’t, but thank God my will is weak,” his response to Chris telling him Regan’s middle name, and her reaction to his line, plus the extended break mid-exorcism ... it’s all so much more than restored deletions, and it makes a great film astonishingly better. To cap it all is the ending I’d forgotten about entirely – “How’s the girl?” “Fine.” “That’s important.” Detective Kinderman is probably my favourite male character of all time – in film and literature. He’s just beautiful. It’s covered in just one brief exchange before the movie’s infamous highlight – “You’re a nice lady,” he says, “thank you,” to which Chris replies, “You’re a nice man.” So simple, so warm.

Most of all the additions keep longtime fans – who might occasionally find themselves numbed by the whole thing – on their toes.

It’s just a true masterpiece, it can’t be said enough, and I feel odd whenever I say it because so many people have said it better. I recommend to anyone who will listen that they immerse themselves in the whole Exorcist thing. Mark Kermode of course wrote the Bible, the BFI Classics book which is now in its 3rd or 4th edition? Just the best long study of any film I’ve ever read. He also made “The Fear of God” documentary available on one of the DVDs of this movie – though every version I’ve seen in the past 5 years has had his parts cut out which is a little annoying. He “hosted” a commentary on the Ninth Configuration DVD, and also wrote notes in the margins of that movie’s screenplay – a movie, which, incidentally, I recommend you regard as the true sequel to this one. Not to say you shouldn’t watch Exorcist II: The Heretic – I happen to like that movie, at the least it looks great and you can’t get enough of Linda Blair as Regan – but The Ninth is so much more in line with the themes set-up here. Then there’s William Peter Blatty’s many other works in literature.

I mean, that’s what this movie really means to me more than anything. The fact it’s a great film almost comes second to the things it opened doors to for me. It’s ten years this year since I first saw it, and I think of all the things that could’ve made me a totally different person now if you just deleted it from my history Sliding Doors style? I don’t even wanna imagine.

Anyway, I also promised there would be ancient “extras” eventually added to this review – well, luckily, I found them in an HTML format from my old site so I present them here unaltered as found without having even read them yet. These go back almost 10 years, so don’t attribute any stupidity therein to the me of now

College essay (more specific, circa 2000?)
School essay (more about the book – though you wouldn’t know, lol – and also about Frankenstein and Dracula … I wanted to do Carrie instead of one of those two but teacher was apprehensive enough about me having one modern text let alone a Stephen King book lol, circa 1998)

November 1st, 2005:

Hmm, I thought I was updating an old page containing a review of “The Version You’ve Never Seen” here but I clicked through and found a blank space so I’ll add some comments about that version another time.

What struck me watching the original theatrical cut today was how good this movie is even minus the extra scenes I love so much in the newer cut. It’s incredible how the pressure mounts, exhausting to be bounced from possible solution to possible solution with Chris McNeil. Regan’s transformation from button-nosed little girl to terrifying monster is practically seamless. And the movie doesn’t lack a little warmth – first in the relationship between mother and daughter and later between Detective Kinderman and just about anyone he shares a scene with.

I don’t know quite what else to say about the movie right now, it all feels like it’s been said before. I plan to watch the other version again soon too, plus I probably have other things written elsewhere that I can add to this page. It really is the best horror movie.

I guess my first surprise here was how procedural and straight-faced this movie is. I read a brief summary of the plot prior to putting it on and couldn’t imagine anything but a generic Seventies exploitation thing doing its best to cover up the fact that it’s making a mockery of the severity of rape (okay, I’ll admit, following the last two movies I was probably just hoping to complete a perfect triple bill, lol). But dang … not only does this thing have a court room scene in it, but it also has Anne Bancroft as the DA looking at every moment like she wants to rip every penis in the room off with her bare hands.

Most of all, it reminds me of the movies Brian De Palma was making around the same time – most notably Blow Out – or things like Peeping Tom ... movies that really used the separate elements of sound and image in cinema to service the theme at hand. You get perfect opposites here like the accepted nude photography of its central character, a victim, a lipstick model vs. the photographs taken as evidence following her rape. Later, we see her even younger sister being groomed in the ways of glamour photography, preceeding an even more unwatchable sequence. We have the predator, an electronic composer, capturing sounds like those made by the birds on his windowsill, but also later, the very heartbeat of his victim. I love this kind of thing, it’s what cinema is all about for me.

Frankly I’d be happy watching Anne Bancroft shouting “Objection! Objection! Obbbbbbb-jection!” for 90 minutes, lol … it’s like the girl version of ... And Justice For All when she’s around. And Mariel Hemingway was supercute at this age.

Like Going to Pieces, this is a wonderfully focussed documentary on the horror genre – in fact, if anything, it’s even more focussed, dedicating around 10 minutes each just to Romero’s Dead trilogy (well, the first two parts, and Tom Savini’s make-up work thereon), Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, John Carpenter’s Halloween, Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw, and David Cronenberg’s Shivers. There’s some brilliant intercutting from the movies concerned to actual reality footage of the time, truly putting the movies in question in context.

Will you learn anything new if you’re already as much a fan of the genre and the time as I am? Probably not – but it’s still a good watch and as good an intro to the whole thing as you’ll get if you happen to be starting a film studies course of any kind. My favourite quote in the movie comes from Tobe Hooper, brutally honest about the whole phenomenon, who says, “We shot a whole bunch of footage. And then 20 years later, we find out what it meant.” When you look at Dawn of the Dead and realise it was made at a time when, really, the world wasn’t so bad afterall, it really makes you (well, me) wonder, where’s the classic horror movie of our time?

Another long overdue review … this is going to get random and gushy ‘cos it’s amazing after countless viewings how this one continues to blow me away.

Everytime I watch this I think it’s going to lose something; but, everytime I watch it, it seems only to become more intense, to move and inspire me more. I need to watch it more often. There are so many more great moments in this movie than I ever come to it expecting. First and foremost the one thing that will satisfy almost anybody, I think, is the soundtrack. I’m constantly wracking my brains over why this movie is so hard to find these days (it’s on TCM here in the UK about twice annually, and you’ll find about as many VHS copies on eBay each year too … well worth grabbing, I promise) and the most logical seems to me that there are a lot of expensive music rights involved (including Lennon / McCartney’s “Give Peace a Chance”) (my other most prominent theory is simply to do with how stunningly relevant the movie remains, the cynic in me believing that no major media corporation with all today’s political pressure would want to make available a movie like this … I swear there’s every chance it would lead to uprising if enough people saw it).

Anyway, it’s one of the great movie soundtracks, the easiest comparison is to Cameron Crowe’s selections for his movies … the movie itself actually kinda resembles Almost Famous to me in a lot of ways – Bruce Davison looks a lot like Patrick Fugit in places, and his position in relation to the main story is similar, a spectator swept along by one of the 60s-70s’ many wild waves.

There’s the love story – the way I react to Linda (beautiful Kim Darby, another aspect of the movie that seems to improve with each viewing) and Simon (Bruce Davison) in this movie definitely leads me to believe it’s purely a personal thing, I can’t put into words how I feel my insides churning when these two look at each other … only to say it’s a similar feeling to that I get when talking to my own true love. There’s some amazing chemistry between these two actors. When they’re on the fairground ride, as she mouths, “do you love me?” to CSNY’s “Our House” – that would be the moment I instantly pinpoint as to why I love this movie so much. Well OK, that and the final line – “PROVE YOURSELF ALIVE!” – set to Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “The Circle Game”.

The violence in the end scenes had me shaking on this viewing even more than I did the first time. As with a number of other movies (Soldier Blue and Dawn of the Dead spring to mind), I found myself wondering if I was seeing a different cut altogether. It’s a truly horrifying finale – I finally recognised Bud Cort (Harold in Harold and Maude) this time round, and I think maybe that was a factor in how much the ending got to me – I was a lot more into his character, and watching him in those final scenes is almost too much to bear. It’s the way the movie swishes from the light to the dark – 30 minutes earlier you were laughing at him holding his nose in the presence of a couple of people smoking pot; suddenly his life is on the line for no reason but pure pathetic human stupidity. I think that’s what the movie captures best about James Simon Kunen’s book, the way Simon is a spectator, neither on one side nor the other with any particular level of commitment. Depending on how you view it, the movie arguably highlights the craziness, the lack of direction of the protestors just as much as it does that of the pigs, the politicians, the authorities. Kunen’s book is all about that ambivalent approach to things and as you might have noticed from this site’s URL, I’m all about ambivalence

What? I haven’t reviewed this one yet?!?

This is one of my all-time favourite movies. This viewing was the original theatrical cut, and though I prefer the longer “bootleg” / “Untitled” cut, there’s barely any difference except the length. It’s just, if you love the movie, you just don’t want it to end: that’s why I think the longer cut is better. This movie is pure love to me.

I’m guessing I first watched this movie in 2003 (it certainly wasn’t last year but I remember thinking at the time ‘why has it taken me so long to see this?’) and the biggest reason for my love of it is how much it changed my love of music. In a way, the movie acted for me the same way Zooey Deschanel as William Miller’s sister does for him when he is a young boy – dropping a handful of hints about what rocks, hints that lead to a whole journey of personal and musical discovery. “One day, you’ll be cool,” she tells the 11-year-old in flat-on, talk to the camera close-up before she leaves, one of my favourite shots of this or any movie. If only all of us could have such a big sister. When she reappears at the end, the relief is so palpable. Zooey Deschanel must be onscreen for less than 10 minutes of the movie but she makes a hell of an impression.

I love how real the movie comes across. Of course it’s all partly Cameron Crowe’s autobiography, but even the little things like character names etc come across as very authentic. After first viewing the movie I was entirely convinced that there really was a band called Stillwater back in the Seventies (there actually was, apparently, but they weren’t anything like the Stillwater in the movie).

But most of all, my love of this movie is down to two things – the blending of Nancy Wilson’s score and Kate Hudson’s performance as Penny Lane. When both are working together, like when Penny first meets Russell Hammond, and when she asks William “What … kind of beer?”, and when she’s dancing alone in a post-concert empty hall; this movie touches me like nothing else but love itself. I want to be with these people, I want to sit on that bus and sing “Tiny Dancer”, I want Frances McDormand to be my overconcerned mom, Zooey Deschanel to be my offbeat big sis, I want to be around these people who say things like, “If you ever get lonely, just go the record store and visit your friends.” This movie is as much a part of my life as any movie will ever be, I love it.

I loved this movie when I first saw it. I could see why people were criticising its similarity to movies like Goodfellas and Boogie Nights etc, but there were still plenty of moments where the movie came into its own. I still pretty much feel this way about it, it’s one of those movies that easily makes up for any failings it might have with a handful of simply beautiful scenes or sequences. I love how the look of the film, the colour and everything, develops over the course of the movie.

Johnny Depp is good … not one of his best performances but it’s a pretty difficult character – how likable can you make this guy? Penelope Cruz was more annoying to me on this viewing than I ever remembered. Ray Liotta and Rachel Griffiths are the standouts here. My first impression of Ray Liotta’s appearance in the movie when I first saw it was, “could they force comparisons to Goodfellas any more?” lol, but he’s really pretty fantastic, especially in the character’s later years. Griffiths is most amazing in the scene following Depp’s arrest in their home. Even though what she’s done is unbelievable, I can’t help feeling so sorry for her.

It’s the last half hour that wrecks me and brings the movie up a lot, as Jung goes past the point of no return and beyond. There’s so many images in this section of the movie that kill me – his daughter’s piercing, shaming gaze as he’s arrested once more; her sitting alone with her pink suitcase waiting to go to California; her line in the visiting room, “I thought you couldn’t live without your heart,”; and the final scene when she ‘visits’ him grown up, that reverse angle on their hug is so sad.

I just realised I could sit around quoting this movie forever. As I said, it has it’s little problems, but for me they’re far outweighed. It’s just a beautiful movie with an amazing philosophy in Jung’s voiceover narration – unbelievably sad, but with glimmers of joy. It’s sad that this turned out to be Ted Demme’s last movie, but it’s certainly his best.