Sin never dies

Carrie

(1976)

Wow: no, I certainly had not ever seen this uncut before: I would have remembered Brian De Palma's slo-mo girls'-locker-room full-frontal-fest, complete with that distinctive lame '70s music that was the aural equivalent of soft focus. I realize that this is at least my second complaint in the past few weeks about gratuitous sex and/or nudity, making me sound like the grumpy old man I am, but come on: is there any reason other than the fact that being able to show pubic hair in a mainstream film was still pretty new in 1976?

OK, now let's dispose of Piper Laurie: she makes Carrie's mother scary in an old-Bette Davis/Joan Crawford movie way, in stark contrast to Moore's honest-to-god (!) scary-human-being portrayal. The only part of Laurie's portrayal that is better--and the credit may go to De Palma--is her orgasmic response to her fatal multiple penetration by kitchen blades, a blend of Saints Sebastian and Teresa.

Overall, this is consistently the lesser of the two films through the dumping of the pig's blood and (apart from the goofy shtick with the firehoses) consistently the better one after that, in part because Peirce seems a little too concerned with justice for those who haven't been shitty to Carrie, but mostly because it gets to the end with much more dispatch. And gee whilikers, that final scene: a scary movie classic.