366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 357

The Date: September 21

The Movie: Carrie (1976)

What Is It?: Brian De Palma’s adaptation of Carrie is one of the best Stephen King (and De Palma) films because the story is focused with a relatable, emotionally resonant lead character. King and De Palma’s often-painful look at adolescence, and its disturbing, misfit wish-fulfillment finale, are offset by humor that while occasionally too silly for its own good (the sped-up tuxedo-modeling sequence), gives the film the flavor of an E.C. Comic.

Why Today?: On this day in 1947, Stephen King is born.

No Tricks! Just Ten Treat Performances in Classic Horror Movies!

A good horror movie can be a grueling experience. All of that hacking, cracking, and killing can really wear you down if there isn’t some relief. Fortunately smart filmmakers know this to be true and tuck moments of levity, and even sheer delight, into their films to give us viewers a well-earned break. Often this pleasure may come directly from a single character played by a most singular actor or actress. I think of these as “treat” performances. These performances deliver waves of delight amidst the horror, whether the character is a beacon of sweetness in a sea of bitterness or is simply a lot of fun to watch despite being really, really evil.

Still not sure what I mean? Well, then kick off your hobnail boots and peruse the following Ten Treat Performances in Classic Horror Movies!

(spoilers ahead)

1. Dwight Frye as Renfield in Dracula (1931)

Although there are few more iconic monster movies than Dracula, it often gets slammed for being slow-moving and talky, more drawing-room mystery than blood-curdling horror. The first twenty minutes of Tod Browning’s film are generally absolved from these charges because watching Bela Lugosi menace Dwight Frye in the sumptuously Gothic Transylvanian setting is unadulterated joy and what a lot of critics want the whole film to be. After the wacky duo jump on a ship to London, Dracula becomes less sinister and more formulaic. Nevertheless, it continues to be terrific—no matter what those blowhard critics say—because every second spent in the presence of Dwight Frye is a treat. Don’t get me wrong. I adore my time with Drac too. Seeing Bela portray Dracula is a lot like getting to Santa Claus in the flesh, being that Bela is such an icon of Halloween and Santa is such an icon of that other major national holiday. But it is Dwight who truly delights. The craziest character in the film is the one to whom we can most relate as he exudes all the desire, hatred, regret, pity, humor, and terror his mostly wooden cast-mates lack.

2. Bela Lugosi as Ygor in Son of Frankenstein (1939)

Review: 'Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks'

Shows as cinematic, daring, and genuinely artistic as “Twin Peaks” come along rarely even in television’s new “golden age” (and with shows like “Breaking Bad”, “Mad Men”, and “Game of Thrones”, I truly do believe TV is enjoying a renaissance). Back in 1990, there simply wasn’t anything else to compare to it even with a crop of excellent series like “China Beach” and “Northern Exposure”, so it’s understandable that all these decades later its cast and crew are still so eager to speak of “Twin Peaks” in DVD and blu-ray bonus documentaries and onstage in last year’s series of panel discussions at the University of Southern California. Big stars like Piper Laurie and David Duchovny will still make time to chat about a 25-year old series that lasted a mere season and a half.

As a crazed Peaks Freak, I make time to watch every one of these recollections I can find, so as excited as I was to read Brad Dukes’s new book, Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks, I was skeptical I’d learn much. I was totally wrong to be skeptical. Reflections is the best book I’ve picked up all year. Dukes scores by digging into the aspects of the show that have not been discussed to death already. Yes, he covers the oft-told origin of the series that began life as “Northwest Passage” and the origin of Killer BOB, the media frenzy that met the show and the early demise that followed the forced resolution of the core “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” mystery, and everything else obligatory. But Reflections really shines when getting into less-traveled zones and giving them surprisingly serious attention. Full sections are devoted to Duchovny’s Agent Bryson (though Dukes did not interview that particular actor), Josie Packard ending up in the pull knob, Diane Keaton and Uli Edel’s turns as director, and most welcome of all, the sweetness of Frank Silva, the set decorator who ended up playing television’s most heinous creature. Mysteries are solved. We finally get some specific details about Stanley Kubrick’s mythic screening of Eraserhead, and Kubrick was not the only legendary director in attendance. Kimmy Robertson reveals her very personal role in getting Duchovny cast. We learn why Windom Earle appears in demonic makeup in the penultimate episode. We get some juicy tidbits about the much-loathed James and Evelyn Marsh mini-noir that will make me look differently at a subplot I sometimes skip through. And though no one holds back their personal opinions (Sherilyn Fenn is as forthcoming as ever about how she thinks Lara Flynn Boyle screwed up the series), you really get a sense that the cast and crew loved working together and loved “Twin Peaks” as a job and a show. If they didn’t, Dukes probably would not have been able to gather nearly 100 of its former denizens (including long-time holdout Michael Ontkean!) to reflect on it two and a half decades down the road.

October 19, 2009: 20 Things You May Not Have Known About ‘Carrie’

“They’re all gonna laugh at you” if you don’t get hip to the 20 Things You May Not Have Known About Carrie!

1. Stephen King’s initial inspiration for Carrie occurred while the soon-to-be prolific novelist was working as a college janitor. While cleaning the school gym, he noticed an unfamiliar device on the wall of the girl’s locker room. A co-worked named Harry informed King that it was a “pussy plug” dispenser. Harry’s colloquialism would evolve into the indelible taunt “Plug it up!” in Carrie.

2. The character of Carrie was based on two girls with whom Stephen King attended high school. One was an unfortunate outsider who hung herself as an adult. The other was a girl who suffered epileptic seizures and lived alone with her single mother who decorated the living room wall with a massive crucifix. The girl later died during one of her seizures.

3. Carrie was almost relegated to the dump. Believing that he’d failed to capture the experience of a teenage girl, Stephen King tossed his first draft of the story (Carrie began life as a short work) in the trash. His wife Tabitha rescued the manuscript from the bin, gave it a read, and convinced her husband to keep working on it.

4. Stephen King’s novel is partially told via testimony to a government “Carrie White Commission” investigating Carrie’s prom night trail of destruction. Lawrence D. Cohen’s first draft of the script used the “Carrie White Commission” as a narrative device, but the writer later dropped this in favor of a leaner approach.

5. Brian De Palma and George Lucas held casting sessions for Carrie and Star Wars simultaneously. William Katt, who eventually scored the role of Tommy Ross in Carrie, auditioned for the role of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Amy Irving (Sue Snell) and P.J. Soles (Norma Watson) both auditioned for Princess Leia. That’s not the only connection between De Palma’s film and the ‘70s’ biggest blockbuster: Palisades High School, a location used for Bates High School, was built on a lot once owned by Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher—the parents of Carrie “Princess Leia” Fisher.

6. Her role as Margaret White in Carrie was Piper Laurie’s first appearance in a feature film since she starred as Sarah Packard in The Hustler fifteen years earlier. Laurie went into semi-retirement after becoming dissatisfied with the roles Hollywood offered her and to raise her family. She received Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominations for playing both Sarah Packard and Margaret White.

7. Priscilla Pointer, who plays Amy Irving’s mother in Carrie, is Irving’s actual mother. De Palma had previously cast the mother-daughter team of Jennifer Salt and Mary Davenport in his film Sisters. He felt that such casting contributed a “documentary reality” to his films.

8. Brian De Palma originally intended Sissy Spacek to play Chris Hargensen, Carrie’s main tormentor.

9. Actor Bill Paxton worked as an assistant to Art Director Jack Fisk on Carrie. Fisk is Sissy Spacek’s husband.

10. Of the lead “teens” in Carrie, John Travolta was the youngest at 22. The oldest was 26-year old Sissy Spacek, who was only two years younger than Betty Buckley, who played Carrie’s gym teacher Miss Collins.

11. An infamous Hitchcock-obsessive, Brian De Palma desperately wanted Hitchcock’s right-hand composer Bernard Herrmann to score Carrie. When Herrmann died shortly before work on Carrie began, De Palma settled for Pino Donaggio, but that did not stop him from using snippets of Herrmann’s score for Psycho throughout the film.

12. Stephen King’s novel refers to an incident in which Carrie causes a rain of stones to fall upon her house prior to the events in the book. Brian De Palma shot this scene for his film, but decided to cut it because he wasn’t happy with the special effects.

13. When the obnoxious little boy rides by Carrie on his bike and shouts “Creepy Carrie! Creepy Carrie!” the voice you are hearing is that of Betty Buckley.

14. Ms. Collins’s personal prom story, which she tells during Carrie’s doomed prom, was improvised by Betty Buckley.

15. During the prom disaster scene, P.J. Soles’s eardrum was actually punctured by the runaway fire hose.

16. One of the differences between Stephen King’s book and Brian De Palma’s film is the death of Margaret White. In the book, Carrie uses her telekinetic powers to stop her mother’s heart gradually. In the film, she causes kitchen utensils to crucify her mother in a manner that mirrors the St. Sebastian statue in her creepy prayer closet.

17. The famous final shock of Carrie was inspired by the similar ending of John Boorman’s Deliverance. De Palma achieved the scene’s eerie look by shooting it in reverse.

18. Carrie screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen later scripted two teleplays adapted from Stephen King novels: It and The Tommyknockers.

19. In 1988, Carrie was adapted into a Broadway musical that was greeted with venomous audience boos and equally outraged press notices. Linda Winer of New York Newsday deemed the show “stupendously, fabulously terrible…” In his book The Monster Show, David Skal wrote, “The performers cast as high school students appeared, on the average, at least ten years too old for their roles; the girls were costumed like vicious hookers, and the boys, at one point, like sadistic leather fetishists.” Instead of having a bucketful of pig’s blood dropped on her head, Carrie was merely subjected to having her cheeks rubbed “with a few handfuls of red glop” before having an empty bucket placed on her head. Betty Buckley played Margaret White in the show’s short-lived Broadway run.

20. In 2006, playwright Erik Jackson received Stephen King’s blessing to stage a non-musical spoof of Carrie starring drag queen Sherry Vine as the title telekinetic. The show debuted off-Broadway. Unlike the ‘80s musical, this production was greeted far more warmly by the press. The New York Times called the performances “joyously on target,” particularly lauding the work of the “adorable pig [puppet] that closes Act I with a horror-movie-style death scene, perfectly played.”