after the blood comes the boys (or, dirty pillows and twin peaks)

Nobody ever told me that Catherine Martell was Carrie's mom when she was younger:

Oh, my favorite game is recognizing character actors.
We have a few feet of snow here in Maine. There was a ban on street parking last night so I had to park over the hill, near the ocean last night and then get it out by 6am this morning. I am sleepy! I'm reading The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon. I love Andrew Solomon even though I might've thought maybe he sounds too know-it-all-ish or pedantic but his voice is really great. Anyway, it's about depression and I'm reading the history chapter, it's very interesting. Here's a crummy cellphone picture of the ocean, the snow and the hill this morning:


So the point of the snow talk is that we got so much snow yesterday that most things were closed. Not the videostore, though, thank goddess. And I've been trying to get into horror so I asked a couple of known horror buffs that are friends of friends to give me a list, and Carrie was on it. I ended up watching it with two girls who went to the high school where it was filmed and also I guess where Mr. King taught high school. I also learned that while he tried to throw the manuscript out, his wife sent it to a publisher and lo it was his first book.

Carrie is the story of how horrible people are. And not just in Maine, right? The opening scene where she gets her period and thinks she's dying was the opposite of the one in My Girl. So sad, she goes to the other girls in the locker room for help or explanation and they just corner her and toss stuff at her. If she didn't even know what a period was, how could she know what to do with the tampon bullets these bitches were shooting at her? Sissy Spacek did such a good job of totally spazzing out. I remember reading the book but this may've been the first time I've seen the movie in total.

The other girls are so mean, Carrie's mom is so crazy, her whole house looks like an attic, the closet with the jesus with the glowing eyes is terrifying, although it's interesting that she ultimately returns to it with her mother's dead body when the house is collapsing in on her. Like, she's telekinetic, right, so her mom thinks that she's got some devil in her. Carrie's not stupid, she's read about telekinesis and she doesn't believe the story about her dad getting taken by the devil, she knows he ran off with a homewreckertype. When one of the mean girls tries to make good by making her bf ask Carrie to prom, Carrie initially refuses because, again, not stupid, but then she accepts, under duress, so she can rid her porch of the asker before her mother discovers him and probably get sent back to the jesus closet. She makes a killer dress that shows off her twin peaks and dirty pillows and has like a nice time at the dance once she calms down. She's amazingly awkward. Sometimes Sissy Spacek is cute. Then of course the awful couple who are always slapping each other and calling each other "stupid shit" rig the king and queen election and she and her date are it and when they go up onstage to get the flowers and crowns, the meanies dump pigs blood all over her. It's worse because they got the pigs blood themselves, from a real pig, it's not like they went to a butcher. Ugh.

At that point, she goes ape/bananas and everyone dies.

When she gets home she wants sympathy from her mom but her mom denies. They spazz out on each other and the house starts to collapse on them, at which point Carrie drags them both to the jesus closet. Oh carrie, will you never learn? Your mother and tormentors death are your ticket to freedom. Telekinesis yourself some cash like the dad from Firestarter and get outta that town. Telekinesis a car to drive you to California, where you can join a freakshow or something.

I hate that Carrie dies in the end. I'm not even comforted by the fact that she haunts the dreams of the only girl who survived. That's the one whose bf took Carrie to prom. I think someone should remake Carrie where she ends up running into some wise old lady or young punk teenager and then it turns into a pagan kennedy book.