Carrie: Sissy Spacek is Not the Devil

We’ve all experienced them. Whether sitting on a patch of freshly trimmed grass gazing off into the distant night sky or staring blankly at the bathroom wall while resting comfortably on the porcelain throne, revelations will hit without warning like a 100 mph Chuck Norris roundhouse kick to the temple. And although mine wasn’t nearly as earth shattering as discovering the secret to defeating the only man capable of slamming a revolving door shut, it was still a pretty eye-opening experience.

With All Hallows’ Eve just around the corner, prime time and cable networks have once again, begun their yearly tradition of saturating our television sets with nightmarish visions of ghosts, goblins, vampires, antichrists, and blood-soaked prom queens. Filled with the Halloween spirit I threw on my couch potato costume, grabbed a pack of peanut M&M’s, set the idiot box to channel 20, and prepared myself for the ultimate high school horror classic, Carrie.

Throughout the entire movie I started to become dizzy from repeated roundhouse strikes of revelation to my dome. They are listed in no particular order:

1. I was home alone on a Friday night
2. I’m a big, fat loser for being home alone on a Friday night
3. Piper Laurie looks like Linda Blair
4. They don’t make horror movies like they used to
5. Sissy Spacek was a 70’s hottie

Ok, so I am neither big nor fat. But I am, without question, a bonafide loser. This isn’t so much a revelation as it is a reaffirmation of the truth. Let me just get that out of the way.

And anyone who looks like Linda Blair will always be scary to me. To clarify, Piper Laurie played Margaret White, Carrie’s fanatically-religious-to-the-point-of-psychotic mother in Brian De Palma’s adaptation of the popular Steven King novel. Linda Blair starred as Regan MacNeil, the sweet little girl turned freakish evil demon child (sounds like some of my ex girlfriends) in William Peter Blatty’s, The Exorcist. If a mother-daughter tandem rings my doorbell this October 31st dressed as the aforementioned two characters I’m 99% sure I’d poop my pants. For their sake (and my boxer’s) let’s hope this Halloween, instead, produces visits from the likes of Cinderellas and Tinkerbells.

But what I really want to talk about are points four and five.

Outside of a handful of movies - Event Horizon, Saw I, Ringu (The Ring), Ju-On (The Grudge), The Others, and Jacob's Ladder come to mind - horror movies post 80's have failed to leave any lasting impressions. For example, to this day I still haven't finished Event Horizon since shutting off the VCR 10 years ago. Joined by my girlfriend (at the time) and six of our closest friends that night we all agreed we were too freaked out to continue. Now that, people, is a scary movie. Besides the above mentioned, horror films haven't done anything like that to me since.

But the back-to-back decades of roller disco and rubik's cube competitions churned out some of the finest hair raisers the genre had to offer. Carrie was one of those horrifying experiences for me on a couple of different levels. I was only a year removed from my mother’s womb when she and my dad made a beeline for the theaters upon the movie’s release in 1977. I thought I was safe, cradled securely in my beloved mother’s arms until the very last scene where I suddenly found my helpless, one year old self, in turn, making a beeline for the concrete floor. Apparently, fright had gotten the better of her as she dropped her precious cargo, leaving me to make like superman before my dad’s heads up reaction saved me from serious mental retardation.

Flash forward: when I was about five years old I got a fix for a good horror flick so my parents and I hopped into our chocolate brown Ford Pinto, headed to Erol’s Video, and rented ‘Carrie’ on Betamax. It wasn’t until later that night I realized what had caused my dear mother to momentarily lose grip on her only son four years prior – only the scariest ending in the history of the horror genre, hands down. Oh yea, and I also developed an incessant aversion to Sissy Spacek.

For over a quarter of a century Sissy’s brilliant portrayal of a quiet introvert gone cuckoo and the infamous ‘prom night’ scene has continually haunted my dreams. Her wide, piercing eyes and pale white skin covered in a bucket’s worth of pigs’ blood caused me to forever believe that Ms. Spacek was the devil incarnate. I couldn’t watch any of her other Oscar nominated roles without being completely overtaken by a case of the heebie jeebies.

That is, until this past Friday when I realized just how hot – a then 28 year old – Sissy Spacek really was. I’m not usually much for blondes so that speaks volumes about her physical beauty. But it was more about the subtle attributes she gave to her character – the innocence, loyalty, demure disposition, and seductive southern drawl – that caught my attention. Had I been a sexually curious teenage boy in 1977 I would have definitely put the petite, blonde bombshell in my laminated top five.

Who would have ever thought I’d eventually be smitten by a 5’2” succubus that used to infiltrate my childhood nightmares? Thank you, revelation, for making me realize Sissy Spacek is not the devil. Now I can openly welcome her to invade my adult fantasies.

Be sure to look out for cameos by John Travolta, Edie Mclurg (the secretary in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off), William Katt (The Greatest American Hero), and Nancy Allen (Murphy’s partner in Robocop)

MUST OWN