"Carrie"

You should wait until the screen shows your entry has been posted -- on dial-up, it's rather slow. I'll have a moderator excise the multiple postings for you. As to "Carrie," it's only a movie and a horror movie that fantasizes the apolyptic finale. There are other films that have been criticized more severly which are more real like "Natural Born Killers."

Hehehehe thanks.

Also, I don't believe in reality, that's where boring people live.

Sorry about your situation. My thoughts will be with you in hopes your homeless situation improves.

There are a lot of 'revenge' movies out there, and Carrie is certainly a good one. There is a vicarious thrill in being able to see people like the ones who have hurt you get their just payback. As long as it is a vicarious revenge, there's nothing to feel guilty about.

I always felt bad in Carrie about her date (William Katt?) - I don't feel he deserved to die- although he may not have been completely innocent, he had a streak of goodness in him.

Well, to be fair there a complicity by everyone involved except William Katt and that last minute empathy displayed by Amy Irving. It was part of the storyline point that Carrie's unleashed fury would take some innocents with her. She ends up punishing the real culprit -- the religious zealot mother who was symbolic of fundamentalism. I didn't find the story that nihilistic especially in the horror genre. If one wants to see a film about how character flaws interact, see "Dogville."

A film about revenge that comes to my mind is Straw Dogs, in which Dustin Hoffman, typical anti-hero, nerdy and civilised is faced with raw savagery (his wife is raped by a gang of country bullies) and has no recourse until he takes in a simpleton (after hitting him with his car) in his house. In the noble motive of protecting the weak from the strong he finds an outlet for his frustration in boundless violent aggression. When the bullies show up to linch the simpleton (He accidentally killed their sister, but Dustin doesn't know that), he kills them one after the other (in self defence naturally).

My brother, who is also a short guy revelled in this movie, because of its message that the small smart guy can overcome the muscular louts.

This reminds me of another, totally different, film with revenge motive: L'été meurtrier with Isabelle Adjani, who plays a young girl tortured by the knowledge that her (German) mother was raped and that her (French) father had done nothing to revenge her, not even after she committed suicide out of shame. She plots and schemes to find out who the culprits are and then sets in motion a plan that will lead to their destruction. Only to find out at the last moment that her father in fact secretly had tracked down the rapists years ago and done them all in, and that the revenge for which she has lived is about to strike the innocent...

The revenge motive is very strong in many films, another well known French example would be Le vieux fusil with Philip Noiret, in which a French physician takes revenge for the murder of his wife (Romy Schneider) and child by retreating German troops (and for you who choose to believe the "cheese-eating surrender monkey"-stereotype, this is not an exaggerated story). He takes out the nazis one by one using an old double barrelled rifle and his knowledge of the terrain, and finally, in a very inventive scene, a flame thrower...

Great examples!

bravo

This blends into the debate of the revenge films "Kill Bill I & II" as the protagonist deals with each offender in a cartoonish violent and gory manner. I assume there were innocent done away with at the wedding but it seems they were revenged (or were they?)

"Valdez is Coming". A Burt Lancaster revenge western. He's framed and crucified by a mob for a crime he didn't commit, miraculously survives, and comes back to kill the two-dozen-or-so members of the gang responsible, one or two at a time.

Sounds like an early Elmore Leonard book I read.

Yup. Movie was based on the Leonard book.

King said he based "Carrie," his first book, on a couple of girls he knew in high school who were mercilessly tormented for being a little bit different. He said that the more they attempted to fit in, the more they were mocked.

He also said that at one point, he threw the manuscript in the garbage, but that his wife fished it out and told him it was worth finishing.

KB I & II had a lot of old Western revenge references, especially Michael Madsen in that silly looking cowboy hat, so it wasn't all Kung Fu.

I know that there are a lot of better-quality, more violent revenge flicks, it's just that this is the only movie which I can watch without feeling sorry for the villians. Usually I regret the tragic waste of life ( no matter how evil the bad guys are).

Yes, I know it's only a movie.

I think that by making the teenies into a mob, it depersonalising them and you can enjoy it while feeling less guilty , like you do when the characters are killed off one by one.

It's like those scenes in the original Austin Power's movie, where they show the henchmen's friends and family right after Austin kills them. I always do that unconsciously.

Life isn't that black and white, and movies shouldn't be, either.

But those movies were in color.

Kidding aside, the writers of these films will nearly always define the good guys and the bad guys (or gals) so one can identify with the heroes in the story. Unless one is perverse and id's with the villains! Tarentino manages to blur who or why the baddies are bad and singles in on one character who presumably is doing "good." Watch the KB I & II and the love story makes for a conflict of feelings about what began as rather cartoonish characters. Tarentino is having his fun amidst all the violence and I understand why that makes some of us feel uncomfortable.

"Carrie" basis is the harrassment of an individual who is considered out-of-the-norm. Well, she certainly turned out to be out-of-the-norm. Stephen King is also have his fun in putting a new twist on old horror themes but bringing them up-to-date. Now that film seems dated.

Who's perverse? lol I almost always side with the bad guys. As well as being much more interesting , they seem to have a lot more fun. While I try to live as morally as possible in reality, living and enjoying myself vicariously through the evil acts of others brings me great pleasure ( at least on bad days).

Then this is like "Portney's Complaint?"

Perhaps it's like going bowling and taking all one's frustration out on the pins.