Nancy Allen is the first girl to appear nude in Carrie, a high school gothic that drops one of its many bombs on us with an opening credits montage set inside a girl's locker room after gym class. The camera tracks over to the requisite outcast, Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), showering in a stall to herself. Something about the combination of water and steam and isolation is affording her bliss, and with Pino Donaggio's ethereal music on the soundtrack, the moment transcends pornography: it's a sensual baptism, and one that's subverted as soon as Carrie, struck with terror, starts to menstruate for her first time. Unsympathetic peers hurl tampons at her, and order rapidly becomes chaos. The sequence is nightmarish for implicating us in their resentful reaction--how could a sixteen-year-old female not understand what's happening to her? Answer: the religious upbringing to end religious upbringings.

There are few directors capable of retaining Stephen King's over-the-top dialogue and situations without embarrassment; De Palma achieves this by placing quotation marks around everything (Piper Laurie, who plays the obsessive-protective zealot mother of telekinetic Carrie, decided against the role at first because she thought the film was going to be too earnest) while staying sincere about Carrie herself. One look at Spacek's mesmerized innocence and he probably had no choice--has there ever been an actress who projects such moral fibre, even as she exacts psychic revenge that's beyond all reason? Spacek anchors the expert Carrie, a throwback to De Palma's avant-garde days (I personally love the split-screen stuff) that's tempered with the ambition, like its heroine's, to please the mainstream. Allen, by the by, is a hoot as John Travolta's devious girlfriend; their nasty driving scenes together seem a sly parody of George Lucas' conservative American Graffiti.

MGM has taken out a new lease on life with their marvellous Special Editions of late. The film aired on television the other night, just after I got through with this DVD, and the difference between the two sources was downright comedic. Maybe that's what's colouring my perception, but I think the disc's 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer looks vibrant and detailed (early De Palma is a hazy affair, regardless), and only slight pixellation detracts. The 5.1 Dolby Digital remix takes advantage of prom-night theatrics in a big way, though improvements in sound are generally quite subtle when toggling back and forth between six-track audio and the original mono recording.

Extras include two entertaining Laurent Bouzereau documentaries, "Acting Carrie" (focusing on cast interviews--43 mins.) and "Visualizing Carrie" (40 mins.). De Palma's participation in both is limited (introspection isn't his strong suit), and the latter concentrates mainly, to my surprise, on the sets, despite that this was De Palma's most preconceived movie in terms of cinematography. (Aside: production designer Jack Fisk is Spacek's husband.) Betty Buckley, Carrie's Ms. Collins, had her part upgraded to that of Mrs. White for "Carrie the Musical" (!) and joins Lawrence D. Cohen in recollecting its disastrous Broadway run. A 6-minute animated photo gallery (with Donaggio's score used as a backdrop), a selection of notes filed under "Stephen King and the Evolution of Carrie" (which might have been adapted from the relevant chapters in King's recent On Writing), and the original theatrical trailer (in 16x9) put the finishing touches on Carrie's Special Edition.-Bill Chambers

Critic Armond White, keeper of the pro-DePalma flame lit by Pauline Kael, calls the ending of The Fury the greatest in the history of movies, which it just might be. Coming on the heels of one of DePalma's most stylistically polite works, the closing shots represent the director gasping for air after holding his breath for a long time. The finale is, as White has said, "an orgasm," what you get when you ask DePalma to practice tantric filmmaking. I only wish I enjoyed what preceded it more; if The Fury is like sex, then it's akin to bad sex: it's slow and clumsy enough that one begins to realize how silly the act is in and of itself. Parallel stories find Kirk Douglas (in a touching, graceful performance) searching for his kidnapped son (the Andrew Stevens), and Amy Irving as a telepathic girl who will be used to track down the boy, also psychic. Although The Fury is far more complex than DePalma's superficially similar Carrie, a lot of that complexity pertains to the plot--dense in two senses of the word--instead of theme. If one insists on filtering his perception of DePalma through Hitchcock, then The Fury is more Torn Curtain than North by Northwest. Fox's DVD version is nice, though relatively featureless: ten skimpy photo galleries (lobby cards and the like) plus trailers for Alien, The Fly (1986), The Fly (1958), Lake Placid, and The Omen. The 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is grainy but handsome, definitely better looking than you remember, while the 4.0 Dolby Digital surround strengthens John Williams' gorgeous score. Miscellany: DePalma's name is spelled without a space between the "e" and the "P" in anything connected to The Fury.-Bill Chambers

Kinda damned if I do and damned if I don't mention De Palma and Hitchcock in the same breath, but let me ask you: how come Woody Allen is praised for his spins on Bergman while De Palma is downgraded in estimation when he dances with his influences? Dressed to Kill's motifs include showers and cross-dressing, and there's an early reversal of expectations that depends on our ingrained notions of star-system politics, but none of this makes it a Psycho rip-off. The film's tribute to Hitchcock's seminal shocker is largely subtextual: there's fear in the eyes of the women who take showers in Dressed to Kill to which no environmental factors could've contributed (if we've always been vulnerable in the loo, only Psycho and, by extension, Les Diaboliques, brought that to the fore), and everybody seems willing to buy a tidy bit of post-climax psychobabble because they saw the same thing in a popular thriller. Far from subverting, satirizing, or imitating Psycho, one might say that Dressed to Kill authenticates its scope of influence. There's a lot to love in Dressed to Kill, the complex tale of a psychiatrist (Michael Caine) who refuses to divulge information that could help stop a serial killer, even though De Palma cheats now and again with the clues. The ending, too, is unsatisfying, if a logical conclusion to the film's symmetrical riffs.

MGM's Special Edition DVD is strong on supplements and weak in the areas of image and sound. Presented in all its 2.35:1 glory (widescreen has never been so essential), in both unrated and R-rated versions to boot (via seamless branching technology), the image looks faded and grainy, despite 16x9-enhancement and presumed remastering. The Dolby Digital 5.1 remix is unmemorable, although better than the original mono track (also here). Really, bonus material is where this disc is at. Laurent Bouzereau's "The Making of a Thriller" (approx. 45 mins.) starts out as a scene-by-scene how-/why-they-did-it breakdown replete with recollections from De Palma and the other principals (excluding Caine) before shifting gears to become something more casual and nostalgic. Topical are the two featurettes "A Film Comparison: The 3 Versions of Dressed to Kill" and "Slashing Dressed to Kill"--the former split-screen compares unrated, R-rated, and network TV edits (some of the changes are so subtle that to notice them requires step-frame study), the latter features filmmaker rants targeting the MPAA and Dressed to Kill's more vocal detractors. Actor-turned-director Keith Gordon, Nancy Allen's on-screen confidante, "appreciates" Dressed to Kill in a third featurette, providing the most useful analysis of the film's themes in the entire package. Photo galleries of ad slicks, international posters, poster concepts, and lobby cards give some insight into the marketing process, but the animated section of production stills is pretty superfluous. The theatrical trailer and a 2-page foldout booklet are finishing touches--this is a DVD Dressed for success.-Bill Chambers

SCARFACE PLATINUM EDITION DVD Image A- Sound A- Extras A-

Buy at Amazon USA Buy at Amazon Canada October 10, 2006|Now here's a double-dip that's really frustrating: Universal's "Platinum Edition" of Scarface amends the presumed-definitive "Two-Disc Anniversary Edition" by featuring the 5.1 remix that should've been on there (i.e. the one that accompanied theatrical prints circa the film's twentieth anniversary reissue) as opposed to the one that actually is. Is there a significant difference between the two? Aye. The upgraded audio might irk purists, but, particularly in DTS, the more flamboyant use of the discrete channels--especially the subwoofer--is a better fit, aesthetically-speaking: the gunfire of the previous DVD sounds positively impotent in an A/B comparison. In fairness, each bullet effect was likely overdubbed with state-of-the-art library cues, and Giorgio Moroder's score doesn't respond as well to amplification as the mayhem does. (Speech, however, comes across with improved fidelity.) Unless you're a home-theatre enthusiast, I can't recommend the package as an upgrade, since the video transfer is identical and the best extras were ported over intact from the Anniversary Edition. Two new featurettes--"Making of Scarface: The Video Game" (12 mins.) and "The World of Tony Montana" (12 mins.)--provide little in the way of added value and are frankly no less cynical than the Def Jam special they replace. Looking like the Unabomber, Vivendi Games' Pete Wanat and others give us the hard sell on their virtual sequel to Scarface, but the parade of Z-list celebs (Fez from "That '70s Show", Jillian Barberie, Jason Mewes) shown lending their pipes to the game hardly fuels up the hype machine, and all the suits are deafeningly evasive with regards to the exact nature of Al Pacino's role in the project. Meanwhile, Tony Montana's "world" seems merely uninviting as explicated by a couple of ex-DEA agents, hip-hop magazine XXL's delusional lifestyle editor (psst!--Tony Montana wasn't a real person), and a writer for MAXIM, who sums up the film thusly: "The moral of the story is...don't have a gun battle in your house." Yes, and the message of Citizen Kane is that snow globes are fragile.-BC

As someone who didn't see Scarface until recently, I wonder if it's because of Tony's status as a mascot for the hip hop community that we can begin to appreciate him as anything other than, well, a figurative cigar: the messiahdom of a penis is bound to be far more interesting than the penis itself. The film's cultural reverberations come back on Scarface, little aftershocks that re-settle its rags-to-riches tropes to resemble some kind of manifesto--and transform Tony's credo ("First you get the money, then when you get the money you get the power, then when you get the power you get the women") into the three pillars of wisdom for the modern American dreamer, the young man enduring violent rites of passage among the pocket tribes that have sprouted up in America's underprivileged neighbourhoods. The question is, how effective a piece of filmmaking is Scarface, really, if anyone anywhere idolizes Tony Montana?

The answer lies in a comparison to the 1932 Scarface, directed by Howard Hawks and written by Ben Hecht (to each of whom DePalma dedicates this remake on-screen): both are cautionary tales, but the policies of the Code dictated that Paul Muni's death in the original not be a glamorous one, while Tony Montana goes out on a note of "fuck caution"--he brings to the High Noon shootout such a nihilistic attitude that he dies with his pride intact, and what is pride but the poor man's dignity? At a certain point--I think it's when Tony, to our bloodthirsty approval, pulls out a machine gun and snarls the pop catchphrase "Say hello to my little friend!"--Scarface sheds its moralistic pretense and becomes a slick come-on to impressionable youth.

The film is rendered all the more tackily seductive by what we commonly think of as the Michael Mann aesthetic: the pastel colour scheme and droning synth soundtrack (what DePalma calls "cocaine music") of "Miami Vice" shares DNA with Scarface, almost none of which was shot in Florida because of death threats levelled at the production by anti-Castroists, emboldening DePalma and production designer Nando Scarfiotti to hyperstylize accepted notions of Miami architecture. Lovingly yet unconscientiously made, dangerously empowering and imminently watchable, Scarface is one of the few cult phenomenons with an understandable, undismissable following.

To commemorate the 20^th anniversary of Scarface, Universal is reissuing the film on DVD with upgraded tech specs in separate 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and pan-and-scan ("fullscreen") editions. (Needless to say, I hope, stick with the former.) The restored image looks delectable and from a source of recent vintage, with the exception of minor vertical scratches during the chainsaw sequence. The glory of the transfer is not quite pronounced until you see clips from a battered TV print on the second platter of this 2-disc set. The 5.1 tracks are meanwhile serviceable at best, that brittle quality of eighties mixes evident even in DTS. Laurent Bouzereau's featurettes on Disc Two aren't the hackwork we've come to expect from the ubiquitous DVD producer--he's genuinely missed during Benny Boom's "Def Jam Presents: Origins of a Hip Hop Classic" (20 mins.), in which a cavalcade of black talent (P. Diddy, Eve, Russell Simmons) is invariably interrupted by Boom's slavish adherence to the cuisinart cutting of urban music videos, which, frankly, is starting to seem a little square.

Bouzereau's "Scarface: The Rebirth" (10 mins.), "Scarface: Acting" (15 mins.), and "Scarface: Creating" (30 mins.) share topics and interview subjects. Testosterone-heavy due to the lack of participation from either of the film's female stars (Mastrantonio and Michelle Pfeiffer), the three pieces nevertheless deliver as a collective and showcase DePalma in a mischievous mood. The auteur grins impishly as he reveals that he performed a switcheroo on the MPAA, slapping the R rating Scarface eventually got on the X-rated version he first submitted to them, while screenwriter Oliver Stone admits to taking every opportunity that Scarface afforded him to snort coke and the late cinematographer John A. Alonzo reflects on one of the greatest challenges of his career: shooting a gunfight with multiple Panavision cameras running simultaneously in a nightclub plastered with mirrors. (A passage that recalls, for what it's worth, the prom chaos of Carrie.) A 22-minute "Deleted Scenes" reel consisting of rushes for scrapped bits of business is an educational peek behind the green curtain shrouding DePalma: the way he breaks up coverage is ruthlessly economical and likely to stymie the studio that tries to tinker with his work in post. "Scarface: The TV Version" (3 mins.)--a featurette that juxtaposes scenes with their TV-friendly alternatives (executed with surprising panache by Harry Tattleman)--plus cast & filmmaker biographies/filmographies round out this premium package.-Bill Chambers, October 8, 2003

DePalma peaked with Casualties of War, a film as faultless as his The Bonfire of the Vanities is reckless. The great screenplay by the Vietnam veteran playwright David Rabe seemed to cajole DePalma again after the pyrotechnic but hardly virtuoso The Untouchables and the flaccid comedy Wise Guys. On first viewing I thought this was because Rabe's sentiments recall those expressed in DePalma's early, anti-authoritarian films, which are precocious bundles of energy, but a closer look at Casualties of War reveals it to be nothing if not pro-authority, full of faith in the system. What we have, then, is the second part of a makeshift trilogy (The Untouchables, Casualties of War, and The Bonfire of the Vanities) in which DePalma examines a basic human decency that translates to courtroom triumph; I think DePalma's particularly audacious approach to Casualties of War comes out of the material's rage. Like the project itself, the film's stylistic chutzpah also represents DePalma's use of the proverbial Get Out of Jail Free card after he had a hit with The Untouchables.

Michael J. Fox plays Eriksson, the green soldier of a squad whose leader, Sergeant Meserve (Sean Penn), drags four of his men into the heart of darkness when he orders the kidnapping and brutalisation of a Vietnamese farm girl. Further complicating the situation as Eriksson refuses to take part in the woman's senseless torture is his debt to Meserve for rescuing him in combat but days before. The characters talk in war movie clichés as if to knock down as many barriers as possible between us and them--familiar figures in messed-up circumstances that are given both poetic distance and due by DePalma, the cast, and composer Ennio Morricone, contributing one of his most aching scores.

The film is deserving of the top-drawer treatment it receives from Columbia Tri-Star on DVD, starting with a spectacular 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that's accompanied by an effective 5.1 Dolby Digital remix; a 31-minute making-of from Laurent Bouzereau featuring new interviews with producer Art Linson, gifted editor Bill Pankow, and DePalma, who admits to dodging Vietnam (if nothing else, Casualties of War reflects what must have been some sweaty nightmares about the draft); "Eriksson's War", a recently taped eighteen-minute conversation with Michael J. Fox (working with Penn was "not a pleasure but a privilege," the typically diplomatic actor says); five deleted scenes, including Eriksson's missing interrogation (in black and white); filmographies for Penn, Fox, and DePalma; and trailers for Casualties of War, Birdy, and The Bridge on the River Kwai.-Bill Chambers, December 16, 2001