Carrie (1976 film)

This is about the 1976 film. For the made-for-television film, see Carrie (2002 film). For the 1952 film, see Carrie (1952 film).

Carrie
Original 1976 theatrical poster
Directed by	Brian De Palma
Written by	Novel: Stephen King Screenplay: Lawrence D. Cohen
Produced by	Brian De Palma Paul Monash
Starring	Sissy Spacek Piper Laurie Betty Buckley Amy Irving William Katt Nancy Allen John Travolta
Cinematography	Mario Tosi
Edited by	Paul Hirsch
Music by	Pino Donaggio
Distributed by	United Artists (1976 - 1981) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1982 - present)
Release date	November 3, 1976
Running time	98 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1.8 million (est.)

Carrie is a 1976 American horror film directed by Brian De Palma and written by Lawrence D. Cohen, based on the novel by Stephen King. The film and the novel deal with a socially outcast teenage girl, Carrie White, who discovers she possesses telekinetic powers after being subjected to both physical and mental harassment by her peers, teachers, and her mother. The film stars Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Betty Buckley, Amy Irving, Nancy Allen, William Katt and John Travolta.

Carrie is regarded as a watershed in the horror genre and is seen as one of the best feature film adaptations of a Stephen King work. The film was also a major success for United Artists, grossing over $33 million at the U.S. box office (over $100 million in 2007 dollars, adjusting for inflation), on a budget of $1,800,000. It was welcomed by immense critical acclaim. The film spawned a sequel The Rage: Carrie 2 and a made for television remake, released in 2002, neither of which involved De Palma.

Plot

Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), a shy outcast, has her first period while showering after a high school gym class. Not knowing that menstruation is a normal process for women, she pleads for help from her classmates, who instead taunt her mercilessly until gym teacher Miss Collins (Betty Buckley) breaks up the commotion. Carrie possesses telekinetic powers, which flare up during moments of great emotional stress, first by shattering an overhead light in the shower room.

Sent home for the rest of the day, Carrie is subsequently harassed by her mother Margaret (Piper Laurie), a delusional religious fanatic who often locks her in a closet to pray. Margaret believes that Carrie’s period is a punishment for sinful thoughts and actions. Meanwhile, Miss Collins forces all the other girls in her class to serve a week’s worth of athletic detention. Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen), the chief instigator of the prank, refuses to participate and is banned from the upcoming senior prom; she blames Carrie for this situation and vows to even the score with her.

Another girl in the class, Sue Snell (Amy Irving), has begun to feel guilty for her part in ridiculing Carrie. She asks her boyfriend Tommy Ross (William Katt) to take Carrie to the prom, even though this means that Sue herself will be unable to attend without a date. Carrie initially refuses, believing his invitation to be another trick, but his persistence and Miss Collins’ pep talk eventually persuade her to say yes.

Chris, her boyfriend Billy Nolan (John Travolta), and her best friend Norma Watson (P. J. Soles) devise a plan to get revenge against Carrie. With the help of other friends, they kill a pig and drain its blood into a bucket, which they balance on the rafters of the school gym where the prom will be held. The group also conspires to rig the election for prom king and queen so that Tommy and Carrie will win; once they are onstage to be crowned, Chris will pull a rope tied to the bucket and drench Carrie in the pig blood.

When Carrie tells Margaret about Tommy’s invitation to the prom, Margaret becomes unhinged and claims that Tommy is trying to lead her into a life of sin. Carrie displays her telekinetic powers, causing Margaret to believe that she has become possessed by Satan. As Carrie firmly states her intent to go to the prom and starts to get ready, Margaret warns, “They’re all going to laugh at you!”

On prom night, Carrie is reluctant to dance with Tommy at first, but Miss Collins persuades her to enjoy herself. She and Tommy are elected prom king and queen and brought up onstage; at the same time, Sue slips into the gym and catches sight of Chris and Billy hiding under the stage. Realizing what they are going to do to Carrie, Sue rushes to stop them but is intercepted and thrown out by Miss Collins. Chris pulls the rope to dump the pig blood onto Carrie, causing the bucket to fall loose and knock Tommy out as well.

Only Norma laughs as everyone else stares speechless, but Carrie – recalling her mother’s words – imagines that the whole crowd is laughing at her humiliation and snaps. Chris and Billy slip out of the gym just before Carrie closes all the doors and windows with her powers. Using the equipment in the gym and on the stage, she kills and injures several students and faculty members (including Miss Collins) before setting the building on fire. She then lets herself out, trapping everyone else inside, and begins to walk home. Along the way, Chris and Billy try to run her over in their car, but she causes it to turn over and explode.

At home, Carrie takes a bath to wash off the blood and changes into clean clothes, only to be confronted by Margaret. After telling Carrie that she was conceived as the result of marital rape, Margaret first comforts her, then stabs her in the back in an attempt to kill her. However, Carrie sends several knives and kitchen utensils into Margaret's body, pinning her to a doorframe where she slowly dies. No longer able to contain her rage and guilt, Carrie allows her powers to tear the house down around her as she drags her mother’s body into the prayer closet and the wreckage catches fire.

Some time afterward, Sue, one of the night’s few survivors, is tormented by nightmares. In one of them, she visits the charred lot on which Carrie’s house had stood. A crude grave marker has been erected to mark the spot; as Sue kneels to place flowers near it, Carrie’s bloody hand breaks the surface and grabs her arm. Sue wakes up screaming in her mother’s arms.

Cast

• Sissy Spacek as Carietta "Carrie" White
• Piper Laurie as Margaret White
• Amy Irving as Sue Snell
• William Katt as Tommy Ross
• Betty Buckley as Miss Collins
• Nancy Allen as Chris Hargensen
• P.J. Soles as Norma Watson
• John Travolta as Billy Nolan
• Priscilla Pointer as Mrs. Snell
• Sydney Lassick as Mr. Fromm
• Stefan Gierasch as Principal Morton
• Harry Gold as George Dawson
• Noelle North as Frieda Jason
• Michael Talbott as Freddy DeLois
• Doug Cox as Freddy Holt
• Cindy Daly as Cora Wilson
• Deirdre Berthrong as Rhonda Wilson
• Anson Downes as Ernest Peterson
• Rory Stephens as Kenny Garson
• Edie McClurg as Helen Shyres
• Cameron De Palma as Bobby Erbter (voice dubbed by Betty Buckley)
• Michael Towers as prom band singer
• Glen Vance as prom band singer

Production

Pre-production

Carrie was the first Stephen King novel to be published and the first to be adapted into a feature film. The film was produced by United Artists which had given the position of director to Brian De Palma, though he was not the studio's first choice. De Palma told Cinefantastique magazine in an interview in 1977: "I read the book. It was suggested to me by a writer friend of mine. A writer friend of his, Stephen King, had written it. I guess this was almost two years ago [circa 1975]. I liked it a lot and proceeded to call my agent to find out who owned it. I found out that nobody had bought it yet. A lot of studios were considering it, so I called around to some of the people I knew and said it was a terrific book and I'm very interested in doing it. Then nothing happened for, I guess, six months."

Lawrence D. Cohen was hired as the writer, and produced the first draft, which had closely followed the novel's intentions. However, later versions departed from King's vision rapidly, and certain scripted scenes were omitted from the final version, mainly due to financial limitations.

The final scene, in which Sue Snell reaches toward Carrie's grave, was shot backwards to give it a dreamlike quality. It was also filmed at night, using artificial lighting to create the desired effect. This scene was inspired by the final scene in Deliverance (1972). Spacek had insisted on using her own hand in the given scene, so she was positioned under the rocks and gravel. De Palma stated 'Sissy, come on, I'll get a stunt person, what do you want, to be buried in the ground?!' However Spacek declared 'Brian, I have to do this.' De Palma explains that they "had to bury her. Bury her! We had to put her in a box and stick her underneath the ground. Well, I had her husband bury her, because I certainly didn't want to bury her. I used to walk around and set up the shot and every once in a while, we'd hear Sissy: 'Are we ready yet?' 'Yeah, Sissy, we're gonna be ready real soon." The White house was filmed in Hermosa Beach, and to give the home a Gothic theme, director and producers went to religious shops looking for artifacts to place in the home.

George Lucas and De Palma held a joint audition for Carrie and Lucas's Star Wars (1977). There is a long-standing rumor that originally, Spacek was cast as Princess Leia, and Carrie Fisher as Carrie White, but when Fisher refused to appear in nude scenes and Spacek was willing to do them, they switched parts. However, Fisher refuted this story in a Premiere magazine article called "The Force Wasn't With Them," about actors who auditioned unsuccessfully for Star Wars. That article quoted Fisher as saying, "Not only do I love being nude, I would've been nude then... But anyway, it's total bullshit [that Fisher refused to play Carrie]." William Katt who played Tommy Ross also auditioned for Luke Skywalker and lost to Mark Hamill.

Coincidentally, one of the locations where Carrie was filmed, Palisades Charter High School, was at one time owned by the parents of Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, years before the school was built. The lot was then taken, some years after the couple had purchased it, by the State by eminent domain to build "Pali High."

Initially, Melanie Griffith had auditioned for the role, taking it as an opportunity to begin a career as a mature, adult actress. Sissy Spacek had been persuaded by husband Jack Fisk to audition for the title role. Fisk then convinced De Palma to let her audition. After several auditions, DePalma concluded that Spacek would be playing Christine Hargenson. Determined to land the leading role, Spacek backed out of a television commercial she was scheduled to film, rubbed Vaseline into her hair, didn't bother to wash her face, and arrived at the final audition clad in a sailor dress which her mother had made her in the seventh grade, with the hem cut off

Amy Irving was cast alongside her mother Priscilla Pointer, who would play the mother of Irving's character - a technique DePalma first employed in Sisters, in which real-life mother and daughter Jennifer Salt and Mary Davenport starred as daughter and mother.

Nancy Allen was the last to audition, and her audition came just as she was on the verge of leaving Hollywood.

Filming

Principal photography and filming began on May 17, 1976 and ended in July on a modest budget of USD $1.8 million, with a fifty day shooting schedule. Principal location shooting occurred in California, in Culver City Studios, Culver City, California and Los Angeles, California, the Bates High School scenes were filmed at Pier Avenue Junior High in Hermosa Beach, California, with the exception of the shots of the Bates High School athletic field, which were filmed at Palisades Charter High School in Pacific Palisades, California, and the shots of the school in flames and the gym scenes, which were both built inside Culver City Studios.

De Palma began with one director of photography, and cameraman Isidore Mankofsky, who was eventually replaced by Mario Tosi after conflict between Mankosky and De Palma ensued. Gregory M. Auer served as the special effects supervisor for Carrie, with Jack Fisk as art director. De Palma borrowed heavily from the films of Alfred Hitchcock, which as a result, gave Carrie a Hitchcockian tone. The most obvious example is the name of the high school, which is Bates High, a reference to Norman Bates from Psycho (1960). In addition, the four note violin theme from Psycho is used throughout the film whenever Carrie uses her telekenetic powers.

Much of the filming and production became problematic, most notably the prom scene, perhaps the most chaotic to film, and took over two weeks to shoot, with 35 takes. Auer added red, green and yellow food colouring to a bulk-sold concoction known in the cosmetics industry as 7-11 Blood. However, when it was put to use, the concoction kept drying and adhering to Spacek's skin because of the hot lights. The only solution was to hose Spacek down when the substance got gluey. Spacek, however, was willing to have the blood poured onto her, she stated "My initial reaction was it was a kind of warm sensual feeling being covered with this wet warm blanket, but after days of shooting the whole destruction scene, it got to be miserable and I was counting the days until we were through".

A wraparound segment at beginning and end of the film was scripted and filmed which featured the White's home being pummeled by stones that hailed from the sky. The opening scene was filmed as planned, though on celluloid, the tiny pebbles looked like rain water. A mechanical malfunction botched production the night when the model of the White's home was set to be destroyed, so they burned it down instead and dropped the scenes with the stones altogether. However, some interior scenes had already been filmed which were left in the movie where one can clearly see boulders crashing through the Whites' ceiling.

Reaction

Box office performance

Carrie initially had a limited release on November 3, 1976, opening in 409 theaters. After receiving a broader theatrical release, it grossed $5 million, and was one of the five top grossing films for the following two weeks. Its final United States gross for 1976 was $33,800,000 - more than eighteen times its budget of $1.8 million. The film, in today's money, has made over $100 million in the US alone, and was a hit in other countries such as the UK, Australia and France.

Awards and critical reception

The film received immensely positive reviews. Film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated the film was an "absolutely spellbinding horror movie", as well as an "observant human portrait". Pauline Kael of The New Yorker stated that Carrie was "the best scary-funny movie since Jaws -- a teasing, terrifying, lyrical shocker", Take One Magazine critic Susan Schenker said she was "angry at the way Carrie manipulated me to the point where my heart was thudding, and embarrassed because the film really works", a 1998 edition of The Movie Guide stated Carrie was a "landmark horror film", while Stephen Farber prophetically stated in a 1978 issue of New West Magazine, "it's a horror classic, and years from now it will still be written and argued about, and it will still be scaring the daylights out of new generations of moviegoers."

Nevertheless, the film was not without its detractors. Variety called it "pure camp", Jump Cut Magazine's Serafina Kent Bathrick said DePalma "upholds and contributes to the kind of scapegoating that keeps capitalist culture in the service of the state", while Andrew Sarris of The Village Voice commented, "There are so few incidents that two extended sequences are rendered in slow-motion as if to pad out the running time..." The most widespread criticism of the film is the artificiality of the special effects, and the pretentiousness of some of the film's dramatic scenes.

In addition to being a box office success, Carrie is notable for being one of the few horror films in existence to be nominated for multiple Academy Awards. Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie received nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress awards, respectively. The film also won the grand prize at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival, while Sissy Spacek was given the Best Actress award by the National Society of Film Critics. This movie ranked number 15 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies, and #46 on the American Film Institute's list of 100 Greatest Cinema Thrills, and was also ranked eighth for its famous ending sequence on Bravo's five-hour miniseries The 100 Scariest Movie Moments (2004). They Shoot Pictures, a filmsite that is in contact with film critics all over the world, lists Carrie as 348th on their current list of the one thousand greatest pictures ever made.

Music

The score for Carrie was composed by Pino Donaggio. Donaggio has been repeatedly referred to as the equivalent of Alfred Hitchcock's frequent score collaborator Bernard Herrmann. De Palma states that he "was put on to him by a good friend of mine, the "Time" magazine film critic Jay Cocks, who had always liked his music and suggested him to me when Bernard Herrmann unfortunately passed away and I was looking for another composer. I listened to his records and talked it over with him and felt he was the right kind of combination." In addition, two pop songs ("Born To Have It All" and "I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Love Someone Like Me") were written for the early portion of the prom sequence and were performed by Katie Irving, sister of star Amy Irving. Donaggio would work again with De Palma on Dressed To Kill, Home Movies, Blow Out, Body Double, and Raising Cain.

The soundtrack was originally released on vinyl in 1976 under the United Artists label; a deluxe CD edition containing a few tracks of dialogue from the film was released by MGM/Rykodisc in 1997. A 2005 CD re-release of the original soundtrack (minus dialogue) is available from Varèse Sarabande. Portions of the film's score were left off of all versions of the soundtrack album, most notably the piece of music that plays while the girls are in detention. Additionally, the other songs in the film (Education Blues by Vance or Towers, (Love is Like a) Heat Wave by Martha and the Vandellas, etc.) were uncredited in the film and were omitted from the album. A bootleg version of the complete score has circulated on the internet.

Differences between 1976 film and novel

Carrie bears significant differences with the original novel. The physical description of Carrie White was changed. In the novel, Carrie is slightly overweight with long, flat dirty blonde hair and pimples on her neck, back and buttocks. However, in the movie, she has a small frame, reddish blonde hair and clear skin. Also, in the novel, the name of the high school was Ewen Consolidated High School. For the film, it was changed to Bates High School (a homage to the character Norman Bates from Psycho.) Other major differences include:

• Norma Watson becomes Chris Hargensen's gal-pal in the movie, while Tina Blake is omitted. Also, Miss Desjardin is renamed as Miss Collins, Mr. Stephens as Mr. Fromm and the characters of assistant principal Peter Morton and Principal Henry Grayle are fused into Principal Henry Morton.
• In the book, Chris and her boyfriend Billy do not wait around after drenching Carrie with blood and only learn what she has done some time later. In the movie, Chris and Billy view Carrie through the gym windows wreaking havoc on the prom goers immediately after she has been soaked with blood.
• In the novel, Carrie's mother is a large, heavyset and rather ugly woman with white hair and rimless bifocals, whereas in the movie, she's slim, with relatively pleasant features and auburn hair. Both versions tend to portray the character cloaked in black at all times.
• In the film, Carrie's mother is killed in a manner that closely resembles crucifixion; in fact she crucifies her mother the same way as her small figure of Saint Sebastian, with her arms pinned up by kitchen knives and potato peelers. In the book, after Carrie is stabbed, Carrie uses her powers to slow her mother's heart down to a complete stop. This version is later used in the remake of the movie.
• In the book, after Carrie has the blood spilled on her, she runs out of the school before closing all the doors, and she then sets off the fire sprinklers. She causes an electrical fire, and at that point, she decides to leave them to burn to death. She then walks across town, using her powers to strip the hydrants along the way, blow up gas stations and bring down live wires from telephone poles, killing many more than in the movie as she spreads the mayhem across the town of Chamberlain, Maine. (Those scenes were cut from the final draft of the script, and not produced because of the small budget).
• In the novel, Carrie is also gifted with a limited telepathy (i.e., ability to communicate outside the normal range of sensory experience), and she unknowingly broadcasts her thoughts to onlookers throughout the city as she brings chaos throughout it. In the movie, there is no sign of this ability.
• In the book, Billy Nolan tries to kill Carrie, while in the 1976 film, his girlfriend Chris Hargensen tries to kill her. In both the film and the book, Chris and Billy end up being crushed in their car and killed.
• Both the film and the book see Carrie dying in guilt for killing her mother, but the film has her death set up because of falling debris striking her on the head. In the book, Carrie leaves her house after killing her mother and continues back into the town. It is at this point that Chris and Billy try to run her over, but she manages to swipe their car aside, killing them both by running the car into a roadhouse, where it catches on fire. Overusing her telekinetic powers, however, has put too much stress on her body, and Carrie collapses. Sue comes up and has a telepathic conversation with her before she dies, also inviting her into her mind to prove that Sue was, in fact, innocent. In the book, Carrie's death is the result of blood loss from the knife wound, shock, and coronary occlusion as a result of the stress that overusing her telekinetic abilities placed upon her circulatory system.
• In the novel, the entire story is portrayed as documentary-esque police interviews in the aftermath of the massacre in Chamberlain, Maine. As such, many things were left out from the end of the novel where Carrie destroys the town.
• In the movie, after Carrie has killed the entire school body, she returns back home and takes a bath to wash off the pig's blood whereas in the novel, Carrie does not take a bath and goes straight into the conversation with her mother.

Sequels, remakes and related works

Carrie, along with the novel, have been reproduced and adapted several times.

Sequel

A significantly derided, much-belated sequel was The Rage: Carrie 2, released in 1999. It featured another teenager with telekinetic powers who is eventually revealed to have shared a father with Carrie White. Stephen King reportedly hated the sequel so much that he once pleaded in Entertainment Weekly that Hollywood not make another Carrie sequel.

Remake

In 2002, a TV movie remake starring Angela Bettis in the titular role was released. The film updated the events of the story to modern-day settings and technology while simultaneously attempting to be more faithful to the book's original structure, storyline, and specific events. The one exception to the latter was that the ending of Carrie in the remake was drastically changed: instead of killing her mother and then herself, the film has Carrie killing her mother, being revived via CPR by Sue Snell and being driven to Florida to hide. This new ending marked a complete divergence from the novel and was a signal that the movie served as a pilot for a Carrie television series, which never materialized. In the new ending, the rescued Carrie vows to help others with similar gifts to her own. Although Angela Bettis' portrayal of Carrie was highly praised, the remade film was ultimately panned by most critics, who cited it as inferior to the original.

Stage productions

A 1988 Broadway musical, starring Betty Buckley, Linzi Hateley and Darlene Love closed after only 16 previews and five performances. An English pop opera filtered through Greek tragedy, the show was such a notorious turkey it provided the title to Ken Mandelbaum's survey of theatrical disasters, Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops. Clips of the musical may be found on Youtube.

Early in the 21st century, playwright Erik Jackson attempted to secure the rights to stage another production of Carrie the musical, but his request was rejected. Jackson eventually earned the consent of Stephen King to mount a new, officially-sanctioned, non-musical production of Carrie, which debuted Off-Broadway in 2006 with female impersonator Sherry Vine in the lead role. Similarly, many other unofficial spoofs have been staged over the years, usually with a gym teacher named "Miss Collins" (as opposed to the novel's "Miss Desjardin" and the musical's "Miss Gardner"), most notably the "parodage" Scarrie the Musical, which hit the Illinois stage in 1998 and was revived in 2005; Dad's Garage Theatre's 2002 production of Carrie White the Musical ; and the 2007 New Orleans production of Carrie's Facts of Life, which was a hybrid of Carrie and the classic American sitcom The Facts of Life.

Spoofs

The movie has been spoofed countless times in other films and television programs. Some of the most notable: are Zapped!, a 1982 film starring Scott Baio in which he uses his telekinetic powers to rip the clothes off of his peers at the prom; Superstar, in which a Carrie-obsessed Molly Shannon is doused with blue paint in front of the entire student body; Another Gay Movie which features an homage with a man in drag showered by a bucket of semen; Student Bodies, in which they spoof the arm-from-the-grave sequence; the episode "Love Disconnection -The Amazing Three" of Tiny Toon Adventures in which Shirley the Loon is splashed with red punch; and an episode of Ugly Betty titled Petra-Gate in which Betty stages an "anti-prom" that concludes with her being doused in pig's blood. Also in one opening of Lil' Bush, Lil' Condi is elected prom queen, and blood from Tiny Kucinich, having been killed by Lil' Cheney, is dumped on her. Another spoof can be found in the American Dad! episode It's Good To Be Queen where Stan reflects on his own prom nightmare where the popular kids dump live pigs on Stan, after having not read the word "blood" in the original text.

Influence on other films

The film was quickly followed by a wave of copycats and imitators. Though Carrie is more melodrama than traditional horror film, its biggest influence was on the slasher genre that exploded in popularity shortly after the release of the film. The final scare (in this instance, a hand bursting from the grave) was rarely seen until this point, and soon most slasher films incorporated this tactic. Films like Jason Goes to Hell have been accused of ripping off Carrie's ending, because each feature finales where a hand bursts out of a strange location and grabs something. Another film of that series, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, featured a protagonist similar to Carrie in some ways.

Other films lifted the character layout and storyline more blatantly and featured teens who were humiliated seeking revenge, often with the aid of some sort of supernatural power. Amongst the most notable are: Jennifer, in which the titular character (Lisa Pelikan) unleashes her wrath on her peers by exerting her telepathic control over snakes; Mirror Mirror, in which a girl taps into an evil force that resides in her mirror; The Initiation of Sarah, a 1978 movie of the week in which the titular character (Kay Lenz) gets revenge on a rival sorority member (Morgan Fairchild); Slaughter High, in which a young man is horribly burned as a result of his classmates' prank; Evilspeak, in which Clint Howard taps into the powers of Satan through his computer; and Jawbreaker, which featured an ugly duckling plot, a humiliating prom sequence, a pig's blood reference and three cast members from Carrie films (William Katt, P.J. Soles, Charlotte Ayanna) portraying the Purr family.

In the 2004 film Mean Girls, the main character has her name, Cady, continuously mispronounced, just as occurred with Carrie's name. The reference is probably because both films illustrate high school bullying.