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 dates	November 3, 1976
Running time	98 min.
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 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 De Palma participated in.

Plot

The film begins during a physical education session; the girls are playing volleyball and Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) misses the ball. The girls on her team laugh at her and one (Norma) hits her with a baseball cap. In the locker room, Carrie experiences her first period, and after becoming distressed, cries out for help. Instead of helping, the other girls laugh and humiliate her by pelting her with tampons and chanting "Plug it up!" The gym teacher, Miss Collins (Betty Buckley), rushes in to stop the commotion. At first Mrs. Collins berates Carrie for her stupidity, but after questioning Carrie, Miss Collins realizes that Carrie is unaware of the concept of menstruation. In light of this, and the trauma of the incident, Miss Collins asks the school principal to excuse Carrie from gym class for a week. After repeated mispronunciations of her name by the principal ("Cassie"), Carrie snaps out at him, "It's Carrie!", and causes the ashtray on his desk to mysteriously flip up into the air and break on the floor. On her way home, Carrie uses her newly discovered telekinesis to stop a young boy on a bicycle who is teasing her. While at home, Carrie is tormented by her delusional, fanatically religious mother (Piper Laurie), who locks Carrie in a closet (which contains a small shrine with a statuette of St. Sebastian - his body pierced with arrows) and forces her to pray--she believes that Carrie received her period due to sinful thoughts.

Miss Collins, still upset about the incident, talks to the other girls and forces them through an athletic detention, deliberately overworking them. The leader of the clique, Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen), refuses to participate and is banned from the upcoming senior prom as punishment. Furious, she blames Carrie for her misfortune. Meanwhile, another one of the girls, Sue Snell (Amy Irving), feels guilty about her part in teasing Carrie so she asks her boyfriend, Tommy Ross (William Katt),the hottest boy in school to take Carrie to the prom. Tommy grudgingly agrees. When Tommy asks Carrie to the prom, she initially refuses, thinking that yet another trick is being played on her. But, after a comforting pep talk about forgeting passed humilaition from Miss Collins, and after Tommy's further insistence, Carrie finally agrees to go to the prom with him.

While everyone else is getting ready for the prom, Chris schemes with her boyfriend Billy Nolan (John Travolta) and best friend Norma (P.J. Soles) to embarass, and humiliate Carrie. They go to a farm and slaughter some pigs, drain their blood into a bucket, and place the bucket on one of the rafters in the school gym. Carrie asks her mother’s permission to go to the prom. Her mother becomes unhinged at the suggestion, commenting that Tommy is only after her for sex and that this will lead her down a road to perpetual sin. This leads to a violent argument between Carrie and her mother during which Carries mother chants "There all gonna laugh at you!" over and over to make Carrie embarassed, and nervous. Carrie uses her telekinesis to slam windows and doors shut and confesses her new-found power to her mother. At this point her mother begins to regard Carrie as a witch possessed by Satan. After another fight between Carrie and her mother on the night of the prom, Carrie uses her powers to push her mother onto a bed and tells her that she must stop worrying.

Carrie and Tommy arrive at the prom, and Carrie begins to feel accepted by Tommy’s peers. Miss Collins relates to Carrie the story of her own prom, telling her she should cherish the memory forever. Carrie and Tommy dance together; Tommy, who has begun to be attracted to Carrie, kisses her.

As per Chris’ instructions, Norma and some of Billy’s friends fix the ballots so that Carrie and Tommy are elected prom king and queen. They make their way to the stage, and Carrie finally feels what it’s like to be accepted.

Meanwhile, Sue sneaks into the prom and sees Chris and Billy hiding under the stage. She realizes their plan: Chris is going to yank a cord and dump the pig's blood all over Carrie as she is declared prom queen. Sue rushes toward the stage frantically, but is intercepted by Miss Collins, who thinks that Sue is out to make trouble for Carrie after seeing that Carrie and Tommy are together. Miss Collins throws her out of the gym. At that exact moment, Chris yanks the cord, soaking Carrie in pig's blood.

The students gasp and look on in horror except for Norma, who laughs hysterically. Tommy is furious, but the bucket falls and kills him. Carrie is so embarassed, and humiliated that she snaps and imagines that all of the students and faculty are pointing and laughing at her, and taking pictures for the yearbook, and school paper, which is exactly what Carrie's mother had warned her would happen. After Chris and Billy tip-toe outside covering there mouths giggling, Carrie uses her telekinetic powers to shut all of the doors, one of which crushes two students. Carrie turns off the lights and activates and subsequently controls a fire hose, knocking Norma unconscious and spraying the high pressure water at other students, knocking them to the ground. Miss Collins gathers several students and attempts to move the unconscious Tommy, but Carrie uses her power to push Miss Collins against a wall and then crushes her to death with a falling basketball rafter. Carrie uses the hose to electrocute the school's principal and another teacher who are trying to calm down the panicking students using a microphone, setting the stage ablaze. The fire spreads rapidly through the gym. Carrie exits the burning gym, trapping the remaining students inside.

Chris and Billy, who had witnessed Carrie massacring the entire student body, attempt to run over Carrie with Billy’s car. Carrie senses this, and flips the car over before it can hit her. The car explodes, killing Chris and Billy.

When Carrie finally makes it home, she finds the house full of lit candles. She goes upstairs and takes a bath, scrubbing off all the blood and sobbing. After she finishes, she finds her mother and hugs her, crying. Mrs. White holds her and tells her the story of how she was conceived in result of a strange marital rape. Then, convinced that her daughter is evil, she takes out a hidden knife and stabs Carrie in the back. Carrie falls down the stairs, and stumbles away from her mother. When her mother corners her in the kitchen, Carrie uses her power to crucify her mother with kitchen knives. At this point her mother resembles the statuette of St. Sebastian in the closet. After her mother dies, Carrie is wracked with guilt, and her powers, grown to the point where she can no longer control them, cause the house to begin to crumble as the numerous candles set it ablaze. Carrie drags her dead mother into the prayer closet one last time as the house burns and collapses down upon them.

Some time later, Sue, having survived the prom night catastrophe, is having great difficulty dealing with the deaths of Tommy and her friends. She has a dream in which she visits the lot where Carrie’s house once stood. As she reaches down to put flowers on the burnt lot, Carrie’s bloody hand reaches up from the rubble and grabs her. Sue wakes up screaming in the arms of her mother.

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
• 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 where 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 White's 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 it 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). The 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.

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.

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.

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.

References in popular culture

Carrie has had a strong effect on popular culture and has been spoofed several times in the media. Most notably, the end prom sequence has spawned countless imitations

• Adam Sandler's album "They're all gonna laugh at you!" contains a track called, "Oh Mom..." , in which children ask permission from their mother to do things, and the mother constantly replies, "NO! They're all going to laugh at you!" This is based on the famous line in the movie spoken by Carrie's mother (Piper Laurie), which is repeated before Carrie gets her revenge at the prom.
• In Scream (1996), a horror film which appears as a tongue-in-cheek approach to the genre, Billy says, "Corn syrup... same thing they used as pig's blood in 'Carrie'".
• In Sabrina The Teenage Witch, at character Sabrina's prom, Hilda says, "I can't believe that bouncer confiscated my pigs' blood. I swear sometimes I think I'm the only one who thought Carrie was a comedy."
• The final episode of the 2006 series of the British comedy The IT Crowd refers to the film when the female lead character is suffering from PMS, to explain to another character what is happening. After being completely oblivious to hints like "I've got Aunt Irma visiting", "it's my time of the month", "It's high tide", "I'm closed for maintenance" and "I've fallen to the Communists", the dumbfounded character finally realizes when a friend says "Carrie... first scene in Carrie".
• In a prom scene in Tiny Toon Adventures red punch is spilled on Shirley the Loon and she starts to go crazy. When Fifi Le Fume asks why people should leave, Babs Bunny grabs her and says "Remember the movie Carrie?"
• In the prom episode of "That '70s Show," you can hear Hyde's mother scream, "They're all gonna laugh at you!" before he exits his house, much like Carrie's mother tells her before Tommy Ross picks her up.
• In the drama series Degrassi: The Next Generation the episode Time Stand Still part 1 and 2 Rick is drenched with yellow paint instead of with blood.
• In the 2006 film Another Gay Movie, a wet dream consists of one of the characters at a prom being drenched in semen instead of blood, and taunts of "they're gonna laugh at you" are heard in the background.
• In the Crash Into Me, Part 2 episode of Grey's Anatomy, Nick, a patient whose carotid artery just exploded on an intern, effectively covering her with blood, says "I'm a little freaked out, to be honest. Mostly because you look like Carrie at the prom."
• In the Into You Like a Train episode of Grey's Anatomy, Meredith says "Carrie at the prom with the pigs blood horrifying" while telling the barman that she asked Dr Derek Shepherd to pick her over his ex-wife.
• In the drama series Charmed, after having received a power she is unable to control, Piper states that "by next week, I will be walking around like Carrie at the prom".
• In another episode of Charmed, "Hyde School Reunion", Phoebe, whilst at her high school reunion, begins to cause chaos as the result of a back-fired spell; resulting in her sister Paige commenting that "as someone whose seen Carrie, both versions, I'd say the reunion is over".
• In the opening scenes of the episode Mother's Little Helper of the series Medium, Ariel has a dream that is very similar to the ending of the movie.
• In the Addams Family Values movie, the last scene features Wednesday Addams (Christina Ricci) and her boyfriend over the grave of the Addams kids' nanny. Wednesday states that if she had to kill her husband (which the nanny previously did several times), she'd make him die of fright. Her boyfriend answers that it isn't possible and reaches out to put flowers over the tomb. At that moment a hand shoots out of the grave and grabs his arm, while he screams in horror.
• The pig's blood scene is parodied in American Dad, in a flashback where it is Stan's prom night and his peers tell him that the prom queen wants to dance with him. He walks over to her and one of the bullies pulls a rope, releasing pigs on to him. *The first bully says "Pigs?! It was meant to be pig's blood!" to which the second bully responds "I didn't finish the book!" and finally the first bully says 'You stopped reading after pigs?! That's not even the end of the sentence!"
• In a Halloween special of Simpsons Comics, a tale called Dark Lisa was published as a mix of Carrie and the Dark Phoenix Saga in X-Men. Lisa is teased at school for being vegetarian in a similar vein to Carrie teased over her menstruation; the most notable is when Bart, as vengeance against Lisa, rigs her shower with chili, the girls in the changing rooms throw paper towels at her shouting "Clean it up! Clean it up!" in reference to the girls throwing sanitary napkins at Carrie accompanied by cries of "Plug it up! Plug it up!" Further references include: Principal Skinner mistaking Lisa for Bart (the principal can't remember Carrie's name); Ralph is pushed off his bike telepathically while teasing Lisa (Carrie does the same to a little boy on a bike); Jessica Lovejoy and Nelson Muntz plan to humiliate Lisa even further at the Lemonade Ball (akin to Chris and Billy plotting against Carrie); Lisa sarcastically asks Nelson whether he's going to "boost my ego as Ball Queen and then have your friends dump chili over my head?", a swipe at the bucket of pig blood climax; and Lisa's new-found mastery of telepathy ends up massacreing the whole student body (with the exception of Bart and Milhouse). The rest of the tale is a direct parody of Dark Phoenix, as Lisa is capable of flight, surrounded by a dark fiery aura à la Phoenix, and Mr Burns and Smithers disguise themselves as Professor X and Cyclops respectively in order to blackmail Lisa into powering the nuclear plant.
• In the Ben Elton novel Past Mortem Helen Smart has her period in the change room and golden girl, Christine Copperfield, sticks a tampon down her throat. She later describes it as "like the scene from Carrie."
• On the UPN sitcom "Girlfriends," Joan kneels at Toni's (imaginary) grave and confesses that she told Toni's boyfriend Greg that Toni cheated on him. As Joan lays flowers on Toni's grave, Toni's hand reaches through the ground and grabs Joan's hand.
• In the Ramones song "Endless Vacation" Deedee references Carrie in one line - "Like taking Carrie to the prom/somethings always going wrong"
• In a scene in "Knocked Up" the opening credits to "Carrie" are showed when trying to find films with nudity.