Carrie (film)

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Carrie
Original 1976 theatrical poster
Directed by	Brian De Palma
Produced by	Brian De Palma Paul Monash
Written by	Lawrence D. Cohen Stephen King (novel)
Starring	Sissy Spacek Piper Laurie Amy Irving William Katt Betty Buckley Nancy Allen John Travolta P.J. Soles
Music by	Pino Donaggio
Cinematography	Mario Tosi
Editing by	Paul Hirsch
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	November 3, 1976 (USA)
Running time	98 min.
Language	English
Budget	$1.8 million US (est.)
Followed by	The Rage: Carrie 2
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Carrie is a 1976 film directed by Brian De Palma based on the novel by Stephen King. It draws strong parallels between the onset of the title character's adolescence (especially her menstruation, sexuality) and burgeoning telekinetic powers.

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Reaction 3 Differences between 1976 film and novel 4 Trivia 5 Cast 6 Other Carrie works 7 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Carrie White is a repressed, socially awkward teenage girl who begins to discover that she has telekinetic powers. At home, she is emotionally abused by her mentally unstable Christian fundamentalist mother, Margaret White; at school, nobody likes her because she is socially awkward and is thus a frequent target of ridicule.

As the film begins, Carrie (Sissy Spacek) has her first period while showering after gym class. Unaware of what is happening to her, a terrified Carrie reaches out for help from the other girls in the locker room. Disgusted, the girls ridicule her, pelting her with tampons and sanitary napkins. The gym teacher, Miss Collins (Betty Buckley), comes in and stops the teasing. While at first upset with Carrie for making a scene, Miss Collins soon realizes that due to Carrie’s upbringing, she is unaware of the concept of menstruation. Aware of the trauma Carrie has gone through, Miss Collins meets with the principal and has Carrie dismissed from gym class for a week.

On her way home from school, Carrie is teased by a young boy on a bicycle. Carrie uses her powers to make him fall and hurt himself.

At home, Carrie’s unstable mother (Piper Laurie) is under the delusion that Carrie has only begun menstruating because she has committed a sin. Mrs. White preaches to Carrie and attempts to force her to repent for a sin that she did not commit. When Carrie refuses, Mrs. White drags her kicking and screaming body into a small pantry and locks her in. Defeated and terrified, Carrie prays for forgiveness.

Later, Carrie, still upset over being confined in the closet, unintentionally uses her powers to break a mirror in her room. Mrs. White inquires about the noise, but Carrie feigns ignorance.

The next day, Miss Collins, still livid about the locker room incident, berates the other girls and forces them through a boot camp-like detention, deliberately physically exhausting them. The ringleader of the girls, Chris (Nancy Allen), refuses to participate, and, as punishment, is banned from the upcoming prom. 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, the handsome and athletic Tommy Ross (William Katt), to take Carrie to the prom. Tommy begrudgingly agrees.

Tommy asks Carrie to the prom, but she refuses, thinking yet another trick is being played on her. After a comforting pep talk with Miss Collins, and Tommy’s further insistence, Carrie finally consents to going to the prom with Tommy.

While everyone else is getting ready for the prom, Chris schemes with her boyfriend Billy (John Travolta) and best friend Norma (P.J. Soles) to get revenge on 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. Mrs. White threatens to make them move from the town so that Carrie will never see Tommy again; Carrie retaliates by telekinetically closing all of the windows in the house, effectively revealing her power to her mother. Mrs. White believes that her daughter is being used by the devil, but Carrie asserts that the power is her own, and that other people have it too.

Prom night arrives, and Mrs. White tries desperately to keep Carrie from attending. She begins hitting herself and raving, eventually crying out “they’re all gonna laugh at you!” Mrs. White then criticizes Carrie on her choice of wardrobe. When Tommy arrives, Carrie telekinetically pushes her mother down on her bed, telling her to stay there until she leaves. As Carrie leaves, her mother mutters, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus 22:18).

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 has since fallen for Carrie, and kisses her.

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 under the stage. She realizes their plan: Chris is going to yank a cord and dump the pigs’ blood all over Carrie, ruining what would be the greatest moment of her life. Sue rushes toward the stage frantically, but is intercepted by Miss Collins, who thinks that Sue is just out to make trouble for Carrie. Despite Sue’s protests, Miss Collins throws her out of the gym. At that exact moment, Chris yanks the cord and, at the height of Carrie’s happiness, Carrie is drenched in pigs’ blood.

The students gasp and look on in horror (except for Norma, who laughs hysterically). Tommy is furious, but the bucket falls and knocks him unconscious. Carrie snaps and imagines that all of the students and faculty are laughing at her, her mother’s prophecy fulfilled. After Chris and Billy run out the door, Carrie telekinetically shuts all of the doors, one of which crushes two of Billy’s friends. The stage lights flicker and give off an ominous red tint, and Carrie turns on a fire hose which spirals out of control, spraying water at Norma at high-pressure and leaving her unconscious before pushing over other students. Miss Collins gathers several students and attempts to move Tommy, but Carrie uses her power to push Miss Collins against a wall before killing her by toppling a basketball rafter down against her torso, crushing her to death. Carrie uses the hose to electrocute two faculty members, which results in a fire. The fire spreads rapidly through the gym. Carrie exits the burning gym, trapping the remaining students inside.

As Carrie walks home, a firetruck is seen passing her (presumably on the way to the school). Chris and Billy, who have just witnessed Carrie massacring the entire student body, attempt to run Carrie over 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 tools. After her mother dies, Carrie is wrought with guilt, and her power becomes so out of control that the house begins crumbling, and the numerous candles set it ablaze. Carrie takes her dead mother into the prayer closet one last time as the house burns down around 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.

[edit] Reaction

Film critic Roger Ebert called Carrie an "absolutely spellbinding horror movie", as well as an "observant human portrait".[1]

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 were nominated 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.)

[edit] Differences between 1976 film and novel

• 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.
• In the novel, the name of the high school was Ewen Consolidated High School. For the film, it was changed to Bates High School (an homage to the character Norman Bates from Hitchcock's Psycho).
• Miss Desjardin is renamed 'Miss Collins'. In the movie, she is crushed to death against the auditorium wall, but in the book, she survives the massacre.
• 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 brownish-red hair. Both versions tend to portray the character cloaked in black at all times.
• In the movie, 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 only wishes to drench the prom-goers in water, but inadvertently 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, and blowing up different gas stations and bringing down livewires from telephone poles, killing many more than in the movie as she spreads the mayhem across Chamberlain. (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 the 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 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 of Chamberlain. As such many things were left out from the end of the novel where Carrie destroys the the town.

[edit] Trivia

• Real-life mother and daughter, Priscilla Pointer and Amy Irving, play the roles of Mrs. Snell and Sue Snell.

• Stephen King has expressed that he wished he had thought of the film's ending.

• Adam Sandler's Album "They're all going to laugh at you..." Is based on the famous line in the movie, "NO! They're all going to laugh at you!" And on the album there is a track called, "Oh Mom..." Where the children ask permission from their mother to do things, and the mother constantly replies, "NO! They're all going to laugh at you!"

• Sissy Spacek insisted that she would be the one whose hand shoots up out of the grave at the end. Her attitude was "How many times do you get to be buried alive and know you'll be alright?"

• During the prom scene, when Carrie is spraying everyone with the fire hose, PJ Soles was actually knocked unconscious when the hose that sprayed over her face burst her eardrum. Brian DePalma decided to keep the scene in, so the actress is unconscious when her head rolls to the side.

• The second-last scene where Sue Snell lays flowers on Carrie's grave was actually shot in reverse and the footage was rewound to give it a creepier feel. Also in the scene you can see a car travelling backwards at an intersection.

• On the original theatrical trailer Stephen King's name was spelt wrong and appeared as Steven King.

• The prom scene was parodied shot-for-shot in Another Gay Movie.

• This film was #8 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role
Sissy Spacek	Carrie White
Amy Irving	Sue Snell
William Katt	Tommy Ross
Betty Buckley	Miss Collins
Piper Laurie	Margaret White
Nancy Allen	Chris Hargensen
John Travolta	Billy Nolan
P. J. Soles	Norma Watson
Priscilla Pointer	Mrs. Snell

[edit] Other Carrie works

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

• In 2002, a TV movie remake starring Angela Bettis in the title 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 resurrected 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 was supposed to have 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' portyal of Carrie was highly praised, the remade film was ultimately panned by most critics,^[1] who cited it as inferior to the original.

• 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. However, a UK revival of the musical is rumored to be currently in the works with hopes of a scheduled February 2007 premiere. Clips of the musical may be found on Youtube.

• The 1976 film's soundtrack was composed by frequent DePalma collaborator Pino Donaggio. Donaggio has been repeatedly referred to as the equivalent of Brian DePalma's outspoken role model director Alfred Hitchcock's score collaborator Bernard Herrmann.^{[citation needed]} A re-release CD of the 1976 film soundtrack is available on the Varese Sarabande label.

1. ^ "TV Reviews: "Carrie"", Internet Movie Database, November 4, 2002.

[edit] External links

• Carrie at the Internet Movie Database
• Carrie at Rotten Tomatoes
• Carrie at All Movie Guide
• Carrie at Movie Tome

Carrie (by Stephen King)
Novel Carrie (1974) Films Carrie (1976) | The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999) | Carrie (2002 film) Characters Carrie White | Margaret White | Sue Snell Related Articles Telekinesis