Carrie '76 Soundtrack

Prior to 1997, all of the soundtrack releases worldwide were generally the same. The front cover featured the poster art (dual images of Carrie before and after the blood), with lists of film credits and song titles on the back. The only major variation of the albums are the color of the title logo (which has appeared in white, red, and yellow). The score itself is incomplete -- the majority of music is from the final act,and Donaggio opted not to include the funky porno-esque cues that play over the exercise/prom preparation scenes ("Calisthenics" & "The Tux Shop"), feeling that they stood out too much from the rest of the score. Strangely, most releases close with the exact same "Theme" that opens the album. The two songs are included that were composed by Donaggio for the prom and performed by Priscilla Pointer (Mrs. Snell)'s daughter/Amy Irving (Sue Snell)'s sister, Katie Irving -- however, neither of them are the same versions featured in the film. There are drastic differences in the vocals for "Born to Have It All," and "I Never Dreamed..." is missing an instrumental interlude.

The only known single release was in Japan (catalog: United Artists FMS-27) featuring the theme and “I Never Dreamed...”

Track listing

1. Theme From "Carrie" (02:55)

2. I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Want Someone Like Me (03:13) vocal: Katie Irving

3. And God Made Eve (02:06)

4. At the Prom (01:58)

5. Contest Winners (02:47)

6. Born To Have It All (03:05) vocal: Katie Irving

7. Bucket Of Blood (02:47)

8. School In Flames (03:11)

9. Mother At The Top Of The Stairs (03:44)

10. For the Last Time We'll Pray (02:44)

11. Collapse Of Carrie's Home (01:41)

12. Sue's Dream (03:18)

Total Duration: 00:32:27

In 2010, along came Kritzerland Records, a small company that releases a variety of soundtrack rarities. For their CD release, they dug up the original 4-track master tapes. This version includes everything from the previous releases (remastered and included as a bonus disc) plus 25 more minutes of Pino Donaggio's score and both the film and bonus instrumental versions of "Born to Have It All" and "I Never Dreamed." Boasted as "the complete score," this 2-disc set was released around Thanksgiving 2010, limited to 1200 copies... and it sold out on pre-orders four days after it was listed for sale. Yours truly just barely attained a copy of his own.

The first disc features the complete score, including some musical moments that were sheared from the film’s final edit, as well as the alternate recordings of Katie Irving’s songs that were featured in the film. The second disc is the original version of the album, remastered from the original recordings. Limited to 1200 copies, this set sold out in days. In 2013, Kritzerland released “The Encore Edition,” which looks virtually identical, but it only includes the first disc. Strangely, the catalog number is identical: Kritzerland KR20017-5.

Track listing

Disc 1

1. Main Title (02:49)

2. The Principal’s Office/The Ashtray (01:35)

3. Margaret Comes Home/The Telephone Call (02:26)

4. The Closet: St. Sebastian/The Mirror/The Reflection (01:24)

5. Calisthenics (01:15)

6. The Card Catalogue/Telekinesis (01:17)

7. Carrie and Miss Collins (01:49)

8. The Slaughter/The Storm/ Outside the Gym/Margaret Prays (01:33)

9. The Tuxedo Shop (01:30)

10. Waiting for Tommy/Tommy Arrives (00:55)

11. Born to Have It All (03:02) vocal by Kate Irving

12. I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Love Someone Like Me (04:07) vocal by Kate Irving

13. The Ballot/Carrie and Tommy/The Conspirators (02:12)

14. The Coronation/The Blood (05:24)

15. The Retribution (03:07)

16. Carrie Returns Home (03:38)

17. The Bath/Carrie and Margaret (01:04)

18. The Crucifixion (02:47)

19. The House (01:35)

20. The Dream/The Nightmare/End Titles (05:04)

Bonus Tracks

21. Born to Have It All (instrumental version) (03:02)

22. I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Love Someone Like Me (instrumental version) (05:37)

Total Disc Time: 58:22

Disc 2

1. Theme from Carrie (02:51)

2. I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Love Someone Like Me (03:09) vocal by Kate Irving

3. And God Made Eve (02:02)

4. At the Prom (01:54)

5. Contest Winners (02:45)

6. Born to Have It All (03:02) vocal by Kate Irving

7. Bucket of Blood (02:42)

8. School in Flames (03:08)

9. Mother at the Top of the Stairs (03:40)

10. For the Last Time We’ll Pray (02:41)

11. Collapse of Carrie’s Home (01:36)

12. Sue’s Dream (02:16)

13. Theme from Carrie (01:00)

Total Disc Time: 33:19

Total Duration: 01:29:58

An "expanded" bootleg version of the soundtrack is also in circulation (made by fans and freely available on various blogs) that's dubbed from the isolated music track on the Criterion laserdisc. The main problem with this rip is some of the dialogue and sound effects are slightly audible.

Unfortunately, all of these releases have one thing in common: they're missing the pop music that wasn't composed by Donaggio. These included perennial hit "Heat Wave" by Martha and the Vandellas, two completely obscure songs and two brief additional bits of score....

The song that opens the prom is "Education Blues" by Vance or Towers, and it was issued on the band's self-titled A&M album in 1975. The version in the movie, however, drastically differs from the LP cut. Now read on...

The more elusive do-wop song that plays while Nancy Allen has her face buried in John Travolta's lap is appropriately titled "Lady Lay." Fans spent decades trying to identify that song, only to later discover it was co-written (cue ominous music here) by Michael Towers, of Vance or Towers. A little more investigation and it turns out the exact same songwriting team responsible for "Lady Lay" also wrote two cues called "Pre-Prom Disco" and "Ernest's Announcement." In other words, it's logical to presume "Lady Lay" is also by Vance or Towers. In other, other words, it's never been released (there's a non-album cut or two that were released as b-sides on Vance or Towers' singles, but "Lady Lay" isn't one of them). Sorry, the best I can do is encourage you to bug A&M / Interscope Records to give the Vance or Towers' album a re-release with unissued bonus tracks.

Now here's where it gets really weird. "Ernest's Announcement" wasn't officially released either, but it was used as the opening theme music in a 1976 gay porn flick called "Catching Up" by director Tom DeSimone (whom some of you might know from the Linda Blair flick "Hell Night," others from the aptly-titled x-rated comedy "Chatterbox"). I swear somebody else discovered that. Really, it wasn't me. Since pornography was still very much an outlaw business in those days, filmmakers didn't bothering clearing rights -- if they wanted music, they just used it (I've heard everything from Pink Floyd to Dolly Parton in old porn). However, DeSimone was juggling careers at the time as a low-budget director and a purveyor of straight, gay and bisexual filth (often credited to Lancer Brooks), so it's probable that he (or someone who worked on "Catching Up") was friends with someone behind-the-scenes of "Carrie" and wound up with a copy of the unreleased recordings. Educated guess, anyway. Wonder who's got those tapes now...

So anyway, here's a list of all of the songs and musical cues that are heard in the film, as denoted by the United Artists cue sheet (there's a few additional bits recorded live while they filmed that didn't make the official music list). The only music not listed below is the hymnal faintly heard in the background while Carrie tries to shoo Tommy from the door. No idea what that is. Except where noted, all music is credited to Pino Donaggio.

1. Main Title (2:45)2. The Principal's Office (0:40)3. The Ashtray (0:52)4. Margaret Comes Home/The Telephone Call (1:58)5. The Closet: St. Sebastian (0:25)6. The Mirror (0:36)7. There Is Power in the Blood - Piper Laurie8. The Reflection (0:42)9. Calisthenics (1:15)10. The Card Catalogue (0:34)11. Telekinesis (0:39)12. Love Is Like a Heat Wave (2:12) - Martha & the Vandellas13. Duel at Diablo (Main Titles) - Neal Hefti14. Lady Lay (2:45) - Vance or Towers

Rykodisc Liner Notes

By Jeff Bond

In the long history of Stephen King movies, amidst efforts by directors ranging from Mark Lester to Stanley Kubrick, one film stands out as an undisputed classic: director Brian De Palma’s 1976 adaptation of Carrie.

It’s an unforgettable mix of compassion, pathos and horror that solidified DePalma’s reputation as a popular filmmaker and put King on the map as the prime mover of modern horror fiction.

Carrie was Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), a painfully shy and naive young high school girl who’s been shielded from knowledge of the world and herself by her fundamentalist mother (Piper Laurie). At the beginning of the film Carrie panics when she begins to menstruate in the girl’s shower after gym class; her mother has never allowed her to learn about this aspect of growing up. Her classmates are no help; in a brutal sequence, they pummel her with feminine napkins as she screams and cries.

Carrie’s gym teacher (Betty Buckley) rescues her and enlists the aid of a popular and somewhat sympathetic classmate, Sue (Amy Irving), in order to rehabilitate Carrie socially. The girl begins an odyssey of discovery as the gym teacher makes it her mission to win Carrie friends and acceptance, as well as punish her tormentors in the gym class.

King’s story would have made for an affecting drama about the agonies of high school life but for one additional plot element: Carrie has the power of telekinesis, the ability to move objects with her mind alone. As the stakes of her social life increase, the movie becomes an excruciating exercise in suspense as Carrie heads blindly into a collision course with her high school rivals, her mother, and her own supernatural abilities.

The marvel of the film is that its anguished drama is every bit as unforgettable as its moments of horror. Sissy Spacek created an amazingly affecting and real character who generated enormous sympathy; far from being a super-powered monster, she was a touching innocent cursed with an ability that seemed an incarnation of personal and natural drives that had been stifled so long they’d taken on a life of their own.

De Palma’s unflinching portrayal of high school cruelty has been unequaled; Carrie is a pariah that even the sympathetic Amy Irving character doesn’t want to be associated with. Her chief tormentors are Nancy Allen as a snotty sexpot and P.J. Soles as Allen’s cackling, ignorant sidekick, but the real objects of their hatred is the gym teacher determined to grind the rebelliousness out of them.

Carrie is a pawn in the battle of wills between Buckley’s gym teacher and Allen’s bitchy queen bee, and the sheer viciousness of the struggle seems barely contained by the militaristic relationship of teacher to student. Buckley smugly uses her position of authority to physically manipulate Irving into helping Carrie win a date to the high school prom, while drilling Allen and the other girls to exhaustion during grueling after-school workouts. When Allen defies her, Buckley hauls off and slaps her student.

Allen in turn sexually maneuvers her dimwitted boyfriend (John Travolta) into assisting her in publicly humiliating Carrie as a way of striking back at her gym teacher. The only note of decency in this brew of high school discord is Irving’s amiable boyfriend Tommy, played by William Katt. Initially flummoxed by Irving’s insistence that he ask Carrie to the prom, Tommy proves an exceptionally kind and understanding suitor who breaks down the young girl’s natural suspicions and shyness with sheer niceness. Their prom date is one of the most exquisite moments of anguished suspense and pathors in the history of the genre: Spacek’s growing, unbridled and child-like joy as she finally begins to feel accepted and liked is heartbreaking given the inevitability of the chaos that’s about to ensue.

DePalma created a moment of rhapsodic tenderness as Spacek and Katt dance and the camera whirls around them in balletic grace (and homage to the famous “Scene D’Amour” of Hitchcock’s Vertigo) as Carrie gives herself over to Tommy’s gentle romantic overtures. Carrie’s good fortune seems to reach its height as she and Katt are elected King and Queen of the dance, but the contest has been rigged by Allen and her cronies to get the couple on the stage.

DePalma’s staging of the climactic moment, as the beautiful young girl is drenched in pig’s blood from a bucket hidden over the gymnasium stage, is a transcendent moment of Grand Guignol horror rising out of the ashes of teenaged humiliation. Red emergency lights add to the sticky crimson blood covering Carrie, recreating her as a bulging-eyed demonic avenger. Split-screens segment the view as Carrie uses her powers to systematically slaughter everyone in the gymnasium.

Wandering home in shock, Carrie is confronted by her crazed mother, who’s convinced that Satan has taken root in her daughter. Wanting only to be comforted after her ordeal, Carrie joins her mother in prayer only to find herself under attack as the woman attempts to kill her defiled daughter with a kitchen knife. Almost unconsciously, Carrie retaliates, literally crucifying her mother against a doorway with a fuselage of kitchen cutlery. Overcome with emotion and seemingly the victim of some biblical retribution, Carrie collapses into the dark closet her mother has locked her into countless times before and brings the house down around her in a final conflagration.

THE PRODUCTION…

United Artists (now a subsidiary of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.) took a number of risks that paid off in spades when they secured the film rights to Carrie. The book, although it was a best seller, was the first by then-unknown author Stephen King, and developing auteur Brian De Palma was suggested by King for the director role.

Carrie launched the careers of an amazing number of popular actors: Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving, William Katt, Nancy Allen, P.J. Soles, and John Travolta. Broadway actress Betty Buckley got her first film role in the movie. With so many newcomers involved, tensions on the set were high, which added to the convincing texture of teen angst, budding sexuality, and hostility in the film’s performances.

Veteran actress Piper Laurie returned to film after a 15-year absence and copped an Oscar-nomination for her frightening performance as Carrie’s psychotically devout mother. Spacek also received a Best Actress nomination for her extraordinarily delicate and touching performance as Carrie, making De Palma’s film one of the most honored films in the horror genre.

Despite Laurie’s fire-and-brimstone histrionics, the movie creates a naturalistic, deglamorized view of high school life that makes its moments of horror all the more effective. Stephen King’s fiction always emphasized the intrusion of the supernatural into ordinary lives, and director Brian DePalma had a reputation for resurrecting the style of Alfred Hitchcock, a filmmaker who delighted in contrasting the ordinary and the bizarre. DePalma was adept at demonizing the Christian imagery of the White household, particularly in shots of a terrifying electric crucifix with a tortured Christ rolling his anguished, illuminated eyes toward heaven. [VINNIE’S NOTE: It’s actually St. Sebastian.]

DePalma keeps his virtuoso technique in check throughout the film, only unleashing moments of whipcrack editing and swirling camerawork as Carrie’s powers manifest themselves. Particularly effective is the gruesome crucifixion of Carrie’s mother, with knives bulleting through the air toward her in rapid succession. The film’s final scare is a classic jolt, as Amy Irving’s character visits the buried remains of the White household and plants flowers over Carrie’s grave -- only to have a blood-soaked hand clutch her from beneath the ground!

THE MUSIC…

Carrie marked Brian De Palma’s first collaboration with Italian composer Pino Donaggio, with whom he later worked on films like Home Movies, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Body Double, and Raising Cain. Donaggio’s approach to the material perfectly suited DePalma’s, emphasizing the film’s drama and pathos with a lyrical sensibility familiar to the Italian cinema of composers like Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota, with occasional nods to the jabbing, string-dominated suspense style of Alfred Hitchcock’s frequent collaborator, Bernard Hermann. De Palma had worked with Hermann himself in his two previous pictures, Obsession and Sisters, and the director had intended for Hermann to score Carrie, but the composer’s death after finishing his final score for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver forced DePalma to seek out other composers.

Pino Donaggio was born in November 1941 in Burano, Italy, and was brought up in a musical environment, with his grandfather and two uncles playing instruments and his father forming his own dance band. Donaggio took up violin at the age of ten, performed solo violin at the age of 14, and later performed with the chamber of orchestras. He mixed popular songwriting with his classical studies and performances, gaining success as a songwriter in Italy, Spain, and South America.

After a period of working primarily in pop, Donaggio gained his first film scoring assignment almost through a twist of fate when an associate producer working on Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Down claimed to have had a psychic vision that Donaggio should compose the film’s score. Roeg’s film was a critical success and Donaggio was offered further work in film.

It’s strangely appropriate that a composer who came into cinema in this manner should be associated primarily with horror and supernatural films. In addition to his collaborations with DePalma, he scored two early Joe Dante thrillers, Piranha and The Howling, as well as 1979’s Tourist Trap, 1980’s Beyond Evil, 1985’s Savage Dawn, and 1986’s Crawlspace. He also score Luigi Cozzi’s two Hercules fantasies starring Lou Ferrigno, and the 1982 drama Tex.

The composer’s long-term creative relationship with De Palma has been a fruitful one. Donaggio remarked in a 1994 interview in Soundtrack! Magazine: “DePalma never listens to the music before rehearsals, so it always comes as a surprise to him. We have some similar kinds of feelings toward music.”

Donaggio approached Carrie as a dramatic tragedy rather than a horror film. Horror effects accompany the infrequent demonstrations of Carrie’s telekinetic powers, but Carrie herself is treated with enormous sympathy and gentleness. “Evil” is only associated with Nancy Allen’s plot to humiliate Carrie and the religious obsessions of her disturbed mother.

THE ALBUM…

Theme from Carrie: The score’s title music opens with extended, floating string chords, leading deliberately into a poignant, quiet melody for solo flute and piano. Played over dream-like slow-motion footage of Sissy Spacek washing herself in the school gym showers, the music underscores Carrie White’s innocence and her separation from the self-absorbed high school students around her, who exist in a world Carrie can barely fathom.

I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Love Someone Like Me: Donaggio collaborated with lyricist Merritt Malloy on two songs, both of which play under dialogue in the film’s climactic prom sequence. As sung by Katie Irving, both songs have a pop/country-western influence very much rooted in the low-key ballads of the 1970s. The song plays as Carrie and Tommy dance, and Donaggio brings in swirling, plummeting string glissandos and chimes to accentuate the balletic motion of DePalma’s camera and the giddy feelings of affection and happiness that Carrie undergoes during the dance. The lyrics comment rather directly on the onscreen action.

And God Made Eve: A chorale-like theme associated with Mrs. White’s fundamentalist religious obsessions makes its first appearance as Carrie’s mother returns home from a day of proselytizing only to recieve a phone call from school informing her of Carrie’s humiliation in the gymnasium showers. Low, ominous strings play as Mrs. White’s anger gathers and a gentle series of chimes answers as we view Carrie cowering upstairs in her room. Far from being sympathetic, Carrie’s mother blames her daughter’s natural progression into womanhood as a curse derived from her sinful nature. A delicate piano ostinato plays as Carrie is forced into a closet to pray for her sins.

At the Prom: Directly after the “Born to Have It All” song finishes during the prom (track 8) and Tommy and Carrie sit down, the melodic line from the song continues as underscore when Tommy tells Carrie that she’s beautiful. Chime effects from the song continue as Carrie and Tommy cast their votes for King and Queen of the Prom, but hard, agitated strings interrupt as we see hands setting the trap for Carrie on the auditorium stage. Carrie’s melody plays delicately on chimes, a reminder of the innocence that’s about to be forever destroyed.

Contest Winners: Carrie’s theme plays itself out, fully, with a lush, rapturous melodic extension as Tommy and Carrie, elected King and Queen of the Prom through voter fraud, walk in slow-motion to the stage. Donaggio’s music gushes forth along with Carrie’s delirious happiness, but a funky, almost rock-influenced riff interpolates on cellos, a malevolent motif that interrupts the dream-like Carrie melody as Amy Irving’s character sights the rope leading to the bucket of pig’s blood perched atop the stage flyers.

Born to Have It All: Donaggio’s second song play first in the movie under Tommy and Carrie’s dialogue. The song is based on Carrie’s melody, and its lyrics expressively foreshadow the tragedy that is about to unfold: “…born to want too much/let the bodies fall/You were born to have it all…”

Bucket of Blood: Swelling brass and surging, pulsing string rhythms build suspense as Tommy and Carrie mount the auditorium stage in slow motion, oblivious to the stunt their classmates are about to pull. A secondary ‘malevolent’ motif -- a jerky, agitated rhythm of low strings and percussion -- alternates with the extended suspense chords, gradually building into a an accelerando and crescendo as the trap is sprung and the bucket of blood drops its contents on Carrie White. In the bloody aftermath, strings slur a plummeting, sickened glissando.

School in Flames: Donaggio’s approach to the mayhem as Carrie launches her psychokinetic powers at everyone around her is striking in its simplicity. Sustained low string chords and a sizzling, buzzing grouping of sythesized sounds underscore her slaughter of the students in the auditorium.

Mother at the Top of the Stairs: Brooding mid-range strings accompany the blood-soaked Carrie as she staggers to her home in a state of shock. When she enters her house the interior has been transformed by Mrs. White into a sacrificial altar with hundreds of burning candles, and Donaggio unleashes his religious theme for Mrs. White in full force with brass and pipe organ, finishing out its cadence with remorseful strings. Donaggio’s string writing throughout his Carrie score subtly pays homage to Bernard Hermann’s suspense music, particularly Psycho, and here the effects emerge fully with a building, high-pitched string line over rumbling textures from the cellos and double basses.

For the Last Time We’ll Pray: Seeking her mother’s comfort after what is certainly the worst high school prom any girl has ever gone through, Carrie lowers her guard only to find herself the victim of a terrifying attack by her knife wielding mother. After a moment of building, suspenseful strings, Donaggio’s score takes a surprising lyrical turn, bringing back the delicate, repeating piano figure as Carrie is knifed from behind and plummets down a flight of stairs. The Psycho-esque strings intervene again, only to give way to a tired, reflective take on the piano ostinato as Carrie struggles to maintain her wits against her mother’s onslaught. As Carrie launches a volley of knives at her mother, pinning her to a doorframe and killing her, the religious chorale makes its return as a sad elegy played by solo flute over strings.

Collapse of Carrie’s Home: Imposing string and brass underscoring lend an epic sensibility to Carrie’s demise as her powers unleash a final, violent cataclysm that burns her mother’s house down around her. A wailing electronic tone gives way to elegiac writing in mid- and lower-range strings.

Sue’s Dream: As Amy Irving makes a dream-like, slow-motion walk to visit Carrie’s final resting place, Carrie’s melody is played once again by solo flute, with the same romantic extension used at the height of her prom happiness -- but the music is violently intruded on by the agitated ‘bucket’ motif, repeated by strings, brass, and bells as Carrie’s blood-soaked hand springs up from the ruined ground of her demolished house to clutch Irving’s arm. Even here, Donaggio’s “evil” music is essentially sympathetic to Carrie White, conjuring up the viciousness of her classmates’ prank more than the danger of Carrie’s supernatural abilities.

Theme from Carrie: After the nightmare ends, Donaggio’s wistful Carrie melody returns to play through the film’s end credits.

Kritzerland Liner Notes

by Bruce Kimmel

In 1976, director Brian De Palma had already established a reputation as a cult director of such films as Greetings, Hi, Mom, and more importantly, Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise, and Obsession. But it was his film of Stephen King’s classic, best-selling first novel, Carrie, that would catapult him into major director status. Many directors have tackled Stephen King, including King himself, all to varying degrees of success, but Carrie is the film that leads the pack.

De Palma got everything right -- the casting (an amazing group of actors), the adaptation by Lawrence D. Cohen, the art direction (Jack Fisk and Bill Kenney), camera-work (Mario Tosi), editing (Paul Hirsch) -- everything just came together magically and perfectly. The film works so well because there is not only great horror (as to be expected), but also a large helping of emotion and pathos (thanks to Sissy Spacek’s affecting and brilliant performance as Carrie).

There is a depth to the characterizations that elevate the film way beyond a simple scary movie. The film also has a sly sense of humor, and it’s just fun in a way horror films seldom are -- thrills, chills, laughs, and one of the most amazing jump-out-of-your-seat scares in the history of cinema. The audience literally jumped out of their seats and the collective scream was unbelievable -- a moment that’s been ripped off countless times. The film became an instant-classic and a box-office triumph, grossing close to $34 million on a budget under $2 million (at a time when that kind of money actually meant something). There was a lot of repeat business (no home video back then), so people could watch their friends squirm and scream.

Horror films are rarely nominated for Academy Awards, but Carrie was one f the exceptions with Sissy Spacek getting a Best Actress nod and Piper Laurie getting one for Best Supporting Actress. Over the years, the film has never lost one iota of its popularity, thanks to numerous releases on every home video format, most recently on blu-ray.

Of all the decisions De Palma made, one of the most important was choosing Pino Donaggio as composer. De Palma had used Bernard Hermann on two of his films -- Sisters and Obsession -- but Hermann passed away in 1975. In 1976, Donaggio had only one major film to his credit, but his score to that film was masterful -- Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. However De Palma came to choose Donaggio, it was a perfect marriage of composer and film.

Donaggio’s score hits all the right notes (pun intended) -- he brings out every emotion and all the subtext, with great suspense and horror music, plaintive and yearning music for the character of Carrie, two songs for the prom sequence (with lyrics by Merritt Malloy) that help make that sequence so magical and memorable, and light and infectious music for the calisthenics sequence and the scene at the tux shop. It is, in fact, a perfect score, a masterpiece of film scoring, with unforgettable themes that capture every nuance of the film.

Donaggio and DePalma continued their director/composer relationship over the next few years, with Donaggio providing terrific scores for Home Movies, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Body Double, and Raising Cain. Donaggio has done many great scores for a variety of directors, including Piranha, The Howling, Tourist Trap, The Fan, and many others.

United Artists released the soundtrack album on LP. It was an odd presentation in that almost all of the music was from the film’s second half, save for the main title sequence (which was repeated verbatim at the end of the album). The album, as was the fashion back then, ran 35 minutes -- but you got most of the themes and the two vocals (out of film order) on the LP. That album was released twice on CD -- first by Ryko (with dialogue snippets included to pad the running time), and then by Varese Sarabande (with the dialogue snippets gone). Ryko used the album master, and the Varese was a clone of the Ryko disc (the pop songs used in the film were not available to them or to us).

When I found out that the rights were available for license, the first thought was why do a third CD release? The answer to that was simple: I love the film and the score. But I knew it would be a tough sell unless we could find a bonus track or two and make it sound better.

I had the MGM vault pull all the tapes and was delighted and surprised to find eleven reels of the original session tapes, along with the earliest version of the album master. I had no idea what was on the tapes, actually -- whether it was just what had been included on the original LP or if there were some additional cues. It was hard to tell from the cue sheets. So, we put up the first reel and found the two instrumental versions of the songs -- and there was reason enough to do a third release -- two unreleased bonus cues.

The cue numbers were sequential, from one to thirty two. I kept hoping against hope that all those early numbers would be from the first part of the film -- and a day later, when CDRs were delivered to me of everything on the tapes, I knew the story -- we had every note of the score, about 25 minutes of additional score cues than those used on the LP and CD releases. Since both film and score are iconic, it was the greatest kind of discovery we could have made.

Transfers were done from those original sessions tapes, and the fidelity on those tapes was incredible.

So it is with great pleasure that we offer the complete score to Carrie in film order. We also found two instrumentals of the songs, which we’ve included as bonus tracks.

Additionally, on CD 2, we offer the original album sequence and mix, newly remastered for this release.

--Bruce Kimmel

CD 1 Produced by Bruce Kimmel

Remixed by John Adams

CD 2 Remastering Produced by Bruce Kimmel

Both CDs mastered by James Nelson at Digital Outland

Tape transfers by John Davis, Precision AudioSonics

Art Direction and Package Design by Doug Haverty for Art & Soul Design

Original Album produced by LeRoy Holmes

Film Score Conducted by Natale Massara