Carrie in the papers
In the days when "Carrie" was originally released, films didn't get unleashed upon 10 billion screens all at once (only to be immediately leaked onto the internet). Nope, in those pre-digital-days, a number of prints were struck and they would circulate theatres regionally. So although "Carrie" was released in November in Washington, it wasn't released in Texas until March of the following year. Not at all uncommon. Complicating this release, United Artists was convinced the film was doomed to be a whopping failure, which is why it was originally released to the major markets in early November. That way, if it failed, it could be pushed out of theaters before the end of the month to make room for the latest batch of Christmas hits. Clearly U/A execs misjudged Miss White. So here's a collection of newspaper articles about the film and its stars, the bulk of which were published within a year after the movie was released.
Syracuse Herald-Journal - November 19, 1976
The Salt Lake Tribune - November 23, 1976
The Washington Post - November 24, 1976
Idaho State Journal - December 10, 1976
Lubbock Avalanche Journal - December 12, 1976
The Advocate - December 23, 1976
Kennebec Journal - December 23, 1976
The Abilene Reporter-News - January 30, 1977
Times Standard, The - February 20, 1977
Del Rio News-Herald - March 4/6, 1977
Pacific Stars and Stripes - April 3, 1977
Corpus Christi Times - April 12, 1977
The Paris News - September 29, 1978
Chicago Daily Herald - October 31, 1991
Winnipeg Free Press - August 31, 2001
Travolta not worried about 'Carrie' image
Star News
November 8, 1976
Actor John Travolta isn't concerned that his role as a brutal, sadistic high school student in United Artists' new "Carrie" film will turn his fans against him. He's convinced, "They'll forget about the violence — and remember the sex."
The 22-year-old idol of ABC's "Welcome Back Kotter" series admits that, "Some people may get a little upset" when they see their loveable Vinnie Barbarino "Kotter" character hacking up a pig and slapping around a girl in "Carrie." But he feels the majority of ticket buyers will get so turned on during his sex scene featuring fellatio, "They won't mind the rest."
Travolta hardly minds that his "Carrie" bad-guy part is a complete departure form Vinnie Barbarino. And is delighted that his role in ABC's Nov. 12 movie "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble" will give fans their first chance to see him in a tender portrayal — as a 19-year-old with an immunity deficiency who must spend his life in germ-free isolation.
Both film projects will help him break away from his mold of Vinnie the Sweathog — as will the new million-dollar three picture deal with the Robert Stigwood Organization. And his flourishing new recording career, which has already seen the release of the first "John Travolta" album this summer. And which will find him back in the recording studios again this week.
Making reference to other current TV idols such as Henry "The Fonz" Winkler, who aren't having as much success breaking away from series identification, Travolta says, "I think things are working out so well for me because I avoid going to every press interview screaming. 'I don't want to be known as Barbarino,' and I don't mind being introduced as Barbarino — because that's the way most people know me. I just quietly go to auditions and get other parts to SHOW people I can do more than Barbarino.
"The way to break out of a mold," says the fellow who's doing quite a remarkable job of it, "Is simply not to make a big deal about the situation. It's like a pimple. The more you pick at it. the worse it gets — and the more attention you call to it."
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'Carrie' misses as good suspense drama
Syracuse Herald-Journal
November 19, 1976
Cynically contrived to ensnare the 13 to 20 age group, "Carrie" makes more disappointing film fare as the second Brian de Palma movie this year that reeks of commercialism.
With one lone exception, the director exhibits none of the bizarre filmmaking that had become his hallmark prior to this summer's "Obsession." Again, as in the earlier film, he utilizes much soft focus which creates a special atmosphere suitable in some places but not as wise for "Carrie" as it was for "Obsession."
Incredibly naive for a 14-year-old, Carrie's innocence is abused by her fellow students in the girls' locker room. When their reprimand seems excessive, one girl leads a revenge plot, aided by her dumb boyfriend.
But Carrie for all her sheltered life with a sexually-neurotic, evangelistic mother, is not without personal resources. It's mind over matter— telekinesis that slams doors shut, shatters glass and eventually kills.
The motion picture is cynical from the start in its casting of tv teen idol John Travolta( Barbarino on Welcome Back, Kotter). However, de Palma does resist the urge to make him the football hero and casts him instead as the animal-like boyfriend of the sexpot who leads the plot. She seduces him into joining the literal blood bath.
Pale, wispy Sissy Spacek is leaned on heavily to evoke tugs at the heartstrings in the title role, and she does it well. Fortunately, William Katt's winning grin and direct personality mitigate some of the sugar coating of Miss Spacek as he plays the prince charming who finds himself enchanted with Carrie, despite dating her as a favor to his real girlfriend.
The finale contains one heartstopping moment that redeems the horror expert. It's better than the suspense at the end of "Obsession" and indicates de Palma hasn't wholly deserted his special milieu of the bizarre.
There also are winning performances from Piper Laurie, overcoming much of the handicap of the mother's role, Betty Buckley as the gym teacher who befriends the title character and disciplines her schoolmates and from Amy Irving as the one friend Carrie has.
Lawrence D. Cohen's screenplay must be accorded a major share of the cynicism of the product. If it is the best dePalma is being offered, the director must be pitied.—J.E.V.
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'Carrie:' 'Horror Movie of the Year'
The Salt Lake Tribune
November 23, 1976
By Bill Cosford
Knight News Writer
NEW YORK — Carrie White is a high school girl, a very unhappy one. To begin with, she's not so pretty. And she lives in the creepiest house on her street — maybe in her whole, small town. But that's hardly the worst part. Carrie's mother is a Bible-totin' religious fanatic. She makes the rounds of the other kids' houses, badgering their parents to bear witness to The Lord, flashing those wild, Holy Roller's eyes like a creature possessed.
Which, of course, she is — but not by demons. Her mother has been careful to build into Carrie a great wall of fear concerning the sins of everyday life; sins like making friends, like dating, like laughing. When the child is ornery, Mrs. White throws her into the "prayer closet," where she can ponder the terrors of her/inherited faith for just as long as it takes to repent. And when Mrs. White confronts the sure signs of her daughter's successful emergence from puberty, it's into the closet with her one more time, for the worst sin of all: Carrie's incipient womanhood.
Champion Wallflower
But what's hardest on Carrie is that she dresses funny, and that she is easily the champion wallflower in the entire history of Bates High School. It is hard to tell who has more contempt for her — the Bates High boys or the Bates High girls — but it is the girls who finally push things too far, launching the tale of horror that is "Carrie," which opens Wednesday at Midtown Trolley, Trolley Square, Century, Highland Drive-In and V. A. Fashion Place Theatres.
For Carrie is a telekinetic. She can move things. With her mind. She just thinks, and things move. The bullying of the Bates girls and a bizarre act of vengeance committed at the climax of the high school prom act to push Carrie over the edge she's stood near for so long. She takes her own revenge, using her "gift." It is one of the most effective plot devices for a horror film used in a long time; just effective enough to redeem the film's occasional, violent excesses.
Director'Brian De Palma has made a film about as different from-his last ("Obsession") as possible. The moodiness, the layered plotting and heavy dependence on the score of the latter are all missing here. So is the relentless heavy-handedness of his gruesome "Sisters." In their place De Palma has used a slick, "contemporary" style, full of tricks and gimmicks and camera angles that seem to be competing for "most novel" honors.
But De Palma knows his material in this case, knows a horrifying story when he finds one and lets his taste for the macabre run free. The result is at times quite stunning, at others mindlessly violent. In the end though, "Carrie" is the horror movie of the year, of the last several years'.
As the unstable telekinetic, Sissy Spacek is a perfect combination of inarticulate loser and gifted child, wallflower and demon. She becomes — so rare for this kind of melodrama — a character of some depth. When, as the beneficiary of a classmate's sympathy, she comes up with a Cinderella date to the high school prom, we are involved, no matter how hokey the prospect.
The prom scenes are oddly poignant, searching out our sentimental weak spots and twanging at heart strings, all gauzy and soft. But the horror is inevitable, and we can only squirm in prospect. It is not a film one wants to translate fully — else where's the horror? — so suffice to say that among the shock scenes is one guaranteed to propel you from your seat with very little effort — there has been none like it since the fabled leap of "Wait Until Dark."
Forgive Those Excesses
Ultimately, we are scared just enough to forgive De Palma those excesses, in particular the wholly gratuitous impaling of a woman with an entire kitchen cutlery set. Though he may be making cinema history — first to dispatch a character with a carrot peeler — De Palma need not have used the scene at all. The horror comes from other corners altogether: the wounding of the psychic girl, the dread in her new-found talent, her pitiless revenge.
Still, this is the year's scariest. And that counts for a great deal in a time when so much of the screen violence we see is without any emotional coloration at all, merely hung out as a reminder that perversity still exists. As the raving mother, Piper Laurie is intriguing. She brings her beauty to an ugly role and the combination works. There are others in the-competent cast — notably teen personality John Travolta (from television's "Welcome Back, Kotter").
Like the Western, the horror-film has fallen on bad'times-in recent years. The genre has lacked humanity, which was always the key to successful, filming of the macabre. But it is here, in "Carrie." You will care something about this film, even as you cringe.
RATING: "CARRIE" is rated R. It contains considerable violence and some scenes of female nudity.
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Great American Movie Drought Ends with De Palma's "Carrie"
Carrie
Reviewed by GABY ARNOLD
The Washington Post
The Great American Movie Drought of autumn, 1976, can be declared officially over: Brian De Palma's brilliantly directed "Carrie," is a new horror classic guaranteed to leave your nerve ends vibrating far into the night.
"Carrie" is the most astute, skillful and satisfying thriller crafted for the screen since "Jaws." "It will scare the hell out of you," claimed an ad for "Carrie," and for once the claim was justified. What the ads neglected to specify was the disarming, pleasurable, consummately stylized nature of the scare.
"Carrie" earns its "R" rating, but it's a hair-raising "R" instead of a gross-out "R." Unlike the directors of "Marathon Man," "The Omen" and "The Exorcist," De Palma manages to include apprehension while sustaining high levels of humor, human interest and even ravishing romance and to achieve frightening climactic effects without relying on literal-minded or merely nauseating stunts.
The audiences leave "Carrie" feeling scared, in part because De Palma has saved his most spectacular fright for the fade-out, but it is a high, happy scare. While no one is likely to sleep for several hours — indeed, De Palma's superb kicker is a way of saying, "Sleep tight, but not tonight."
Carrie, beautifully portrayed by pale, freckle-faced Sissy Spacek, is a withdrawn, awkward teenage girl, browbeaten at home by her repressed, fanatic, fundamentalist mother (Piper Laurie in a strong-voiced, triumphant return to the screen) and humiliated at school by her more fortunate, knowledgeable, physically coordinated classmates. However, Carrie the misfit possesses a secret weapon: telekinetic powers, the ability to will objects into motion. When the stresses become too great, she makes extraordinary things happen. Carrie's mother adheres to a superstitious belief in the supernatural, but Carrie herself is supernatural.
The story, drawn from a novel by Stephen King, a former high-school English teacher now specializing in Gothic thrillers, details the events that provoke Carrie into a dreadful, apocalyptic exercise of her powers. King's material seems to have provided De Palma with the opportunity to synthesize every aspect of his versatile, exciting filmmaking talent. Elements that had remained incongruous or unfulfilled in earlier movies coalesce smooth and seductively in "Carrie": the influence of Alfred Hitchcock, a sense of parody, a flair for horror effects with baroque and perverse touches of humor, excellent rapport with actors (especially young performers), a sensibility peculiarly attuned to the romantic and lyrical possibilities in both film music and imagery.
The tendencies and the bits and pieces that looked so promising in "Greetings," "Sisters," "Phantom of the Paradise" and "Obsession" have now come together in a single, wholly satisfying achievement. Moreover, DePalma has attained such technical proficiency that "Carrie" becomes one of those rare pictures in which technique may indeed be experienced as its own reward.
The dramatic revelation of the show is Sissy Spacek's performance, which gives the fantastic narrative a consistently touching and believable human core. None of her previous movie or TV roles had prepared me for the range and intensity of expression Specek demonstrates as Carrie. It's been several years since a young American actress has been encouraged to make such an impact, and it's exhilarating to watch Spacek take advantage of this opportunity.
Piper Laurie's talents are not a surprise to those who recall how her acting had begun to mature and deepen just at the time she retired from the screen in the early '60s. Now there may be a generation that regards her as a new discovery. At any rate, it's gratifying to see that she's picked up her technique right where she left it in "The Hustler." This is certainly not a rusty actress at work.
The technical work is alert, attractive and — when needed — downright scintillating. Some of the key elements are Mario Tosi's photography, Paul Hirsch's editing, Gregory Auer's special effects, and the interiors by William Kenny and Jack Fisk, the husband of Sissy Spacek.
De Palma has really delivered: In the Babe Ruth tradition, he shows you where he's going to hit it and proceeds to hit it way, way out.
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"Carrie" rivals "Psycho"
Idaho State Journal
December 10, 1976
By JOE BURGGER
Journal Staff Writer
Used to be the ultimate shocker was "Psycho," Alfred Hitchcock's tidy little tale of mother love.
"Carrie" makes a pretty good try for the title and winds up close to "Psycho's" shock, with a minimum of carry-over from the Hammer Films and American-International traditions. There isn't quite the emotion, but then Brian De Palma isn't Hitchcock. On the other hand, Sissy Spacek (Carrie) is far more impressive than Janet Leigh, so the end effect is a stimulating if hardly pleasant movie.
Carrie is an odd, isolated child with a religious lunatic of a mother and an indescribably vicious peer group. She plays the part well, adding intensity to the empty woman-child of "Badlands" and carries the film through the slow spots.
Mother (Piper Laurie, who played a few second-billing dramatic roles in the mid-50s, faded, and then popped up on television recently) is sufficiently intense as the door-to-door missionary, deftly supplying the background for little Carrie's odd relations with the rest of the high school. All of us knew someone who was like Carrie—maybe ourselves—and that's why the movie works.
Camerawork is good. DePalma and his cinematographer work well at an impressionistic depiction of the classmates' attitudes, giving them individual shadings and lending credibility to the way the film develops. Maybe it's best to stop here and encourage a viewing by the devoted shock film aficionado.
Unhappily there are flaws, mostly in the second half of the film. And "Carrie" hangs together much better than De Palma's "Obsession," so his next should be a real sock in the gut. But he commits two errors. One big punch is telegraphed and the climax is fragmented by an ineffective diffused split screen. Red tinting is effective, slow motion is effective, nearstop action is effective. But the shattered lens effect visually reduces the impact when it should be magnified, and curbs the excitement when De Palma has done a reasonably workmanlike job of showing us "the McGuffin" and building suspense.
Other than that, the real show is Spacek, playing a difficult role with a frightening and thoroughly horrifying smoothness. Once the rules are drawn—an angered Carrie can shatter ashtrays, shut doors and windows from across the room and so on—Carrie becomes quite a little demon simply because of the implied threat. Yet she remains pathetic and vulnerable to the grisly very end.
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Spacek's Performance Wasted In New De Palma Film 'Carrie'
Lubbock Avalanche Journal
December 12, 1976
By WILLIAM D. KERNS
Fine Arts Editor
If critic John Brosnan is to be believed, there are two extreme schools of thought on the horror movie. The first imagines the genre as a sea where the wrecks of actors and directors collect when they can no longer stay afloat in the mainstream, and where the films are little more than pulp for the bloodthirsty mental defectives. The second, and vastly more artistic school sees each individual horror film as a maligned masterwork which goes beyond fantasy to trace our deepest fears and tensions. Such talk has been plentiful in the wake of such as "The Other," "The Exorcist," "The Omen" and that other bit of horror, "Jaws."
But here comes director Brian De Palma who, by giving us a repressed teenager at last delivering fiery apocalypse upon her tormentors (she wipes out the senior class) and a group of predatory adolescents which are as over-vicious as the Room 222 crowd was over-sweet, tries to rock the boat. He tries to create a new category, a new look at horror and the result is "Carrie" — a film which can't exceed the boundaries of farce, much less fantasy, a picture too stupid to mistake for reality and thus too fake to fear.
He offers us cheap thrills and even manages to toss in a nonsensical "Deliverance" type ending which sees everyone jump three feet in their seats before giggling at their own foolishness. But he never masters control of our nerve endings. And the biggest tragedy of all is that he completely wastes a very good performance by talented Tecas actress Sissy Spacek in the title role.
Spacek is perfectly cast as Carrie. She has the withdrawn, plain-Jane turned Cinderella look the script calls for and she is well capable of serving up a full, well-drawn portrait of a sensitive, vulnerable girl who's been shut up too long like some holy mole in her mad mother's prayer closet, and who must break away from that and the awful (though too exaggerated to be believable) indignities she suffers at the hands of her classmates through the only gift she's got.
The gift is the power of telekinesis and with 90 minutes practice time Carrie works her way up from popping light bulbs and flipping ashtrays all the way up to willing kitchen utensils to fly across the room and causing fire hoses to go harmfully berserk. Look ma, no hands. The resulting effects are sometimes brilliant, but you can still smell this stinker of a movie clear out at the concession stand.
Mind you, there are good parts. Spacek is a treat, William Katt (as super jock Tommy Ross) is quite funny thanks to a grab bag of facial expressions and Pino Donnoggio's music succeeds both as a mood device and lovely listening.
But the script, the teenagers, the camera work, the dialogue: all are about as believable as the New York Jets in the Super Bowl. The movie may have been sunk from the first, however, since Stephen King's novel had to be the most boring bestseller of all time and screenwriter Larry Cohen has managed to save all those great bits of dialogue like "Pimples are the Lord's way of chastising people."
On top of this we have such realistic inclusions as girls wearing their baseball hats to the prom, principals refusing to call students by their given names even when corrected, teachers ridiculing students in class, another bout with revolving cameras (De Palma grew enraptured with this gimmick in "Obsession"), an amateurish use of split screen and (ho hum) slow motion, and a director who merely wants a blood-spattered Spacek to act as bookends for his plot.
Another regrettable factor is Piper Laurie as the mad mom, coming back to the movies after a 15-year hiatus to offer a cardboard caricature of fanaticism, complete with such screeching excesses as modeling a half dozen kitchen knives and still taking longer than John Wayne to die.
This high school horror is both a waste of financing and a waste of talent and perhaps an indication that De Palma, so full of promise after "Phantom Of The Paradise," is satisfied cast in the role of the bogey man who uses calculated trickery to tucker naive audiences into thinking original trash just might really be original entertainment. He should know better.
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'Carrie' latest movie to hit pay dirt
The Advocate
December 23, 1976
•By JOSEPH GELMIS
The L.A. Times/Washington Post
NEW YORK - Though the popularity of an upbeat movie like "Rocky" spurs talk of a revival of public interest in positive pictures about the human condition, the fact is that audiences still can't get enough of the technically proficient revenge movies. The latest sensationalized revenge movie to hit pay dirt is "Carrie," one of the season's biggest money-makers. It's the story of a high school scapegoat who is driven berserk by her tormentors and uses her telekinetic powers to destroy them.
Telekinesis is the power to will objects to move. In "Carrie," it's merely used as what Hitchcock would have called the McGuffin, a device to divert the audience's attention from what's really going on. There is no discussion, analysis or exploration of telekinesis in "Carrie." What's really going on is a formula manipulation of the audience's emotions to sympathize with the girl when she's being persecuted by her classmates (especially the school tramp) and locked in a punishment closet bv her sin-obsessed, crazed Jesus-freak mother.
The essence of "Carrie" is the worm turning, the victim turning monster on a rampage. It is the same revenge theme that is at the heart of "King Kong," who escapes his chains and his humiliation as a freak on exhibit and terrorizes New York City.
"Carrie" is a simplistic entertainment, belonging to the category of good-bad movie or absorbing trash. It's designed to appeal not only to the getting-it-off mentality but also to the youth market. It's a sort of nasty "American Graffiti" setting that pays tribute to kid culture while tapping into the impotent fantasy of adolescence — wish-fullfilling revenge on your enemies without touching them.
There is a streak of masochism in the national psyche, or the revenge movie would not so consistently tap a nerve. "Carrie" is made by a superior technician with fine performers (most notably Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, in a dazzling return to the screen as her terrifying mother) and outstanding special effects.
Yet it's an intrinsically unpleasant movie. The sardonic mind behind it, that of director Brian DePalma, evidently gets perverse pleasure in the kinkiest moments of his film. Like the opening in a school shower, where Sissy Spacek, a scrawny, immature girl is shown naked, hysterical, huddled in a corner as she belatedly has her first menstruation (which her mother hasn't prepared her for) and her classmates shriek taunts and pelt her with boxes of sanitary napkins. Or like the scene in which the mad mother stabs her daughter, a ghastly, ugly image that is followed by an even more repellent sequence of knife-throwing.
DePalma's sense of humor tastelessly extends to a liquid plop on the sound track when a hand pinned to a wall by a knife is yanked free. More than the choreographed slaughter at the senior prom, which is abstractly kaleidoscopic, it is the butchery between mother and daughter that has an intimate brutality that makes the comic context offensive.
DePalma has now hit the jackpot, as did his friend Martin Scorsese earlier this year with "Taxi Driver," a similar formula flick artfully made. Their success says something about them and us, their amorality and our masochism.
New Yorkers who've gone Hollywood, Scorsese and DePalma are a couple of the more talented filmmakers of their generation (roughly in their mid-30s). They've each demonstrated a willingness to relinquish values for technique, to exploit a trend. DePalma used to be a committed anarchist as a young Columbia University graduate. Now he's indistinguishable from a cynical nihilist. Scorsese bared a tortured soul in "Mean Streets" and the lack of one in "Taxi Driver." These are gifted filmmakers who are content in these, their most successful pictures, "Carrie" and "Taxi Driver," to withhold commitment, to "entertain" with pornographic grand-guignol blood baths.
Each director has struggled to get financing in the past and has had marginally successful pictures. Both "Taxi Driver" and "Carrie" are essentially variations on one long buildup to a massacre. The protagonist of each movie is a victim of society who is finally driven past endurance to revenge. Robert De Niro in "Taxi Driver" is another Kong figure angry with New York City. You could read the outsider, or anything else, into him if you chose, as some read meaning into Kong. But De Niro was merely an instrument, like Sissy Spacek in "Carrie," for giving your viscera workout, for exercising your internal organs.
Now that each has had a commercial hit, maybe their humanity will seep back into their movies. Each is capable of being a complete artist. Neither has yet achieved what their confrere Francis Ford Coppola did with "The Godfather," made a substantive film that had social significance, dramatic validity and the vitality (and yes, the violence) that sells tickets.
DePalma has done outrageous experiments, like "The Phantom of the Paradise," a cult film . And Scorsese's touch was deft enough in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" to help Ellen Burstyn win the best-actress Oscar. He's got "New York, New York," a musical, coming up. One can only wish them the luck and the strength to surpass what they've done so far, and to use the clout they've attained as commercial directors to keep growing as personal filmmakers.
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'Carrie' better than the book
Kennebec Journal
December 23, 1976
By DAVID C. CHUTE
Screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen and director Brian De Palma have managed to turn Stephen King's revolting novel "Carrie" into the most enjoyable American movie since "Jaws", and they have done it by playing up what most would call the book's worst side — the trashy core of the story that King tried, unsuccessfully, to disguise.
Earlier De Palma films like "Sisters," "The Phantom of the Paradise" and "Obsession" suggest that he is not one for disguises; he takes his trash straight and reveals in it. If one has read the book the film will seem astonishingly different, lighter, clearer and considerably less violent.
If much of the movie has the look of a drive-in theater shocker, it is one of the great drive-in movies of all time. De Palma's jumpy, anarchic impulses, as an artist and a satirist, are so well suited to this sort of project that, while telling a horror story that can make the audience scream, he can make chilling, ironic jokes (both with and on the audience) and still manage beautiful moments of romantic fantasy.
Carrie is a dumpy, withdrawn high school girl with latent telekinetic powers: she has a mother who is a religious-hysteric who has never told her daughter about menstruation. When Carrie starts to bleed for the first time, in the girls shower room at school, she is set upon and humiliated by her classmates, the trauma awakens her dormant powers and gets the wheels of the story turning. We follow two parallel developments. Carrie's slow program of training and building her powers, and the effects of the shower incident, leading up to a final humiliation.
When Carrie is elected Queen of the Prom in rigged voting, and then doused with pig's blood as she stands on the dais, she unleashes her power and methodically "trashes the entire town." There is no attempt at anything like suspense, the plot being outlined on the very first page, but the book does work up a kind of unpleasant, ghoulish tension, as we wait to find out just what will be done to whom, and how badly.
Cohen pared the novel down to essentials in his screenplay, and left its bones showing. He knows that we most enjoy being tricked and teased when we can watch it happening, relishing the skill as well as its effects. Speed seems to have been a prime concern, so Cohen leaves in little that does not contribute directly to the mechanism of the plot, and the story has translated easily into a kind of pop shorthand that can be interpreted at a glance.
The irrelevant Maine town is gone, replaced by an enormous, nameless suburb which looks like Southern California but is really Televisionville; these are the streets 'down which the fire engines of "Emergency" race each week. The only character who does not fit easily into the glossy new setting is Carrie's mother, but DePalma has minimized the problem by having Piper Laurie play the role with a slight southern accent, transforming her from a left-over Puritan into something like a Jehovah's Witness or "born again" Christian.
Other aspects of the production, notably the casting, extend Cohen's revisions and help provide the base for De Palma's triumph of style. The already conventional supporting characters become such archtypes that we can almost pick the impossibly beautiful Sue Snell and Tommy Ross (Amy Irving and William Katt) — with their heads of identically bushy hair in complementary colors — out of the crowds in which we first see them. Billy Nolan, the principal villain, is no longer a rural Maine greaser: as played by John Travolta he is like a murderous, foul-mouthed extension of Vinnie Barbarino, the actor's television role. This rich stew of stereotypes is just about perfect De Palma materials, because so much of the humor and the horror in his films arises from his toying with genres and with audience expectations; the more of these there are, the deeper into the material his animating irony can reach.
We say that De Palma's is a triumph of style In "Carrie", as in the films of Martin Scorsese ("Mean Streets". "Taxi Driver") the camera style is built on movement rather than on static, pictorial effects. The moving camera has close ties not only with the movement of narrative, but also — perhaps especially — with music. Like Scorsese, De Palma can do astonishing things with simple combinations of music and movement. De Palma's irony disperses the rancid, "Exorcist"-like solemnity that clouds the novel, and his gliding camera helps restore the elements of magic, fantasy and primal terror that the novelist suppresses. These paper-thin cliches, gracefully orchestrated, have some of the fairy tale lightness of operetta, or of the Astaire and Rogers musicals.
Nonsense is integral to this kind of charm, since nothing more substantial could be toyed with so delightfully. As crucial as Sissy Spacek's performance in the title role is to "Carrie's" success (the Village Voice called it "the best performance by an American actress this year") she makes us care almost too much, so that we begin to resent the indignities the story heaps on her.
De Palma says that Spacek has "a wider range than any young actress I know", and it is her versatility which enables her to bring complete conviction to each of this role's distinct moods. It is not just that "Carrie" is enjoyable in so many ways at once, but that De Palma has found a style which holds the contradictory elements together, which makes them reinforce each other: if it were not for his irony, as a charm against sentimentality, we might be more reserved in our response to Sissy Spacek. DePalma does not try to evade the fact, which was the source of much of the novel's ugliness, that serious matter introduced as such into this setting can only be debased and trivialized; he makes conscious use of this effect, as part of his satire. He communicates his disbelief, which is also the source of his pleasure, without the contempt that turns some movies into "spoofs", he likes things outrageous and hollow, seeming to reserve his contempt for the normal and substantial.
Part of the fun of "Carrie" is watching DePalma's tightrope act, wondering if he will slip and push the movie over into either burlesque or straight-faced grisliness, but he keeps his balance triumphantly.
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"Carrie" nice and scary
The Abilene Reporter-News
January 30, 1977
By TOM SETZER
Staff Writer
Carrie is a pop gothic fairy tale gone mad. It promises to be an audience favorite much like Jaws because it hits you in the same visceral mindbending fashion.
(Now showing at the Westwood, nudity, sex, language and violence give the film its R rating.)
Directed by Brian De Palma, Carrie is his tenth feature film and his fourth major one. Two of his earlier successes — Sisters, a bizarre talc of psychotic Siamese twins, and Phantom of the Paradise, a rock reworking of the Faust legend — showed his ability with gothic themes. Last year's Obsession, albeit flawed in the script department, showed De Palma's growing romantic camera technique and his ability to handle actors, especially with Genovieve Bujold's artful performance. Carrie combines these skills in a neat, scary package.
The screenplay, written by Lawrence Cohen and based on a fairly trashy book by Stephen King, is barely adequate but De Palma and an exceptional cast lift the film into the realm of popular screen art.
Carrie is an adolescent misfit, despised by her high school peers and miserably tied in a love/hate relationship to her religious fanatic mother. Carrie's classmates display their hostility toward her in a vicious early sequence. The incident so traumatizes her that she begins to display telekinetic powers — moving objects with concentrated mental effort.
The school gym teacher sympathizes with Carrie and punishes her tormentors. With their teen-age capacity for cruelty, this only leads them to plot further against her by rigging her election as prom queen and then playing a hideous joke on her at this moment of triumph. They don't know — but the audience can guess — that this will trigger a telekinetic storm of revenge on her part.
Thus De Palma sets up a perfect dramatic conflict. The audience becomes torn between its horror at the prom bloodbath and the sense of righteous revenge Carrie's destruction of her enemies evokes.
A large part of this sympathy is engendered by the performance of Sissy Spacek, a native of Quitman, Tex., in the title role. Or maybe I should say performances, since the part can be split into three distinct portions. The first has her effectively withdrawn as the ugly duckling and she makes a glowing transition to the second when she enjoys her brief happiness participating in the normal high school rituals. She then becomes truly terrifying in an other-worldly sense when rage possesses her and she unleashes her terrible power.
Miss Spacek has done only a few films, her most notable role thus far being the young girl in Badlands, a fictionalized treatment of the Charles Starkweather/Caril Fugate murder spree. Carrie is her first star shot and she makes the most of the opportunity by not overdoing it. She shows tasteful restraint throughout,"imbuing her misguided Cinderella with an awkward grace. Even in the horror scenes she uses a narcotic remoteness to underscore the terror. Her Carrie is well worthy of acting awards — the National Society of Film Critics has given its 1976 best actress nod — and hopefully the role that will make her a star.
Besides De Palma's triumph with Miss Spacek, he scores another coup in luring Piper Laurie out of a 15-year screen retirement (her last movie was 1961's The Hustler which gained her a best actress nomination) to play Carrie's demented mother.
It was a wise choice. One hopes Miss Laurie continues in films for she almost manages to steal Carrie with a bravura portrayal. Some critics have quibbled about her performance being too hammy but the role is written this way. Besides this is not a realistic movie anyway, and Miss Laurie plays the part in the only way possible — a grand theatrical style that so overwhelms you, you don't stop to question the character's validity.
But when you get right down to it, the show belongs to De Palma. He takes a base subject and transmutes it to an artistic success coming up with a popular thriller in the process. He trips up at times by using some ill-advised effects (speeded-up photography in one scene, is supposed to be funny but isn't and he errs in using split-screen photography during the telekinetic maelstrom at the prom) but overall Carrie is a noteworthy effort. Particularly since he doesn't rely on shock effects but uses suspense instead — the audience knows what will happen; the question is when.
De Palma has become one of the few filmmakers, joining the ranks of Robert Altman and Ken Russell, whom'you can expect to be never boring. They may be bad or good; but never boring.
To end on a teasing note, let's say there is one great shock moment in Carrie that will shake you out of your seat. It's worth the ticket price alone.
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Footlights
Times Standard, The
February 20, 1977
By CASSANDRA PHILLIPS
Staff Writer
Film savants tend to agree that it's a heck of a lot easier to make a good movie from a pulp novel than from a classic. The examples are plentiful, with "The Great Galsby" (a flop) and "The Godfather" (a tour de force), most readily coming to mind. . .
Carrie, is happily in the category of trash that translates well to the screen. Although I can't claim to have read the book — written by Stephen King — I did breeze through it while standing one day in a check-out line at Safeway. There was no evidence that the book was anything more than a sleazy "Exorcist" knock-off.
The director is Brian De Palma,'who has a well-known penchant for the macabre. He obviously had fun with this property, stretching it equally into the realms of the absurd and horror. For this reason it doesn't have the impact of "The Exorcist," which asked that you accept the notion of a living, snarling devil, and gave only the slimmest chance of a psychological interpretation of the girl's possession.
Carrie has more integrity because it operates on both psychological and supernatural levels. That we create our own devils is a far more interesting, though less terrifying, notion. The problem with De Palma's interpretation will be discussed later.
Carrie (chillingly played by Sissy Spacek) is the classic high school outcast. She is pale, excessively freckled and lives in a dreary house with a mother who has embalmed herself in religious fanatacism. A girl like this doesn't have a chance with a peer group composed mostly of girls who resemble slightly decadent "Seventeen" magazine models. Carrie wears baggy seersucker jumpers and walks around with her shoulders hunched in a perpetual cringe; obviously a case of "poor self-image."
Ah, high school. How dearly this film evokes the simplicity and hastiness of 17-year-old impulses. De Palma perfectly captures the penultimate cool of high schoolers, who have the most rigid caste system of any culture this side of India. (And he didn't even regress to the 1950s to do it!) When the naive Carrie gets her first period while showering after gym class, she thinks she's dying. Her classmates viciously mock her. Neither is there solace at home, where Carrie's mother (Piper Laurie) reviles her daughter for becoming a sin-tainted woman.
Telekinesis
But with the onset of puberty, Carrie discovers in herself a hidden talent — telekinesis, which allows her to move objects at will without touching them. Ashtrays crash to the floor, mirrors shatter, and windows slam shut in expressions of her repressed misery.
Carrier's luck changes when she is befriended by an attractive gym teacher who punishes Carrie's tormentors and advises make-up and hair rollers to spruce up the self image. Meanwhile, one classmate hatches against Carrie a vindictive plot, inspired by unprovoked hatred. Another student, however, has taken pity on the misfit and arranged for her her Adonis-like beau, Tommy, to escort Carrie to the senior prom.
Like the proverbial ugly duckling, Carrie is transformed. When she and Tommy are named queen and king of the prom, her smile radiates with the intensity of a roomful of Miss Americas. De Palma shoots this scene in slow motion, a gimmick that works beautifully to prolong Carrie's illusory triumph. The audience can't help but rejoice when Carrie's inevitable humiliation unleashes a justly violent display of telekinesis. Haven't we all at one time or another wanted to "get them"? It's a teenage pariah's dream come true.
Sissy Spacek has definitively established herself as a compellingly weird actress. She's 27 now and it looks like she'll be playing disturbed ingenues well into her 30s. (Her first major role was as a homicidal teenager in "Badlands.")
The movie is scary enough, but it would have had greater impact if only De Palma had reined in his campiness. He has made about five major films, and each one (except Obsession, which had other problems) has been defused by touches of what appears to be lingering adolescence. The flaw in this film is Carrie's mother, a caricature of a religious nut who is so crazy that you wonder that Carrie is as normal as she is. You can't take the film as seriously as it seems to deserve with this woman ever raving in the foreground. As one well-known film critic has written, when De Palma gets the snicker out of his movies, they might be incredibly good.
Too bad-Carrie had no powers over the parents of a yowling infant who was dragged along to this film. It seems to be a local phenomenon, to take one's baby to the movies. I say, stay at home and watch TV movies if you can't afford a babysitter. The lack of consideration to fellow movie-goers and to the child is shameful.
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Carrie-ing Things a Bit Too Far
Pacific Stars and Stripes
April 3, 1977
By JIM LEA
TOKYO (S&S) — Sometimes Hollywood goes a little too far. In "Carrie," that amounted to about 90 seconds. . . the time it took director Brian DePalma or United Artists — or both — to blow a completely beautiful movie.
Japanese television commercials for a month or more had made it appear the flick would be something that would turn "Rosemary's Baby" into Minnie Mouse, exorcise "The Exorcist" and shove "The Omen" and "The Premonition" into the Walt Disney class.
One phrase in the commercials brought a groan from me: "The first in United Artists' parapsycho series!"
Lord! I thought. A whole series!
Parapsychology gives a dozen or more subjects to work with . . . and I could care less about anything that contains the letters "psych" in that sequence because I'm a firm believer that nobody knows enough about the human mind to even begin to talk about it — Freud probably knew about enough of what there is to know (not counting what we don't know there is to know) to fill the head of a pin.
But, the TV commercials did their job — which means I'm as swayed as anyone else by a few of those "psych" words. I went to see it ... and immediately strengthened my resolve not to pay attention to another TV commercial.
The movie wasn't bad. In fact, it was pretty good. But there was nothing chilling or heart-stopping in the first couple of hours. There was terror — the kind human beings foist upon each other in just being average, run-of-the-mill human beings.
And there's plenty of acting, which isn't the case in a great many movies. Sissy Spacek — who somebody fortunately discovered in a wide spot called Quitman on Texas State Highway 154 east of Dallas — was terrific. John Travolta, Amy Irving, William Katt, Nancy Allen and Betty Buckley also lend dignity to the film and the profession.
The really remarkable acting job was turned in by Piper Laurie, who debuted in films the year Miss Spacek was born and hasn't done a damned thing until now worth mentioning. In "Carrie," she was magnificent.
Both the special effects and camera work were superb and the dialogue writers gave the actors and actresses lines that made them sound like real people.
Carrie (Miss Spacek) is a Class A wallflower, made that way by her religious nut mother (Miss Laurie) to whom everything but everything is sin and who keeps her daughter shut away in a closet, praying to a fire-eyed crucifix for salvation.
Not at all sin-possessed, Carrie finds she is possessed of telekineses, the power to move things by concentration. When she begins her first menstrual period (during a shower following a particularly uncoordinated showing) following a high school PE class volleyball game, she — as more young women do than the average guy would believe — believes she's dying; leading to some exceedingly low-life abuse from her gym-mates.
As punishment, the gym teacher (Miss Buckley) puts the offenders on a strict regime of calesthenics. One (Miss Allen) balks and is banned from attending the senior prom. To get even with Carrie, she uses a bit of sexual coercion to talk her not-too-bright boyfriend (Travolta) into killing a pig and tapping it for a bucket of blood.
Miss Irving, however, feels sorry for the part she played in Carrie's humiliation and has her boyfriend (Katt) — the star jock and most popular boy in school — take Carrie to the prom to give her a shard of the high school happiness she's missed.
A bit of makeup transforms Carrie into a genuine beauty and she and Katt are elected king and queen of the ball — a feat engineered by Miss Allen.
As Carrie is crowned, nurd and company douse her with pig's blood, the bucket falls on Katt's head, killing him, and Carrie flips out, putting a telekinesis doublewhammy on the festivities that wipes out both faculty and studentbody.
She heads — still blood-covered —" for the only place she has left, home and sermon-spouting mom . . . who's waiting to get the sin out of her for good with a fair-sized butcher knife. In desperation, Carrie does mom in, too, and her mental gymnastics go completely berserk, blowing up the house, herself, mom and all.
If the movie had ended there, it would have been a magnificent film. Up to then the human situations were appallingly believable and the audience was solidly on Carrie's side, even though her getting-even method was a bit far out. It was acceptable. But it didn't.
There's another minute and a half of totally unnecessary footage which seemed to have been tacked on for one — maybe both — of two unacceptable reasons: Pure commercialism or to lay the groundwork for a sequel. It was the only shock in the movie — a shock which, as far as I'm concerned, changed DePalma's ART to, simply, art.
The movie had a message, and those things usually turn me off completely because most of the time there's so much overacting just to get the message across that the films become tedious. "Carrie's" message was woven deftly enough into the story to get it across quietly — the propensity all human beings have for seizing inhumanly upon the flaws we find in others to cover the flaws we find in ourselves.
Everybody does it at one time or another in life. My folks tried to teach me not to do it as theirs tried to teach them and I try to teach my kids. But nobody ever seems to learn until they become the butt of the abuse themselves.
"Carrie" is rated R, but I'd take my kids to see it for that lesson. Maybe if they'd watch how simply horrible people can be, it'll help them learn to avoid that pitfall in living.
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'Carrie' opens/Packs 'Em In
'Carrie' Opens Tonight
Del Rio News-Herald
March 4, 1977
Terror stalks Del Rio movie theaters this weekend as the cinematic spawn of the "The Exorcist" heads a horror-fest for adrenalin freaks.
"Carrie," another tale of demonic possession opens tonight at the Cinema starring Texas-born Sissy Spacek along with Piper Laurie, who is returning to the screen after a ten year absence.
The film is directed by Brian DePalma, and, despite its obvious appeal to audiences who have flocked to the recent spate of chiller tales, its stars have two Oscar nominations—with Miss Spacek nominated for Best Actress and Piper Laurie for Best Supporting Actor.
Heart throb John Travolta also makes his screen debut in"Carrie," which is probably good news for teen-scene fans who have admired him on television's "Welcome Back, Kotter."
The film is based on the best-selling novel by Stephen King, a Massachusetts English teacher who is no doubt still amazed by the success of his first novel.
'Carrie' Packs 'Em In Here And Scares 'Em to Death
Del Rio News-Herald
March 6, 1977
Del Rio theater owner Bob Hargrove said it was "standing room only" Friday night at the Cinema as patrons flocked in to bring a little tenor into their lives with "Carrie."
Hargrove said the picture is "really scary" and seems to be attracting a more adult audience than the recent local boxofflce smash "King Kong." "I was helping clear out the theater and even I was caught up by the ending. It's the scariest ending I have ever seen," he said.
The R-rated picture stars Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie—both of whom have been nominated for Academy Awards for their performances in the film.
"Carrie" continues its run Sunday at the Cinema, with both matinee and evening showings.
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A parade for Sissy
Corpus Christi Times
April 12, 1977
By GREGG KILDAY
HOLLYWOOD - It was quite an affair, this citrus festival she's just come from held in the valley in Texas where her grandparents settled and her mother grew up. It was like a fantasy. She rode in the parade on this beautiful palomino horse, a $20,000 horse, the most wonderful horse she had ever been astride. And people were calling out "Sissy!" and "Carrie!" and just waving and handing her their babies and she just sort of wanted to cry. And there were these cadets a whole class of cadets, a bunch of real heavies, who thought she was 17 or 18 years old and they came over and asked her to go to a dance. She was going to be all of their dates. She was going to have about 40 dates. It was quite an affair.
Twenty-seven-year-old Sissy Spacek is laughing with a delight that is almost adolescent as she recounts going home to Quitman in the wake of her starring performance in "Carrie" which has already won her recognition as the best actress of the year from the National Society of Film Critics, an Oscar nomination as best actress and a cover story in Newsweek hailing her as the foremost of the new Hollywood actresses.
But Sissy isn't talking about any of that. She is more excited by the parade. By the fact that she just learned to snow ski while on a promotional tour of Europe. By the jokes that she is planning for an appearance as guest host on Saturday Night Live. Like wouldn't it be great if she did a skit in which she played little Amy Carter and...
Not that Sissy isn't grateful: She is willing to enumerate upon the advantages of her new-found celebrityhood. "You know," Sissy says in her wild, Texas twang, "the thing that's had the most effect on me's having made connection, it's a strange thing how you feel close to people very fast. You meet people and they've seen the movie and there's sort of a strange kind of bond. There's a lot you don't have to go through in meeting people in relationships. It's already — you seem to be through phases or stages.
"The other, I think, exciting thing about it is that it's brought me together with exciting artists and I hope that it gives me opportunities to meet more people who I can work with.
It has been the child rather than the woman in Sissy that has most captured the imagination of the directors with whom she has worked. In her first film, "Prime Cut," she was the hapless victim in a white-slave ring. It was just a warmup exercise. She costarred with Martin Sheen in Malick's "Badlands," bringing off a performance that many critics still consider her most subtle and compelling. Playing the uncomprehending accomplice of a mass murderer, Sissy acted as if she was just going along for the ride — out of a yearning for a true confessions romance and out of the need simply to get out of town.
In casting the part of a live-in maid who cleans house topless while pursuing rock stars as a sideline in the soon-to-be-released "Welcome to L.A.," Alan Rudolph was looking for a similar quality of innocent amorality. "Sissy understood. She was a combination of what I knew I wanted; she borrowed from her own life for the film."
As producer of "Welcome to L.A.," Robert Altman was so haunted by Sissy's performance as it emerged in rushes that he went home one night and dreamed a whole new movie in which she was to star.
The results will be seen in "3 Women," also about to be released. In it, Sissy plays a young girl from Texas who becomes so enamored with the more sophisticated manner of Shelley Duvall that she begins to take on the other woman's personality.
Since she is an actress who works by intuition rather than technique, her accent remains a problem. Brian De Palma solved it by instructing Piper Laurie, who plays Sissy's mother in "Carrie," to speak with corresponding inflections, a decision that dovetailed nicely with the characters' fundamentalist religion.
Jeremy Kagan, who directed Sissy in "Katherine," the televised biography of a rich girl turned radical, compensated for her accent by rewriting his script, moving Katherine's home from Philadelphia to Colorado.
Sissy herself cavalierly dismisses the study of acting. At 17, when she first left Texas for New York, she intended to become a singer. She turned to acting, she says jokingly, "when I discovered I was too short to be a model." She then studied acting briefly, but, she demurs, "A lot of my schooling and experience came on the walk home across 14th St. at 9 o'clock at night."
Don't be misled: Adds Kagan, "I know that after 'Katherine' she went back to acting classes. She has a real desire to hone the machinery."
Sissy's award-winning performance is all the more satisfying because, as she freely admits, she was not De Palma's first choice for the role. "I had read Sissy for all the parts, but I was leaning toward another actress for Carrie," De Palma recalls.
But "Carrie" is now behind her, Sissy insists. And she is ready for new roles in which the balance between girl and woman tilts more in favor of the woman.
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Actress gets 'kick' out of attention
The Advocate
March 9, 1977
By KEVIN THOMAS
The Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES - The morning after Piper Laurie received ner Oscar nomination for best supporting actress for her electrifying performance as the demented, religious hysteric mother in "Carrie" (her first movie in 15 years), she was sitting in her sun-drenched living room. It's in a rented, ' tacky, but inviting old Spanish house perched precariously on the edge of the Pacific Palisades. She was going through a small cardboard box of snapshots she just came across.
There was a lifetime of family photos on her lap. Pigtailed little Rosetta Jacobs, daughter of a Los Angeles furniture salesman, posed somewhat shyly in front of an old Venice apartment house and, at a later age, in front of a comfortable-looking house on St. Andrews Place. And then a shot of her as a pretty starlet, renamed Piper Laurie by Universal. She was joyously greeting relatives upon her arrival in Detroit, her hometown. (Piper Laurie bates her professional name. Family and friends call her Rosie.)
After finally getting out of her contract at Universal, where she made a series of forgettable films, she went to New York and proved herself a serious actress on stage and TV- She got her second Emmy nomination as the alcoholic wife in "Days of Wine and Roses" and worked occasionally in the Actors Studio where she was seen by the late director Robert Rossen. He cast her opposite Paul Newman in "The Hustler" as a self-destructive cripple.
Despite accolades for her portrayal, she received offers only for similar parts and therefore returned to the stage and TV. By now married to writer and onetime Newsweek film critic Joseph Morgenstern, she saw her career wane. Just before "Carrie," she played pioneer birth
control advocate Margaret Singer in "A Woman's Rebel," a film made for public TV, and last summer appeared in a summer stock production of the John Guare play, "Marco Polo Sings a Solo," which has now opened on Broadway. Recently she completed Curtis Harrington's "Ruby," in which she has the starring role.
"I'm getting a kick out of this," admitted Miss Laurie. "I had no response when I was nominated for "The Hustler' — and that was for best actress. But then this is the first time when I've really enjoyed the process of acting, with "The Hustler" it was all so painful because of my need for perfection and the need to prove myself, after all those years of being bad in bad movies. But now I'm having fun."
In "Carrie,' she plays the mother of a high school girl (Sissy Spacek), so intense a religious fanatic, equating sex with sin, that she doesn't even tell her scorned, miserable daughter the facts of life. "I got such a bang out of playing this part! In retrospect I think it's because it was a chance to act out adolescent — even earlier — fears. You have this childish desire to be the most evil person in the world, and here I could act out the most horrible things of my imagination! "I don't think 'Carrie' has reached its full audience, and that is why I'm so amazed I got the nomination.
"I also think there's another reason for the film's success. There's that delicious scare just at the end, and the last tew moments of a movie are important for word of mouth. But I wish people could know of its lyricism and its other qualities — that it's not the film that many people think it is. I hope the fact that Sissy and I both got nominations will add another texture to the promotion of the movie. Maybe our nominations will give it respectability!"
"I'm also a little afraid of the way 'Ruby's' being sold; because it's a thriller. I like that line from the trade ad that describes the film as 'A love affair with the supernatural.' I'm not so happy with them saying 'She was frightening in "Carrie," she is terrifying in "Ruby," Piper Laurie is Ruby.'
Lying about her age, Miss Laurie joined a semiprofessional acting group while still a student at L.A. High (she was graduated in 1950). She landed a screen test at Warners at a time when the studio was laying off contract players and wasn't about to hire her. But at least she had footage of herself, in a scene from Tennessee Williams' "This Property Is Condemned," that got her to Universal.
"Thev made another test," she recalls. "Rock Hudson and I tested together. I can still remember the line I had to say to Rock: 'I love you like this, all stirred up and your eyes full of fire.' Ha! Well, they signed both of us. Rock was a very nice man; I haven't seen him for years.
"I didn't think I had the right to protest this name they gave me. I was an inexperienced, sheltered, grateful 17-year-old who'd been given a seven-year contract They tore it up after nine months and extended it for more money. They were offering me money to act — I couldn't believe it!
"I had had serious plans to go East and study. I think there was a great deal of time wasted. I always took myself seriously as an actress. If I had gone East I would have had a different kind of background. I think I would have had some kind of success simply because I was so determined. I like working hard.
The Morgensterns have been living here since June and are beginning to think seriously of settling here permanently. Morgenstern is working on a play and on a script for Miss Laurie, who yearns for a romantic role after two thrillers.
From an alternate newspaper (ironically also titled "The Advocate").
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Tuesday: Carrie
The Paris News
Paris, Texas
September 29, 1978
An unpopular teenager uses her supernatural powers to gain a devastating revenge against her cruel classmates in 'Carrie.' the hit thriller starring Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, John Travolta, Amy Irving and William Katt, premieringon television on 'The CBS Tuesday Night Movies,' Oct. 3.
Carrie (Miss Spacek) is shy, withdrawn, unpopular and naive. At home, her mother (Miss Laurie) runs her life with a fanatically stern hand. At school, her classmates subject her to taunts and cruel jokes. What they don't know is that Carrie has a supernatural power to make objects move through concentration, a telekinetic power she will eventually use against -them.
The scene is set when a sympathetic gym teacher catches some of Carrie's tormentors in action and disciplines them. Their ringleader Chris (Nancy Allen, pictured with John Travolta as her boyfriend), vows to get even with Carrie for spoiling their fun.
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This list of classic Hollywood movies just may shock you
Chicago Daily Herald
October 31, 1991
By Dann Gire
Halloween. Ah, what an opportune time to remember Hollywood's greatest shock treatments. Here's a list of 10 of the greatest all-time shocking moments in movie history. Keep in mind that these are genuine, classic shock treatments, not manipulative no-brainers, such as when somebody tosses a poor little kitty cat into the movie frame for the sake of a sudden jolt (e g. "The Amityville Horror" and "Halloween II").
Characters who shriek when they unexpectedly see themselves in mirrors don't count, either Neither does the old cliche of "the hand coming out of nowhere to grab the hero's shoulder for a cheap scare," but it always turns out to be a rude friend who never thinks of calling the hero's name before manhandling his clavicles.
Here are some shock treatments par excellence . What's more, all of them are available on videotape.
1. In "Jaws," an underwater Richard Dreyfuss discovers a shark's tooth lodged in a disabled boat just before the decomposing corpse of the skipper drops in through a hole in the hull.
2. In "Wait Until Dark," injured drug-dealing killer Alan Arkm performs a masterful jete across a
darkened room to grab blind date Audrey Hepburn.
3. In "Alien," John Hurt's abrupt case of indigestion turns lethal as the title character makes an unusual debut.
4. In the original "Thing," Captain Kenneth Tobey casually opens a door and surprises both himself and the title character from outer space (James "Gunsmoke" Arness), which takes an angry swipe at him with its vegetable matter.
5. In "When a Stranger Calls," babysitter Carol Kane discovers that the threatening telephone calls she's been getting are coming from upstairs in her house. She runs like the dickens for the front door, only to be greeted by the menacing face of Charles Durning, who looks just like John Wayne Gacy.
6. In "Carrie," Sissy Spacek's hand emerges from the rubble of her fried home to literally give the film one last grabber.
7. In "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," truck driver Large Marge shows Pee-wee exactly how she "faced" death in a traffic accident.
8. In "Twilight Zone The Movie," Dan Aykroyd asks Albert Brooks if he'd like to see something really scary
9. In "Poltergeist," a Euell Gibbons nightmare comes to life when a tree smashes through an upstairs window, snatches a little boy and tries to digest him. In this case, the bark may not be worse than the bite.
10. In "Friday the 13th," the real Jason Voorhees surprises Adrienne King at the end with a game of Marco Polo.
• • •
Here are a few sure-bet suggestions for Halloween night video selections.
Ghost movie: "The Haunting" with Richard Johnson leading a group of paranormal investigators through the harrowing halls of Hill House
Runners up: "The Changeling" with George C. Scott and "Poltergeist" with Craig T Nelson.
Monster movie: "The Thing" with James Arness.
Runners up: "Them!" with James Arness and "Alien" with Sigourney Weaver.
Slasher movie: "Psycho" with Anthony Perkins.
Runners up: "Black Christmas" with Margot Kidder and "The Step-Father" with Terry O'Quinn.
Satan movie: "The Exorcist" with Linda Blair.
Runners up: "Angel Heart" (unrated version) with Mickey Rourke and "Rosemary's Baby" with Mia Farrow.
Zombie movie: "Night of the Living Dead," the original George Romero masterpiece.
Runners up: "The Re-Animator" (un-rated version) and "Dawn of the Dead," Romero's own sequel
Strange people movie: "Carrie" with Oscar-nominee Sissy Spacek.
Runners up: "Dead Ringers" with Jeremy Irons and "Blue Velvet" with Dennis Hopper
• • •
Just in case anyone's keeping score, here are the top 10 best-renting horror titles on the video store shelves, according to Video Software magazine:
1. "Alien" — 31.1 million
2. "Child's Play" — 23.7 million
3 "The Fly" —22.8 million
4. "Nightmare on Elm Street" — 22.1 million
5. "Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Warriors" — 21 9 million
6. "Flatliners" —20.3 million
7. "Friday the 13th" —18.1 million
8. "The Lost Boys" —17.7 million
9. "Pet Sematary" —16 9 million
10 "Nightmare on Elm Street, Part 2" - 16.6 million
• • •
[WEBMASTER'S NOTE: "A Nightmare on Elm Street 2" on the top 10 horror rentals list?! Funny how the tide has turned against what's now referred to as "the gay Elm Street!"]
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Horror films have undergone major metamorphosis
Texas City Sun
June 1994
By Roy Harsgrove
[Webmaster's note: This was a three-part article that touched on tons of films. For posterity, I've included all three parts below.]
The evolution of horror films began in the late 1960s. Beginning with the 1968 masterpiece "Rosemary's Baby," horror films took on a more plausible tone in stark conrast to the old castle and dungeon citings of the early classic '30s and 40s monster movies, such as Frankenstein," "The Wolfman," Dracula," and "The Mummy."
• • •Rosemary's Baby• • •
"Rosemary's Baby" was Roman Polanski's first American movie and his second honor film. His first was "Repulsion" (1965). Because it was set in modern day New York and had no monsters, creepy characters, or strange locations, it was incredible. The film deals with a young couple awaiting the arrival of their first child. The newlyweds are Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her unemployed actor-husband Gus (John Cassavetes). They live in a Gothic apartment in Central Park. Their neighbors Minnie (Ruth Gordon) and Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer) are rather intrusive. Rosemary learns she is pregnant and becomes rather apprehensive. She vaguely recalls a dream in which she was raped by a devilish beast. With strange marks on her stomach, and her physician prescribing curious cure-alls, it is no wonder that Rosemary decides she is with Satan's child.
"Rosemary's Baby" is a fine example of how far horror films have come since the early offerings. It was a milestone for the genre.
The treatment is very realistic even though the subject matter is supernatural. Rosemary's fears and anxieties are natural considering her situation. The film takes its highly acceptable basis and makes pregnancy a rich and metaphoric condition.
• • • The Exorcist• • •
1973's 'The Exorcist" was highly controversial in its time. Religious leaders and critics alike debated its topic and stirred the public to make it one of the most successful horror films ever made.
Again, we see a horror film with a modem day setting, this time an elite section of Georgetown just outside Washington, D.C., a normal situation with everyday events. Regan McNeil (Linda Blair) is the 12-year-old daughter of a well-known actress (Ellen Burstyn). Regan begins to suffer fits of bizarre and unnatural behavior. Neither doctors nor psychiatrists can come up with an explanation for her ailment As her condition worsens, Regan takes on a demonic countenance.
Mrs. McNeil is at her wit's end and asks young priest Father Karras (Jason Miller), to help her. Because of his dwindling faith, Father Karras turns to older and more experienced priest Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) to help perform a ritual that has become taboo in religious circles — an exorcism.
'The Exorcist" was more than a horror film. It also cleverly examined both the fears and frustrations of parents. The disturbing religious implications were only added accessories. The film is a study in audience exploitation rather than participation. The film balances special effects with downright horror, to produce a solid two hours of uneasiness.
• • • Carrie• • •
Another landmark film for modem horror was "Carrie" (1976). One of the ultimate in revenge/supernatural films, it stars Sissy Spacek as Carrie White in a stunning performance.
Carrie is a troubled, as well as sexually repressed high school teen. As the plot thickens Carrie begins to discover she has telekinetic powers. Feeling unattractive and being the center of ridicule at school, Carrie is also maligned at home by her religious fanatic mother Margaret (Piper Laurie) who also does an outstanding performance. She hates men and forces Carrie to pray in dark places such as closets. Carrie fights as best she can to bolster her dignity, but cruel classmates, especially Chris Hargenson (Nancy Allen), embarrass her by electing her prom queen.
Based on the best selling novel by Stephen King, director Brian de Palma has geared his film to the teenage crowd. The film shows de Palma's talent for intense and stylish filmmaking. In it, he captures the inner rage that is within most teenagers. The movie has an unsettling feeling that has the audience resting on every move. The portrayal by Spacek along with an interesting ensemble of supporting players such as, Allen, John Travolta, and Amy Irving give the film an impact that many others of its type lacked.
NEXT: THE SLASHERS
Slashers Bring Blood, Guts, Even Some Humor
June 5, 1994
Beginning in the late 1970s a new approach to horror films found its way into movie theaters. The "slasher" film was no more than a series of films that consistently had a maniacal character on the loose with either a butcher knife, chain saw, or any other sharp instrument they could come up with to chop, saw, or hack their victims to shreds.
Recently this type seems to have run its course with American movie goers. Starting as early as two years ago, the slasher films, which are in a genre all their own, began to try the patience of even the most avid horror film fans. Oft times ridiculous, and always filled with gore, the slashers
have exhausted audiences desire to see blood and body parts strewn randomly across the screen.
But these days,following in the footsteps of such giants as Count Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster, slashers, it seems, are going to have to take a back seat. As they find their way to the exits, the old classic horror film is again entering the front door. Regardless of the demise of the slasher film, there are three in that category that are worth mentioning. After all, this short lived genre is a pan of film history and will be talked about in years to come.
• • •Friday the 13th• • •
First and worst has to be 1980's "Friday the 13th." It is considered the original slasher flick and one of the last to give up the ghost (no pun intended). It spawned nine sequels, one as bad as the next. Its star was knife wielding, lake dwelling, Jason Voorhees, the monster with the hockey mask.
The plot focuses on a group of Crystal Lake Camp counselors who are systematically murdered by a masked maniac. The story literally consists of the killer slashing and hacking his way through the dwindling counselors.
Director Sean S. Cunningham forced this cross between the Mad Slasher and Dead Teenagers films upon the real honor lovers of America. This series of bad movies, is as much the cause of the genre's death as anything.
• • •A Nightmare on Elm Street• • •
Another of the slasher characters was Freddy Krueger of "Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984). It was one of the more intelligent and terrifying horror films of the '80s, beginning and ending with a haunting children's song. The film introduced us to the horribly scarred man with the ragged slouched hat, dirty red and green striped sweater, and metal gloves with knives at the tips.
Freddy (Robert Englund), is a genius of a monster who exists in his victim's dreams. He preys on them through the vulnerability of sleep. He has returned to the town where he was burned alive as a child killer by the locals who took the law into their own hands. Now Freddy is taking revenge on their children.
The fate of the "slasher" genre hung in the balance until Wes Craven brought "Elm Street" to the screen. It brought to the viewers' attention, intelligently, the tenor of nightmares and even more the possibility of killers in one's own neighborhood.
The characters playing the teenagers, who are paying for their parents' sins, have distinct and intelligible personalities. Unlike "Friday the 13th," they are not just so much ammunition for the special effects people.
The immediate success of this film was the insecurity of the audience. You are never quite sure whether the characters on screen are dreaming, because the thin line between nightmare and reality is blurred. As an outcome, the terror runs rampant.
• • •Halloween• • •
The best, and now considered a modem horror classic, is 1978's "Halloween," which could be called a moderate slasher. You remember the now famous story of Michael Myers, the soul-less maniac. On Halloween night in 1963, Michael, then six, dressed in a mask, stabs his sister and her boyfriend to death while they are making love. He is placed in an institution and 15 years later on Halloween, he escapes and returns to his hometown to wreak havoc.
His psychiatrist Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is now in hot pursuit long with the authorities. Meanwhile, Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) is without a date on Halloween, so she stays home to watch boring TV shows. Little does she realize her evening will hardly be boring.
There is not one drop of blood on screen in this funhouse of a movie, even though it is considered a "slasher" film. There is enough film genius present to cause the audience to jump back in terror. Cheap thrills are found on almost every frame. The camera shots give the effect of a camcorder with scary piano music as its accompaniment.
John Carpenter, who is not only the director but the master of fright, also composed the music. Pleasance is a riot and can boast the most famous line of the film, "The Evil is loose!" Jamie Lee Curtis became known as Queen of the B horror flicks with this film. Her beauty in "Halloween" enhanced the sensitive performance.
"Halloween" was compared to Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" by some over zealous film critics. In no way was this justified. "Halloween" is simply a well made unpretentious thriller. "Psycho" is on a higher plane. While Michael Myers is a maniac with a latex mask, Norman Bates was a psychological misfit.
John Carpenter did a styhsh piece of work considering his budget was less than half a million dollars. "Halloween" grossed more than $50 million, making it the single most successful independent feature of all time. It too spawned inferior sequels.
NEXT: THE CLASSICS
Horror classics focus of recent 'remakes
June 12, 1994
Because of the demise of the "slasher" films, one might wonder about the fate of horror movies in general. Not to worry! Along with the rebirth of the western, the classic horror films are on their way back.
1992 saw the return of Count Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula." June 17 marks the release of "Wolf," a new version of "The Wolfman" starring Jack Nicholson. In the fall Kenneth Branagh brings us "Mary Shelly's Frankenstein" with Robert De Niro as the monster. There is talk of a remake of "The Mummy" set for next year, proving that the monster flicks are still alive and kicking.
In 1930, Tod Browning filmed the stage version of "Dracula," using a Hungarian actor named Bela Lugosi. Shortly after James Whale directed a version of "Frankenstein" that borrowed freely from 1920's "The Golem." Both were immediate successes and Universal Studios set out on a series of horror films that have become cinema Classics.
The following four films set the pace for what we now call classic horror.
• • • Dracula • • •
"Dracula" (1931) is still considered the granddaddy of them all. The atmospheric opening is one of the highlights of the film. It is moody and full of ominous possibility. The film made Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi a Hollywood icon.
The film opens in Transylvania, where Renfield (Dwight Frye), an English land salesman, arrives to finalize the sale of a deserted British manor house to a strange nobleman Count Dracula (Lugosi). The Count turns out to be a 500-year-old vampire to whom Renfield eventually becomes a slave. When Dracula arrives in London he falls for Mina Seward (Helen Chandler) and attempts to make her his bride. Her fiancee Jonathan Harker (David Manners) and vampire authority Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) try to head the Count off at the pass.
Karl Freund did a magnificent cinematography job on the first part of the film. The scenes in England become a bit cumbersome and this could be the fault of director Tod Browning. Most of the music consisted of bits from Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake."
• • •Frankenstein• • •
Superior to "Dracula" was 1931's "Frankenstein." It is still thought of as one of the greatest horror classics. James Whale was probably the best director of horror films. The story isn't exactly what Mary Shelley had in mind but it still worked. Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and his hunchbacked assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) steal bodies from graves to create a "man" (Boris Karloff) who is brought to life with electricity. Fritz is responsible for the monster having the mind of a criminal instead of the intended normal brain.
Whale did a technical wonder with his mastery of the film medium which was not that old. One of the most shocking and memorable scenes was the monster's entrance on screen. He backs in through a doorway building the audiences curiosity. Then the monster slowly turns around to show his hideous features. This portrayal made Karloff a star as well as a legend. Terrifying and
piteous, his monster is a stirring study of estrangement and uncivilized anger. "Frankenstein" was the most influential monster movie ever made.
"The Bride of Frankenstein" (1935) was a brilliant sequel to the 1931 original. Again, director James Whale showed his genius in one of Hollywood's most contributive achievements. Mary Shelley (Elsa Lanchester) picks up where the last film ended. The injured Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is taken back to his castle while the monster (Karloff) is wreaking havoc on the townspeople. Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), an alchemist who has also created artificial life, comes on the scene. He talks the unwilling Dr. Frankenstein into aiding him in creating a mate for the monster.
Combining gothic horror with playful wit, "The Bride of Frankenstein" is a work of art. It has unforgettable scenes, super sets, costumes and makeup, striking special effects, and audacious camerawork. The performances are right on target with Clive again punching all the right buttons. Karloff portrays a feeling of poignant humanity mixed with confusion. Lanchester is amazing.as the prim Mary Shelley and the embodiment of her story, the bride. Thesiger is the scene stealer as the verbose, threatening, yet hilarious Dr. Pretorius. The film proved to be one of the oddest and most memorable horror films ever made.
• • •The Mummy• • •
"The Mummy" (1932) is absolutely marvelous. With his triumph in "Frankenstein," Boris Karloff created another unforgettable character. Jack Pierce did the stupendous makeup work.
The story begins at an Egyptian archeological dig in 1921. Their latest find is a sarcophagus in an unmarked grave. There is a warning on the coffin for anyone who would open it. What happens next is horrific and introduces us to Karloffs wrappings. Cinematographer Karl Freund made his directorial debut in this wonderful horror gem. The film has a feeling of dismay and apprehensiveness.
Karloff carries the mystical tone of the movie. Though he appears only briefly as the mummy, Karloff is more impressive in his reincarnated state. The mass of delicate wrinkles on his face and hands, and his gentle movements, create a being who seems like he might crumble at any time.
Edward Van Sloan (Prof. Muller) is around once again crusading against the monster. Zita Johann (Helen Grovenor/Princess Anck-es-eb/Amon) is the heroine. Karloffs mimimy (Im-Ho-Tep) and Hohann, whom he believes is his lost love, lends assurance and a certain sadness with the horror. One of the rare horror films to include a touch of the poetic, it is cleverly engrossing and has stood the test of time.
• • •The Wolfman• • •
A feast of horror was 1941 's "The Wolfman." It involves Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) a British heir who returns to the manor of his father Sir John (Claude Rains) after his college education in America. He learns of the legend of the werewolf from Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers), gypsy fortune teller Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya) and her son Bela (Bela Lugosi). Larry scoffs at the notion. His notion changes when he is bitten by a vicious beast in the moors. Larry is then informed by Maleva he will transform into a werewolf who can only be destroyed by silver.
Chaney had vowed never to appear in horror films in fear he might be compared with his famous father. When he took on the role of the wolfman, it gave him an identity that would always stick. All elements, the makeup, the screenplay, combined to make a thrilling, scary, and ultimately tragic horror classic.
June 17 introduces the latest edition of the new horror classic remakes. Jack Nicholson does his own unique rendition of the wolfman when he again lives out Maleva's refrain: "Even a man who is pure in heart/And says his prayers by night/May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms/And the autumn (full) moon is bright.
________________________________________
It's a bloody classic
Winnipeg Free Press
August 31, 2001
By Todd Camp
(First published in The Fort Worth Star Telegram)
Prom night has never been the same.
More than bad hair, powderblue tuxes with ruffles or embarrassing last-minute acne, proms will be forever haunted by the vision of Sissy Spacek, drenched in pig's blood, walking through a flame-filled high school gym while laying waste to her screaming classmates.
Brian De Palma's horror classic Carrie, arriving this week as a special 25th-anniversary edition DVD, centres on an introverted young girl with an awesome, terrifying power. This low-budget sleeper tapped into a vein of high school angst, alienation and retribution that remains as frighteningly relevant today as it was in 1976. It also launched the careers of a little-known writer, a fledgling director and a group of talented would-be stars.
THE BOOK
The story of Carrie's birth as a novel is legend among Stephen King fans. In the early 70s, the struggling writer was working as a janitor and living with his wife, Tabitha, in a trailer in a little town outside Bangor, Maine. He began work on a short story about a teenage girl named Carietta White, but abandoned it after a few pages, uncertain of his ability to do justice to the female adolescent experience.
After King tossed the pages in the trash, his wife rescued them and encouraged him to continue the story. He submitted the finished manuscript to a publisher in January 1973 after a friend at Doubleday asked him what he had been up to. After King did some minor rewrites, Doubleday bought the book, sending along an advance of $1,500, manna from heaven for the nearly broke Kings. That May, Doubleday sold the paperback rights for Carrie for a whopping $400,000, thanks largely to Hollywood's interest in the property.
THE MOVIE
Brian De Palma discovered the book in 1974 and was convinced that this intriguing story could help establish him as a capable suspense director.
Abandoning King's non-linear storytelling style, the film became a straightforward retelling of the events leading up to Carrie's ill-fated prom night. United Artists agreed to make the film on a modest budget of $1.8 million, forcing the filmmakers to cast mostly unknowns in the lead roles.
De Palma cast production designer Jack Fisk's wife, Sissy Spacek, in the lead, though he had originally considered her for the part of Carrie's nasty rival, Chris. He coaxed veteran actress Piper Laurie out of retirement. Secondary roles went to young unknowns Amy Irving, William Katt, De Palma's girlfriend, Nancy Allen,* and a young upstart named John Travolta. De Palma also hired a cocky stage actress he had employed to loop voice-overs in his films Phantom of the Paradise and Obsession. Her name was Betty Buckley.
De Palma "took me to dinner and gave me the book Carrie and said that this was going to be his next movie," Buckley recalls. De Palma had her in mind for the part of the gym teacher, a rather tiny role in the book. But he combined the role with that of the principal, and Buckley eagerly accepted. "It was a wonderful feature-film debut, so I was very, very moved that he basically gave me the gift of this part," she says.
In Buckley's memorable death scene in Carrie's fiery finale, she is crushed at the waist by a basketball backboard. De Palma's direction to her upon being crushed was to "squirm like a bug on a pin," Buckley says and laughs. "Which I thought was one of the funnier directions I ever received."
Though Carrie was up against big budget horror films such as Burnt Offerings and The Omen, the film struck a nerve with audiences, returning a $15-million profit and earning a surprising pair of Oscar nominations for Spacek and Laurie.
Often critical of films based on his work, King later told Playboy magazine that he thought Carrie was "terrific. In many ways the film is far more stylish than my book, which I still think is a gripping read but is impeded by a certain heaviness... a quality that's absent from the film."
THE MUSICAL
The movie was not the last incarnation of King's horror classic. Following a poorly received run in London, a musical adaptation of Carrie by lyricist Dean Pitchford and composer Michael Gore, previous Oscar-winning collaborators on the film Fame, came to Broadway in 1988.*
THE SEQUEL
In 1999, director Katt Shea unwisely decided to make a sequel to the original film* with The Rage: Carrie 2, focusing once again on a teen outcast (Emily Bergl) who turns out to be the late Carrie White's sister. Amy Irving's Sue Snell, the only survivor of the original Carrie, returns as the perceptive school guidance counsellor who recognizes the girl's exceptional talent, but unfortunately not soon enough to prevent her from decimating a bunch of deserving teen snots after yet another ill-conceived practical joke.
Though The Rage tried to tap into the more contemporary trappings of teen ostracism — goth clothing, downer grunge and promiscuous sex — its gorier approach never matched the original's intensity or its unforgettable conclusion.
AFTER THE PROM, CAREERS TOOK OFF
Carrie launched a remarkable number of careers. Here's a sampling:
Brian De Palma (director): De Palma followed Carrie with 1978's The Fury and the 1980 thriller Dressed To Kill, which helped establish his reputation as the "American Hitchcock."
Stephen King (author): Boy, whatever happened to that guy? King, of course, has become a publishing juggernaut, following Carrie with Salem's Lot and The Shining. His numerous bestsellers have continued to be a source of films both good (Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption) and bad (Children of the Corn, Maximum Overdrive).
Sissy Spacek (Carrie White): Spacek made her feature film starring debut in Carrie,* persuaded to audition for the role by her husband, Jack Fisk, the film's art director. Her best actress Oscar nomination for the movie kicked off a solid career that has included an Oscar win for her work in
1980's Coal Miner's Daughter.
Piper Laurie (Margaret White): Laurie was in semiretirement when she was persuaded to co-star in Carrie with a role that would earn her a second best supporting actress Oscar nomination. The acclaim restarted her career, and she went on to receive a third Oscar nomination for 1986's Children of a Lesser God.
Betty Buckley (Miss Collins): After making her film debut in Carris, Buckley scored a regular gig on TV's Eight Is Enough. She continued to balance TV and film work with her first passion, the stage, winning a Tony Award for her role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats in 1983.
Amy Irving (Sue Snell): Irving worked with De Palma again in The Fury (1978) and received high marks for roles in Voices (1979), The Competition (1980) and Micki & Maude (1984). She received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination for Yentl (1983) and made strong impressions in Crossing Delancey (1988) and A Show of Force (1990), but she earned almost as much fame when she became Mrs. Steven Spielberg in 1985 (they divorced in 1989).
John Travolta (Billy Nolan): Travolta followed his supporting turn in Carrie with a string of leading roles in hit films (Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Urban Cowboy), becoming the biggest star in Hollywood.
Nancy Allen (Chris): She went on to marry De Palma in 1979, starring in his films Home Movies (1979), Dressed To Kill (1980) and Blow Out (1981). She divorced the director in 1983, and since then she has continued to work, mostly in genre films. She soon can be seen starring opposite Carrie co-star William Katt in the film-festival favourite Circuit.
*WEBMASTER'S NOTE: I feel the need to point out a few of the facts in this article are inaccurate. "Carrie" was not Spacek's debut film, Allen was cast in the film and subsequently began dating DePalma, the plan was always to move the musical from London (where the reviews were mixed) to Broadway, and Katt Shea took over directing "The Rage" after production was already underway.