ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - November 3rd
"CARRIE" limited released in 1976
"CARRIE" limited released in 1976
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Shy, bullied high school student Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) is initially terrified when she experiences her first period as she showers with other girls after gym class. Unaware of what is happening to her, she panics and pleads for help, but the other girls cruelly respond by pelting her with hygiene products, laughing and chanting "plug it up!" Gym teacher Miss Collins (Betty Buckley) breaks up the commotion and attempts to console Carrie, when a light bulb mysteriously shatters as Carrie reaches the height of her panic.
While walking home that day, other strange phenomenon occur whenever Carrie is angered or frustrated; a boy who teased her is thrown from his bike by an invisible force, and once home, her bedroom is violently shattered after she is abused by her fanatically religious mother, Margaret (Piper Laurie). Later, Carrie’s classmate Sue (Amy Irving) feels guilty for her part in the showers, so she arranges for her boyfriend, handsome and popular Tommy (William Katt), to ask Carrie to the prom. Reluctant at first, Carrie eventually accepts after encouragement from Miss Collins. Meanwhile, another classmate, Chris (Nancy Allen), skips her detention for bullying Carrie, so she is banned from the prom. Swearing vengeance, she recruits her delinquent boyfriend Billy (John Travolta) to play a prank on Carrie. That night, they slaughter pigs from a nearby farm and place a bucket of their blood above the stage at the school’s gymnasium. On the night of the prom, Carrie, having researched her telekinesis, asserts her power and stands up to her mother after she forbids her to go, and Margaret responds by accusing Carrie of being a satanic witch.
At the prom, Carrie finds acceptance among her peers and shares a kiss with Tommy. Chris' bubbly best friend Norma (P.J. Soles) rigs the election and Carrie is crowned Prom Queen. Carrie’s joy is cut short when Chris pulls a rope to dump the pigs' blood on her. Chris and Billy escape through a back door, while the bucket falls on Tommy's head, knocking him unconscious. The blood-soaked Carrie hallucinates that everyone in the gymnasium is laughing at her and soon unleashes telekinetic fury upon the crowd, guilty and innocent alike. The doors slam shut (crushing a pair of students), a high-pressure water hose assaults many people (including Norma, who is knocked unconscious), the principal is electrocuted, and Miss Collins is crushed to death. As the gym catches fire, Carrie calmly walks out and locks the remaining students inside. Chris and Billy attempt to run over Carrie as she walks home, but Carrie causes their car to flip and explode. Now completely insane, Carrie finally returns home to confront her mother, who reveals a devastating revelation of her own!
While walking home that day, other strange phenomenon occur whenever Carrie is angered or frustrated; a boy who teased her is thrown from his bike by an invisible force, and once home, her bedroom is violently shattered after she is abused by her fanatically religious mother, Margaret (Piper Laurie). Later, Carrie’s classmate Sue (Amy Irving) feels guilty for her part in the showers, so she arranges for her boyfriend, handsome and popular Tommy (William Katt), to ask Carrie to the prom. Reluctant at first, Carrie eventually accepts after encouragement from Miss Collins. Meanwhile, another classmate, Chris (Nancy Allen), skips her detention for bullying Carrie, so she is banned from the prom. Swearing vengeance, she recruits her delinquent boyfriend Billy (John Travolta) to play a prank on Carrie. That night, they slaughter pigs from a nearby farm and place a bucket of their blood above the stage at the school’s gymnasium. On the night of the prom, Carrie, having researched her telekinesis, asserts her power and stands up to her mother after she forbids her to go, and Margaret responds by accusing Carrie of being a satanic witch.
At the prom, Carrie finds acceptance among her peers and shares a kiss with Tommy. Chris' bubbly best friend Norma (P.J. Soles) rigs the election and Carrie is crowned Prom Queen. Carrie’s joy is cut short when Chris pulls a rope to dump the pigs' blood on her. Chris and Billy escape through a back door, while the bucket falls on Tommy's head, knocking him unconscious. The blood-soaked Carrie hallucinates that everyone in the gymnasium is laughing at her and soon unleashes telekinetic fury upon the crowd, guilty and innocent alike. The doors slam shut (crushing a pair of students), a high-pressure water hose assaults many people (including Norma, who is knocked unconscious), the principal is electrocuted, and Miss Collins is crushed to death. As the gym catches fire, Carrie calmly walks out and locks the remaining students inside. Chris and Billy attempt to run over Carrie as she walks home, but Carrie causes their car to flip and explode. Now completely insane, Carrie finally returns home to confront her mother, who reveals a devastating revelation of her own!
Mr. Morton: We're all sorry about this incident, Cassie.
Carrie: [voice breaking, shouts] It's Carrie!
[Morton's ashtray, without reason, flips onto the floor, backwards. Miss Collins jumps back in shock]
Top: Shy, introverted Carrie White (Sissy Spacek);
Above: Carrie is comforted by gym teacher Miss Collins (Betty Buckley)
Carrie was the first Stephen King novel to be published and the first to be adapted into a feature film. Initially, King was reluctant to send Carrie to a publisher because it sounded (to him) the least marketable of all his manuscripts at the time. But horror was a hot commodity what with successes like The Exorcist (1973) and Rosemary's Baby (1968) so the novel became a sleeper success. The novel was then suggested to filmmaker Brian De Palma by a writer friend of his, and proceeded call his agent to find out if anyone owned the film rights yet. De Palma found out that nobody had yet, but a few studios were interested. The director quickly let it be known that he was very interested in joining the production, and, after the rights were finally purchased by United Artists, was chosen to helm the picture. Lawrence D. Cohen was hired as the screenwriter, and produced the first draft, which had closely followed the novel's intentions, and after a final second draft was submitted, De Palma was allocated $1.6 million to shoot the picture (a relatively small sum, considering the popularity of horror films at the time).
Many young actresses auditioned for the lead role of Carrie White, including Melanie Griffith, Jill Clayburgh, Pamela Sue Martin, Betsy Slade, Glenn Close and Farrah Fawcett (Fawcett ultimately bowed out due to scheduling conflicts with her TV series, Charlie's Angels). Linda Blair was then offered the role, but after appearing in the Exorcist, turned the role down as she feared being typecast. Sissy Spacek - who was not even considered for the part by the studio - was persuaded by husband, art director Jack Fisk, to audition for the title role, who then talked De Palma into seeing her. Up until that point, De Palma was strongly considering Amy Irving for the role when he agreed to audition Spacek, who showed up to the audition with Vaseline rubbed into her hair and wearing a sailor dress (which her mother had made for her when she was in the seventh grade) with the hem cut off. Impressed with her determination to get the part, De Palma cast Spacek in the lead role and cast Irving as Carrie's friend Sue Snell (interestingly, De Palma cast Irving's real life mother, Priscilla Pointer, to play Sue's screen mother Mrs Snell!). To prepare for her character, Spacek isolated herself from the rest of the ensemble, decorated her dressing room with heavy religious iconography and studied Gustave Doré's illustrated Bible. She studied "the body language of people being stoned for their sins," starting or ending every scene in one of those positions.
Many young actresses auditioned for the lead role of Carrie White, including Melanie Griffith, Jill Clayburgh, Pamela Sue Martin, Betsy Slade, Glenn Close and Farrah Fawcett (Fawcett ultimately bowed out due to scheduling conflicts with her TV series, Charlie's Angels). Linda Blair was then offered the role, but after appearing in the Exorcist, turned the role down as she feared being typecast. Sissy Spacek - who was not even considered for the part by the studio - was persuaded by husband, art director Jack Fisk, to audition for the title role, who then talked De Palma into seeing her. Up until that point, De Palma was strongly considering Amy Irving for the role when he agreed to audition Spacek, who showed up to the audition with Vaseline rubbed into her hair and wearing a sailor dress (which her mother had made for her when she was in the seventh grade) with the hem cut off. Impressed with her determination to get the part, De Palma cast Spacek in the lead role and cast Irving as Carrie's friend Sue Snell (interestingly, De Palma cast Irving's real life mother, Priscilla Pointer, to play Sue's screen mother Mrs Snell!). To prepare for her character, Spacek isolated herself from the rest of the ensemble, decorated her dressing room with heavy religious iconography and studied Gustave Doré's illustrated Bible. She studied "the body language of people being stoned for their sins," starting or ending every scene in one of those positions.
Carrie: [reading from a library book] Telekinesis... thought to be the ability to move... or to cause changes... in objects... by force of the mind...?
Top: Sue Snell (Amy Irving) starts to feel guilty for tormenting Carrie, and (above) has her boyfriend Tommy (William Katt) ask her to the prom
John Travolta auditioned while on a lunch break filming Welcome Back Kotter, showing up still dressed as Vinnie Barbarino. De Palma, who didn't realize Travolta was one of the stars of the hit TV show, cast him in the role of Billy Nolan. They were soon joined by P. J. Soles (as Norma Watson), William Katt (as Tommy Ross), and Betty Buckley (as Miss Collins). According to Piper Laurie, - who was cast as Carrie's insane, religious mother, Margaret White - she honestly thought her character was too over the top fanatical to be taken seriously, even when De Palma had to take her to the side and personally tell her it was a horror film and not a "black comedy" as she thought it was. Even so, she would constantly burst out into laughter between takes because not only was her characterization and wardrobe laughable in her eyes, but the dialogue itself was humorous for her (to this day, she still refers to and maintains the movie as "a black comedy").
Last to audition was Nancy Allen for the role of the main antagonist, Chris Hargensen. Allen, who was on the verge of leaving Hollywood before landing the part, never realized that her character was going to be so evil until she saw the finished film, she thought - like Laurie - that she and Travolta were playing such self-centered, bickering morons for comic relief. Allen herself would later marry De Palma in 1979 and star in two more De Palma films; Dressed to Kill (1980) and Blow Out (1981), the latter film co-starring again with Travolta.
Last to audition was Nancy Allen for the role of the main antagonist, Chris Hargensen. Allen, who was on the verge of leaving Hollywood before landing the part, never realized that her character was going to be so evil until she saw the finished film, she thought - like Laurie - that she and Travolta were playing such self-centered, bickering morons for comic relief. Allen herself would later marry De Palma in 1979 and star in two more De Palma films; Dressed to Kill (1980) and Blow Out (1981), the latter film co-starring again with Travolta.
TRIVIA: Brian De Palma wanted Betty Buckley to really slap Nancy Allen. Because Allen couldn't get the reaction De Palma wanted, Buckley ended up slapping her as many as thirty times.
Top: Mean girl Chris (Nancy Allen) swears revenge on Carrie and recruits Norma (P.J. Soles) and (above) her boyfriend Billy (John Travolta)
De Palma began the production on May 17th, 1976, with director of photography Isidore Mankofsky, who was eventually replaced by Mario Tosi after conflict between Mankofsky and De Palma ensued. The White house was filmed in Santa Paula, California and to give the home a Gothic theme, director and producers went to religious shops looking for artifacts to place in the home. A wraparound segment at the beginning and end of the film was scripted and filmed which featured the Whites' home being pummeled by stones that hailed from the sky. The opening scene was filmed as planned, though on film, the tiny pebbles looked more like rain water. And after a mechanical malfunction botched production the night when the model of the Whites' home was set to be destroyed, filmmakers decided to burned it down instead and dropped the scenes with the stones altogether. It's this version that remains in the finished film, although internal scenes remain showing rocks coming through the roof.
The prom scene took over two weeks to shoot and required a total of 35 takes, with Spacek covered in "pig's blood" made from karo syrup and food coloring; although reportedly, Spacek was willing to have real blood dumped on her! However, the bright, hot lights caused the substance to keep drying and sticking to her skin, so, in order to correct this problem, she was hosed down until it became of a gluey consistency. Spacek refused to wash off the fake blood so that the continuity of the movie would not be harmed, even sleeping in the "bloody" clothes for three days of filming. An actual fire hose was used on P. J. Soles (who played Norma), the force of which ruptured her ear drums, and knocked her unconsciousness! Soles was later deaf in that ear for six months after filming. When Carrie's mother meets her demise (she is stabbed multiple times with flying knives), the knives started off in Margaret's body before being pulled out by string. When editing the scene, they played the footage in reverse to achieve the look of the knives flying towards Margaret
[Jim enters a dark abandoned church when he sees writing on the wall]
Writing on a Wall: 'Repent, The End Is Extremely Fucking Nigh'
Top: Humiliated by Chris' cruel prank, Carrie unleashes her full powers at the prom;
Above: Carrie eventually kills Chris and Billy, who earlier escaped the prom massacre
The final scene, in which Sue reaches toward Carrie's grave, was shot backwards to give it a dreamlike quality. This scene was inspired by the final scene in Deliverance (1972). Spacek had insisted on using her own hand in the given scene, so she was positioned under the rocks and gravel. De Palma stated, "Sissy, come on, I'll get a stunt person. What do you want? To be buried in the ground?!" However, Spacek declared, "Brian, I have to do this." De Palma explains that they "had to bury her. Bury her! We had to put her in a box and stick her underneath the ground. Well, I had her husband bury her because I certainly didn't want to bury her. I used to walk around and set up the shot and every once in a while we'd hear Sissy: 'Are we ready yet?' 'Yeah, Sissy, we're going to be ready real soon.'"
Carrie received largely positive reviews when released in 1976, and is still widely regarded as one of the best films of that year. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated the film was an "absolutely spellbinding horror movie", as well as an "observant human portrait", giving three and a half stars out of four. Pauline Kael of The New Yorker stated that Carrie was "the best scary-funny movie since Jaws – a teasing, terrifying, lyrical shocker". Take One Magazine critic Susan Schenker said she was "angry at the way Carrie manipulated me to the point where my heart was thudding, and embarrassed because the film really works." In addition to being a box office success - earning $14.5 million in theater rentals by January 1978 - Carrie is notable for being one of the few horror films to be nominated for multiple Academy Awards, with Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie receiving nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress awards, respectively. Carrie would be De Palma's first successful film at the box office (enabling to later direct and produce such big studio pictures as Scarface (1983), The Untouchables (1987), Carlito's Way (1993), and Mission: Impossible (1996) among many others), and is widely known to be King's personal favorite of all the films adapted from his work.
TRIVIA: Early on, many of the girls present in the locker room were originally hesitant to appear nude in the film, but after De Palma showed them the nude shots of Spacek, they became more confident
Top: Director Brian De Palma on set with Sissy Spacek;
Above: De Palma filming the prom scenes
Playwright Erik Jackson eventually earned the consent of King to mount a new, officially-sanctioned, non-musical production of Carrie, which debuted Off-Broadway in 2006 with female impersonator Sherry Vine in the lead role. Similarly, many other unofficial spoofs have been staged over the years, usually with a gym teacher named "Miss Collins" (as opposed to the novel's "Miss Desjardin" and the musical's "Miss Gardner"), most notably the "parodage" Scarrie the Musical, which hit the Illinois stage in 1998 and was revived in 2005. Then in May 2011, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Screen Gems announced that Carrie would be adapted to film once more. This time the role of Carrie was played by 16-year-old actress Chloë Grace Moretz, with Julianne Moore starring as Carrie's mother Margaret White. Directed by Boys Don't Cry filmmaker Kimberly Peirce, the remake also starred Gabriella Wilde as Sue Snell, with Alex Russell and Broadway actor Ansel Elgort playing Billy Nolan and Tommy Ross, respectively. Portia Doubleday was given the role of Chris Hargensen and Judy Greer was cast as Gym teacher Miss Desjardin. Like previous installments, Carrie (2013) received mixed reviews, but still managed to gross an impressive $85 million at the box office.
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 93%
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