Carrie

Director: Brian De Palma Brian De Palma

Overview

This classic horror movie based on Stephen King's first novel stars Sissy Spacek as Carrie White, a shy, diffident teenager who is the butt of practical jokes at her small-town high school. Her blind panic at her first menstruation, a result of ignorance and religious guilt drummed into her by her fanatical mother (Piper Laurie), only causes her classmates' vicious cruelty to escalate, despite the attentions of her overly solicitous gym teacher (Betty Buckley). Finally, when the venomous Chris Hargenson (Nancy Allen) engineers a reprehensible prank at the school prom, Carrie lashes out in a horrifying display of her heretofore minor telekinetic powers. Many films had featured school bullies, but Carrie was one of the first to focus on the special brand of cruelty unique to teenage girls. Carrie's world is presented as a snake pit, where the well-to-do female students all have fangs -- even the reticent Sue Snell (Amy Irving) -- and all the males are blind pawns, sexually twisted around the fingers of Chris and her evil cronies. The talented supporting cast includes John Travolta, P.J. Soles, and William Katt. One of the genre's true classics, the film was followed by a sequel in 1999, as well as by a famously unsuccessful Broadway musical adaptation that starred Betty Buckley, the movie's gym teacher, as Margaret White.

Product Details

Release Date:	10/11/2016
UPC:	0826663169904
Original Release:	1976
Rating:	R
Source:	Shout Factory
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Time:	1:38:00
Sales rank:	23,796

Special Features

Disc One: Theatrical trailer Carrie franchise trailer gallery Disc Two: NEW interviews with writer Lawrence D. Cohen, editor Paul Hirsch, actors Piper Laurie, P.J. Soles, Nancy Allen, Betty Buckley, William Katt and Edie McClurg, casting director Harriet B. Helberg, director of photography Mario Tosi and composer Pino Donaggio NEW horror's hallowed grounds - revisiting the film's original locations Acting Carrie - interviews with actors Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving, Betty Buckley, Nancy Allen, William Katt, Piper Laurie, Priscilla Pointer and P.J. Soles and art director Jack Fisk and director Brian De Palma Visualizing Carrie - interviews with Brian De Palma, Jack Fisk, Lawrence D. Cohen, Paul Hirsch A look at "Carrie: The Musical" TV spots Radio spots Still gallery - rare behind-the-scenes photos Stephen King and the evolution of Carrie text gallery

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Sissy Spacek	Carrie White
Piper Laurie	Margaret White
Amy Irving	Sue Snell
William Katt	Tommy Ross
Nancy Allen	Chris Hargenson
John Travolta	Billy Nolan
Betty Buckley	Miss Collins
Sidney Lassick	Mr. Fromm
Stefan Gierasch	Principal Morton
Priscilla Pointer	Mrs. Snell
Michael Talbott	Freddy
Cameron de Palma	Boy On Bicycle
Doug Cox	The Beak
Anson Downes	Ernest
Edie McClurg	Helen
Noelle North	Frieda
P.J. Soles	Norma Watson

Technical Credits

Larry Cohen

Lawrence D. Cohen

Brian De Palma	Director
Gregory M. Auer	Special Effects
Larry Cohen	Screenwriter
Lawrence D. Cohen	Screenwriter
Wes Dawn	Makeup
Pino Donaggio	Score Composer
Jack Fisk	Art Director
Bert Hallberg	Sound/Sound Designer
Donald Heitzer	Asst. Director
Paul Hirsch	Editor
William Kennedy	Art Director
Bill Kenney	Production Designer
Paul Monash	Producer
Rosanna Norton	Costumes/Costume Designer
Ken Pepiot	Special Effects
Louis A. Stroller	Associate Producer
Mario Tosi	Cinematographer
Dick Vorisek	Sound/Sound Designer
Stephen King	Source Author

Editorial Reviews

The film that launched Brian De Palma's career as an A-list director, and one of the most flamboyantly gory hits of the 1970s, Carrie deftly mixed knowing wit with abject terror long before it became Hollywood convention. Based on Stephen King's novel, the plot concerns Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), a painfully shy high school girl who freaks out when she begins to menstruate. The ranting by her witchy, evangelical mother (Piper Laurie) and the teasing by her cooler classmates only add to her paranoid adolescent horror. Two particularly nasty peers (Nancy Allen and John Travolta) even plot to humiliate her at the senior prom, oblivious to the fact that, for Carrie, womanhood has arrived with telekinetic powers -- the ability to propel inanimate objects by force of her mind. The march toward the movie's climactic showdown, thanks to De Palma's virtuoso camera movement and bold use of color, is as grippingly satisfying as it gets. Spacek and Laurie turn in tremendous performances, and Amy Irving turns heads as a kindhearted classmate. But it's truly De Palma's bravura storytelling -- right down to the final scene -- that makes Carrie one of the most shocking portraits of teen cruelty ever to come out of Hollywood.

Barnes & Noble - Monica McIntyre

Stephen King's first novel was also his first work adapted for the screen and, with the arguable exception of The Shining, is still the best, thanks largely to a remarkable performance from Sissy Spacek as Carrie White and a surprisingly subtle, intelligent presentation by director Brian De Palma. De Palma wisely doesn't focus on Carrie's strange power to move objects with her mind in the first act. Instead, he emphasizes her miserable existence as a high-school outcast with a remarkably awful home life, and Spacek's performance brings Carrie to painfully vivid life. Carrie White personifies every high-school student who didn't fit in, and Spacek makes her sympathetic without making us wonder why people pick on her; when Carrie finally takes her revenge, Spacek transforms her into a monster with a strange dignity, at once terrifying and heroic. De Palma presents the story in clear, well-paced fashion, for the most part avoiding the all-too-obvious homages to other filmmakers that often mark his work and (with the exception of the split screen for Carrie's rampage at the prom) laying off distracting visual trickery, letting his cast and Larry Cohen's screenplay do the work. Often regarded as a watershed of '70s mainstream horror, Carrie is at the same time one of the truest and most painfully perceptive films about the high-school caste system; nothing would touch it in this regard until Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse in 1996.

All Movie Guide - Mark Deming

Though Carrie has been on DVD since 1998, the special edition is worth taking a look at, if only to check out the improvements on an extras roster that was woefully inadequate. It still doesn't offer a director's commentary...but the producer has compensated with not one but two "making of" documentaries.

Entertainment Weekly - Michael Sauter