Sissy Spacek in Carrie (1976)

Carrie 1976 mini lobby card set image courtesy Heritage Auction Galleries

Director Brian De Palma and United Artists delivered Carrie to movie theaters in 1976. Sissy Spacek has the title role, with Piper Laurie, Amy Irving, John Travolta and William Katt along for the date from hell.

Stephen King’s Carrie Novel

Carrie is based on the 1974 debut novel by American horror writer Stephen King. As the legend goes, King had trashed the Carrie manuscript one day in frustration, where it was subsequently rescued by his wife Tabitha. Numbering a slim 199 pages, Carrie was published by Doubleday as a hardcover in 1974, priced at $5.95 with a first printing run of 30,000 copies, of which only 13,000 were sold.

The paperback rights were later purchased by Signet for $400,000, with Stephen King and Doubleday splitting the sum equally. Director Brian De Palma had heard of Carrie through a friend, and was later informed that Twentieth Century-Fox owned the movie rights. Following an unsuccessful effort by producer Paul Monash and Fox to bring Carrie to the big screen, the film rights were then acquired by United Artists. Under new studio pressure, Monash was forced to deliver, giving Brian De Palma the green light to proceed.

Brian De Palma Directs Carrie

Lawrence D. Cohen wrote the screenplay for Redbank Films. Brian De Palma (Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables) directed. Pino Donaggio created the original music score and Mario Tosi served as cinematographer.

Sissy Spacek (Carrie White) and Piper Laurie (Margaret White) head the cast. Other players include Amy Irving (Sue Snell), William Katt (Tommy Ross), Betty Buckley (Miss Collins), Nancy Allen (Chris Hargensen), John Travolta (Billy Nolan), P.J. Soles (Norma Watson), Sydney Lassick (Mr. Fromm), Stefan Gierasch (Mr. Martin), Michael Talbott (Freddy DeLois), Doug Cox (The Beak) and Rory Stevens (Kenny).

Sissy Spacek, Linda Blair and Melanie Griffith all auditioned for the role of Carrie. But it was Spacek who came loaded for horror movie bear, showing up at the audition with her face unwashed, Vaseline rubbed into her unruly hair and wearing an old cutoff sailor dress from her grade school days.  

Carrie Filmed in California

Budgeted at $1.8 million, Carrie was filmed from May to July 1976 during American bicentennial fever. Palisades (California) High School along with Pier Avenue Junior High in Hermosa Beach, California, served as the fictional Bates High School. Other Golden State locations included Santa Paula, San Fernando, Farmer John’s Pig Mural in Vernon and Culver City Studios, the latter of which was used to shoot interior scenes.

One of the movie’s principal props was a model of the White family home, which was eventually burned down when the special effects crew couldn’t “stone” it to death as called for in the script. Also employed was a boss 1967 Chevelle SS 396, driven by John Travolta’s creepy character Billy.

Carrie: Horror at Bates High School

Carrie opens at a high school gym class, where the girls are playing volleyball. The athletically inept Carrie White loses the game for her side and is ridiculed by her classmates. In the showers, Carrie experiences her first menstrual period, inviting more derision from the girls who toss tampons and tell her to “plug it up.”

While talking to Miss Collins, the sympathetic PE teacher, Carrie experiences a hint of her hidden telekinetic powers when a light bulb suddenly explodes. A similar event takes place in the principal’s office, with a cigarette-laden ashtray blowing up in Carrie’s presence.

Margaret White, Carrie’s mother, ominously decked out in black, is making the rounds in the neighborhood, evangelizing and passing out religious tracts. Making a donation of $10 is Mrs. Snell, Sue’s mom, with Margaret telling her, “I pray you find Jesus.”

Feeling sorry for the ostracized Carrie, Sue Snell asks her jock boyfriend, Tommy Ross, to take Carrie to the high school prom. Tommy agrees, and over the objections of Mrs. White, the two later head to the festivities where they are crowned prom king and queen. But a cruel joke, rigged by Chris Hargensen and her degenerate boyfriend Billy Nolan, results in a massacre, as an angry Carrie directs her telekinetic powers at her laughing tormentors.

Back home, Mrs. White, in a religious frenzy, stabs her daughter while they pray. Knives begin flying from kitchen drawers and cabinets, piercing Mrs. White and pinning her to the doorway. The White home then self-destructs in a telekinetic holocaust, with flames consuming both mother and daughter.

Carrie Release and Reviews

Carrie opened in movie theaters on November 3, 1976.

“The newest film by Brian De Palma, who is often wrong but not dull, is billed as a horror movie…It isn’t frightening at all until the very end, and then it is briefly and extremely frightening,” reported Richard Eder of The New York Times (11/17/76).

Film Analysis: Carrie the Prom Date from Heck

Stephen King’s high school days must have been terrible, as all of his novels and short stories dealing with those “fun years” are filled with horror and misery. Carrie of course kicked off King’s novelistic plunge into high school darkness, giving his readers and movie fans a little taste of what was to follow down that long, long supernatural road.

Sissy Spacek is both humorous and deadly in the title role, fending off a religious nut for a mother as well as a pack of high school hotties who get their sick kicks in tormenting her. Piper Laurie is literally a scream as the crazed Margaret White, who distastefully recounts her first sexual experience with Carrie’s father, Ralph, who had ”whiskey on his breath.”

Carrie’s classmates are about what you might encounter at any given high school, an eclectic mix of jocks, freaks, gearheads, teases and the odd sociopath. Nancy Allen and John Travolta ably fill the latter category, rigging a bucket of pig blood at the senior prom and dropping it on the unsuspecting queen Carrie White. P.J. Soles garners a nice role as a spacey chick wearing an omnipresent red baseball cap who later winds up on the wrong end of an errant fire hose.

High school kids, especially those from small towns, often complain that they are bored and that “there’s nothing to do.” Take someone like Carrie White to the prom, youngsters, and boredom will be the least of your problems.

Carrie Box Office, Oscar Nominations, Notes, DVD

• Carrie grossed $15.208 million at the American box office, earning the #16 position on the list of the top moneymaking films of 1976.
• Academy Award nominations: Best Actress (Spacek), Best Supporting Actress (Laurie).
• Bates High School’s prom theme: “Love Among the Stars.”
• Prom band: Vance or Towers, who perform “Education Blues.”
• Bates High School is home of the Stingers.
• John Travolta drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon beer in his SS 396 muscle car while Martha and the Vandellas croon “Heat Wave.”
• Carrie consults a library book regarding her telekinetic powers titled The Science Behind Miracles.
• The pig’s blood used in the film was actually Karo syrup and food coloring.
• The word “Mama,” as mouthed by Sissy Spacek, hasn’t gotten so much use since the heyday of TV’s The Waltons (1972-81).
• Rory Stevens, who plays Kenny, appeared as little Chuckie Murdock in three episodes of TV’s Leave It To Beaver (1957-63).
• Among those playing 1976 teenagers in Carrie, with their real birthdates duly noted: Sissy Spacek (12/25/49), Amy Irving (9/10/53), John Travolta (2/18/54), William Katt (2/16/51), Nancy Allen (6/24/50), P.J. Soles (7/17/50). They must have been permanently delegated to the “dumb” row.
• Sequel: The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999); TV remake: Carrie (2002); Broadway production: Carrie: The Musical (1998).
• On DVD: Carrie Special Edition (MGM, 2001).

“If You’ve Got a Taste For Terror…Take Carrie To The Prom,” one of the movie’s blurbs entices.

No thanks, we’re going out to the lake and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon beer instead…