The original "Carrie" (1976)

I also love the weird scene where Chris (Nancy Allen) appears to go down on Billy Nolan (John Travolta). He moans in ecstasy, and we only see his upper half; but somehow she still manages to talk (did she only go below his waist to give him a hand job?): "Billy... oh, Billy... Billy... IBilly... HATE Carrie White!" "HUNH???"

I love, too, that Chris is just pure evil. She wants to humiliate Carrie so brutally, mostly because she's annoying.

I don't know if I'm right, but I don't agree with your interpretation of that scene with Sue, Tommy, and Miss Collins. I think Tommy is hesitant still to bring Carrie, and doesn't fully understand why Sue wants him to do it. His responses to Collins are much less sure than Sue's. As I recall, Miss Collins says "She's not even gonna agree to go!" and Sue says "Well, with a little persuading we can take care of that." And Tommy is like "Ok, whatever, I guess."

But they do snicker when Miss Collins is not looking, as if something were up between them.

Later it becomes clear that Sue 100% asked Tommy to take Carrie to the prom only because she feels so guilty about treating Carrie so badly during the shower incident. but at this point in the movie, it's not entirely clear. It increases the suspense in a really cool way.

Oh interesting. I guess one would only pick that up on the very first viewing, and I've seen it a million times.

It DOES leave a pretty big plot hole. How the fuck does the Nancy Allen character know Carrie is going to be at the prom when Tommy hasn't even asked her yet?

That's another thing--that plot hole suggests Sue is in on the conspiracy and told Chris.

It really misleads you that Tommy is out to get her too, up until Sue sees Chris about to pull the rope.

But then the hole is left exposed and unfilled. Sue and Chris appear to execute their plans simultaneously, but for Chris to even come up with her plain, it would require her knowing that not only was Carrie going to be at the prom, but that she'd be escorted by the most popular boy in school and likely Prom King.

I mean, I guess one can assume that when Chris is blowing John Travolta, she ONLY knows she's going to "get" Carrie somehow with his help, and later formulates her plan when she learns Carrie is going to the prom. But I think that's way too much logistical gymnastics expected of the audience to justify the soundness of the plot.

How many people did Carrie actually kill that night?

Had to have been around 70. Assuming everyone in the gym burned alive.

[quote] I mean, I guess one can assume that when Chris is blowing John Travolta, she ONLY knows she's going to "get" Carrie somehow with his help, and later formulates her plan when she learns Carrie is going to the prom.

That's the actual logic of it if you reason it out later.

But that's part of the brilliance of the film,. When Tommy comes to pick Carrie up, you still think he may be on the cruel conspiracy.

In the book, both the principal and Miss Collins survive (but they resign from the school), and Sue is scapegoated when there's an investigation into the massacre.

I think Tommy was simply embarrassed by the situation, he and Suzy didn't know what was going to happen so why would they snicker?

Whet to William Katt?

Re: Carrie's bodycount.

Actually, Sue Snell is the sole survivor of the senior class. Not sure if the novel spells it out, but it's estimated that the senior class, plus facility is around 135. Plus Carrie's mom, so 136.

Carrie was way more successful than any real life school killer situation. I'm glad that exists only in fiction.

I think Sue really shows the regret in her face when Miss Collins lays into all the girls about the tampon throwing. I never got the feeling she was out to get Carrie after that. Chris , on the other hand, was a cunt.

Ok another correction:

In the HORRIBLE sequel Carrie 2: The Rage, Sue states that 73 people died in the gym that night.

So 73 plus Chris, Billy, Margaret White, and Carrie herself you've got 77.

The pan across the gym in Carrie shows way more than 73 people, but it's stated in Carrie 2 that some people got out, which was never my understanding.

Carrie 2 sucks, but if you're going on the MGM/UA canon it's 77 souls.

I love, love, love the film. In the book though, Carrie goes on a rampage through the town so the body count is way higher.

Wrote this elsewhere but try to find the special on the "Carrie" DVD where Amy Irving is really charming and funny (who knew), especially when she talks about how, unlike popular memory, the shower scene was NOT the first scene in the movie but instead it was a volleyball game. And the whole cast of girls got out there and realized nobody knew how to get the ball over the net. They finally put the best of the worst up front by the net and you'll notice they worked the shot to get past them all quickly so someone could just toss the ball to Carrie to miss.

It's funny to imagine everyone looking around, asking "Anyone know how to play?"

P.J. Soles was actually unconscious in the climatic gymnasium/prom scene. The force of the water hose broke her eardrum.

R17 I don't believe there is any suggestion in the movie that Carrie goes on a rampage through the town. We see her walking home, and she explodes the car with Chris and Billy. As far as the movie audience knows, those are the only two she kills from the gym to her soon-to-be-ashes house.

It's weird. William Katt was cast as the hot hunk.

However, he went on to play ultimate dork in The Greatest American Hero. I can't even imagine thinking he's hot based on that.

I wonder whether his career might have been bigger. Very few people from that era who were typecast (like the Trek actors or the original BSG actors) even had meaningful careers afterwards outside those roles.

Carrie 1976 - Prom Scene HD

R21 Blonde dudes can age quickly.

That gym sure did like to slap those high school girls around.

I love that the PJ Soles character wears her red baseball cap to prom.

Gym teacher liked to slap the girls around, is what I meant to say.

R25 She also wore it in the beauty parlor scene. She put it on top of the hair dryer.

[quote]Actually, Sue Snell is the sole survivor of the senior class. Not sure if the novel spells it out, but it's estimated that the senior class, plus facility is around 135. Plus Carrie's mom, so 136

In the novel, some seniors did survive and it was mentioned in newspaper article format that the class valedictorian broke down during his speech and couldn't finish.

Katt's look was perfect for the mid- to late-Seventies when that angelic blond twink look was in vogue (see also Chris Atkins in "The Blue Lagoon"), but by the mid 80s, that look was going out of fashion.

I'm probably in the minority, but for some odd reason I liked like 2002 TV movie remake more than the 2013 remake.

I kind of liked how the 2002 remake was based more on the book with the investigation into prom night.

[quote]r6 But then the hole is left exposed and unfilled.

Yeah, well, get in line.

Tommy snickers out of awkwardness. Sue doesn't snicker in the scene op is describing. Sue has the idea to get Carrie to go to the prom as a way of making up for what she did in the lockeroom. Tommy is just a dumb-ish jock who is going along with what his girlfriend wants. '

If you watch the scene where Miss Collins chews them out for what they did Amy Irving looks incredibly guilty. (and later tells Nancy Allen to shut up just shut up.)

[quote] Tommy snickers out of awkwardness. Sue doesn't snicker in the scene op is describing.

No, but Norma, the PJ Soles character, does, and he snickers back at her. At that point you don't know that Norma doesn't know yet, and you'te wodering if Tommy and Norman are in on a secret together.

My point is not that the movie misleads you entirely into thinking Sue and/or Tommy are in on the conspiracy. It's just that it makes it confusing so you're not sure entirely who is and is not in on it as it progresses.

there is a cool video on youtube of a benefit Nancy Allen held for a cancer foundation she founded in the name of her I Wanna Hold Your Hand co-star Wendie Jo Sperber.

Piper Laurie and a few cast members are there but Nancy talks the most.

She says that John Travolta was such a nice guy he had trouble slapping her in the car scene. Even the one the used in the final cut is kind of half hearted. She then jokes how Betty Buckley (see r33) had no problem hitting her and put her full force into it.

(that screening must have been so cool. At the moment when Carrie starts using the power at the prom the theater put their emergency lights on so people were sitting there in red light just like in the film.)

Piper Laurie did a truly great job in this movie. She said she thought it was a dark comedy when she first read the script because her character was so over-the-top.

Yes r34. I see your point. I guess on a first viewing seeing it cold you would sort of wonder about Sue's motives. Plus it needs to be believable that Betty Buckley believes Sue is in on it because of the way she throws her out of the gym right before the blood spill. That part is always so heartbreaking. You just want to scream to Miss Collins Listen to her!! Look under the stairs!!!

Betty Buckley does seem like the slapping type. Must have been all of that nose candy she was inhaling.

I wonder if her nickname was Slappy.

Or Slap Happy?

Yes r36 her biography details it. Her husband was a film critic for the Village Voice and knew The Phantom of the Paradise. He told her DePalma does campy comedies. Then she went to the first rehearsal and was shocked at how seriously Spacek was playing the scene. She then went home and called her husband and said I don't think this is a comedy. So she pulled back a little but still kept some of the campy elements and a brilliant performance was born.

(btw that story reminds me of Saffy's play in AbFab where the actors decide mid-show-----its a comedy!!!)

Buckley had no problem being bitchy it seems from the stories Amy Irving tells on AMC's making of Carrie. Irving says she was carpooling with Buckley and told her all her problems.

Then DePalma took Buckley aside and said he was worried the actresses wouldn't be able to be emotional enough in the scene so he wanted Buckley to insult them personally to really make them cry. Irving jokes that Buckley knew just what buttons to push.

Even the slap of Nancy Allen seems organic. I'm not sure if that is acting. Allen seems really upset by the slap and bursts into tears.

R39 Slappy Betty? Buckley The Girl Beater? Coke-ee The Girl Slapper? Midnight and the sound of Buckley's hands slamming against a young woman's face. Eight slaps is enough!!! No tender mercies coming from this cat!

20 takes. And Slaps has the gall to blame the VICTIM!

Stand still while I slap you!

I think Carrie is a fantastic film. De Palma did an amazing job directing this film and Spacek and Laurie were absolutely brilliant.

The Prom scene is one of my all-time favourite scenes in any movie. The acting, writing, directing, editing, scoring are all top-notch. The build-up to Chris dropping the bucket it so intense and suspenseful. Bernard Herrmann's scoring at its best. Every time I watch it, I still think that Betty Buckley will discover Chris under the stairs. I love how after the bucket falls, it's all from Carrie's perspective. Those years of being bullied and taunted come rushing back and cloud her judgment. As the viewer, though, we know a lot of them are NOT laughing. PJ Soles' character, for sure, was laughing - and it seems was the first to laugh. I don't think any were laughing but a few were. But I love how we are in Carrie's head at that exact moment.

Also, the scene post-prom where Sissy Spacek is taking a bath and is all alone is just... sad. You feel bad for her even after she has killed her own classmates.

'Walking In Space' from the 1979 movie 'Hair'.

It is actually Betty Buckley singing while a young woman lip syncs over her voice. Buckley has a beautiful voice.

[quote]r46 Buckley has a beautiful voice.

Slaps Buckley in the musical CARRIE

R45 Spacek and Laurie did a great job and the theme of bullying, being pushed and finally getting revenge really resonated with teen audiences.

Stephen King said he based Carrie on two girls he went to school with. One had a very controlling mother who made her daughter's life hell and the second one was an outcast girl who, anytime she tried to fit in was met with, as King put it, "even more vicious reprisals. Particularly from the other girls."

I guess the first girl died of a seizure while in her 20s and the second girl shot herself in the head while in the throes of postpartum depression while in her 20s.

R47 Buckley was in a musical version of 'Carrie'????

Are you even gay??

It was a huge, notorious Broadway bomb, though the two leads were superb.

don't mean to be pedantic but Bernard Herman didn't do the score to Carrie. It was Pino Dagio. (not sure if I got the spelling right there. )

The 2002 remake was so weird. I thought they were starting from scratch, but they literally lifted at least a dozen shots from the DePalma version. It was much longer, so there was more to it, but it seemed like much dialogue and direction was duplicated from 1976. Not quite Van Sant's Psycho remake, but quite surprising to me.

LOOK! Look how similar this is to DePalma! They must have made some kind of deal.

I'm one of the lucky few who saw a preview of Carrie on Broadway with La Buckley before it closed. Really crazy shit. LeRoy from Fame played the Travolta part.

Oops you're right r51. I was mixing it up with Obsession released the same year, also directed by De Palma.

Sorry, Pino!

Chris Hargensen is the cuntiest high-school mean girl in movie history.

R50 I hereby turn in my gay card, okay? Buckley must have been in dire need of a paycheck.

The 2002 version was actually a pilot for a series. At the end Sue and Carrie would flee the town and try to clear her Carrie's name (and probably have more telekinetic incidents)

That is why in that version Carrie goes into a kind of stupor and doesn't seem to be actually killing the people. It was supposed to be some involuntary stress reaction. (best they didn't make it a series!)

They used the script from the 1976 version too. None of this dialogue is in the book. It's all lifted. I couldn't figure out at the time why no one was noticing this but me. haha.

[quote] Buckley must have been in dire need of a paycheck.

The musical actually started at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford Upon Avon with Barbara Cook in the lead.

Buckley had been offered it first but says she couldn't come to a financial deal so they offered it to Barbara Cook as her big return to the theater. It got terrible reviews in England and Cook quit.

It was then booked for Broadway without a lead so they came back to Buckley. She knew the writers from the film and Dean Pitchford (of Fame Fame) she knew from when she played opposite him in Pippin on Broadway.

They begged her to take over since the show would close without her. Buckley agreed and be all accounts the show got much better with her in it. The Carrie/mother scenes were supposed to be really thrilling. (but the rest bombed.) The head of JuJamcyn always says he thinks they could have made it into a cult hit and kept it running nowadays but back then they just didn't have enough money saved up.

the part that always touches me is how Carrie is alone in the library trying to research "miracles" and then discovers telekinesis

I guess it rings true for gay people. I know I spent time looking up stuff in the library trying to figure myself out. (this was pre-internet childhood.---those Libraries were important.)

[quote]r54 I'm one of the lucky few who saw a preview of Carrie on Broadway with La Buckley before it closed. Really crazy shit. LeRoy from Fame played the Travolta part.

I have ticket stubs someone from Rants & Raves on Craigslist sent me when I was lamenting never seeing it : (

[quote]r57 I hereby turn in my gay card, okay?

I felt bad after posting that.

(Then I got right on with my evening without apologizing, of course.) [italic] (Typical!)

This is the actress (Betsy Slade) Brian De Palma first envisioned in the role of Carrie - but Spacek's screen test was better.

There is a kid on YouTube who did a comparison of the 2002 to the 1976. He honestly, earnestly likes the 2002 better. Crazy sauce.

At the end of the novel doesn't one of Carrie's family members demonstrate telekinetic powers?

R66 Yes

Do you remember who it was R67?

I'm not sure it's a relative. It's just a little girl in a trailer park, or somewhere.

remember the wonder remake starring Chloe Morritz and Julianne Moore?

Julianne Moore must have hated that remake. She did no press for it and I've never heard her discuss it anywhere.

Yes r69. It is just some other little girl who has the power.

In The Rage: Carrie 2 it is supposed to be an inherited trait. That girl is Carrie's half sister who he fathered after a night of filthy roadhouse whiskey I guess.

You don't have to say you love me but at least get my fucking name right

it is not a "gay cult classic."

Travolta, from what I've read, was a class act back in his heyday. He doesn't seem that way now. I've seen a few recent interviews where he was CLEARLY not in the mood.

[quote] It was Pino Dagio.

Lay off the filthy roadhouse whiskey, R51!

R30 Wow, thought I was the only one who remembered the 2002 remake. Iirc, it aired on NBC and I agree it wasn't bad.

I watched this when I was way too young and the cruelty Carrie endured profoundly effected me. I couldn’t understand the almost gleeful spite inflicted on this poor girl. I hadn’t been bullied myself yet but I must’ve known on some deep level that I was different and would maybe have a similar treatment in store for me down the road. Thankfully my high school experience was actually (largely) ok, all things considered. But it wasn’t the hand out of the grave that gave me nightmares- it was the taunting and bullying that did it for me.

I always thought Chris just assumed Carrie would go to the prom, because she assumed everyone was going and she would be the only one left out. Chris had no idea about Carrie's home life or that her mother would probably forbid her to go.

Who did Chris imagine would take Carrie to the Prom?

I always struggled with why Chris wanted her boyfriend to take Carrie to the prom. Even if her motives were good, wouldn't she understand that doing that would really just be toying with Carrie? Assuming Carrie didn't burn the gym down that night and just went home after the prom, what did Chris think would happen at school the next week?

Carrie would have developed a crush on Tommy and would have been heartbroken, because he'd reject her and still be with Chris. Always seemed kind of cruel to me.

Does the book explain the motivation behind Chris having Tommy take Carrie to the prom any better than the movie did?

Do you mean Sue, R81?

R82 Sorry, yes. Sue.

You think she thought about it that much, R81? Chris was completely self-obsessed and internalized every last little thing. Everything was about her and about prom, so she assumed Carrie was out to ruin her life (she wasn't) and that Carrie was going to prom (she wasn't, not at first).

She's not operating on logic, just narcissistic emotion.

R84 I meant Sue, not Chris. Sorry. Of course, everyone understood Chris' motivations. She was a cunty bitch.

Oh, that was my mistake -- I was addressing PattiFan at R80 with my post at R84. Sorry about that.

Sue's motives are clear. Teenagers have very binary thinking. Fact is, it was the senior prom, they would all soon graduate, and it was unlikely that any of them would ever see each other again. Sue wanted to give Carrie a great night with a cute boy to atone for what she did to Carrie both in the locker room, and for what Carrie had to endure for four years in high school. Makes perfect sense, and I could imagine it playing out in real life pretty easily.

May I have a sidebar, your honor?

When did people start saying "going to prom" instead of "going to the prom"? I kind of hate the new way it's said, partly because I think the first time I heard it was on that show MTV show Rich Girls with Tommy Hilfiger's idiot daughter.

Any way in Carrie it is certainly THE prom. Not chiding anyone here, just a really dumb pet peeves of mine.

r88, mine as well.

Okay, well, I'm confused, PattiFan. I mentioned Chris at R79 and I thought you were asking me "Who did Chris think Carrie was taking to prom?"

My answer was that she wasn't thinking that far ahead at all, just making assumptions. Assumptions that wouldn't have panned out, ironically, if Sam hadn't decided to be nice to her.

If we're talking about Sue's motives, they are less clear, but personally I think it was just misguided sympathy from a teenager who didn't understand how privileged she was in comparison to Carrie.

The Carrie musical played in LA for several months a few years ago. It was great! We got the closest available seats, which were on bleachers surrounding the stage. At some tense point in the first act, the bleachers started moving. People behind them were pushing them around to “zoom in” on certain scenes and pull back on others. It was really fun. They had parts of the theater that you could walk through mocked up like the locker room and pig farm. The music was not pretty good, and it was not as campy as I thought it’d be. Overall I loved it.

Sorry, the music was pretty good, not not pretty good.

William Katt is quite good in the filmed version of "Pippin."

Doesn't anybody remember Katt and Nancy Allen's roles in "Circuit?" Ostensibly a gay movie, Katt and Allen, just by being them, were the most interesting part of the film.

William Katt was great in the horror/black comedy movie House. Also starring Bull from Night Court.

"Carrie" has this foreboding feeling to it the entire film that DePalma (not a favorite director of mine) manages to sustain the entire time. King's book doesn't have it as much as it keeps getting broken up by letters, book excerpts and police reports. But you know nothing is going to end well and it doesn't for anybody.

[quote]King's book doesn't have it as much as it keeps getting broken up by letters, book excerpts and police reports.

I HATED the book for this very reason.

King tried to make the book like Dracula, with newspaper clippings, and legal documents and stuff. He wasn't entirely sucessful. But he sure created a character and story that will resonate down through the ages.

Which is why it really sticks out that the 2002 movie lifts dialogue directly from the 1976 movie. There isn't much dialogue in the book at all.

R90 I was responding to someone else who said Sue's motives weren't clear to them.

R90 I hear you on Chris, but I don't agree. Chris would realize she'd never seen Carrie out at parties, or dances. That Carrie stayed home. I just don't see that she would assume that A) Carrie would be going to the prom, and B) she'd go with a guy who was likely to be elected prom king.

But, again, I hear you.

Sue spells it out with the chubby girl as they are decorating for the prom. Prompting the chubby girl to greet and be extra nice to Carrie when she arrives. Making up for the mean act.

I wish I could find a copy of William Katt's lead with Susan Dey in "First Love". I had such a crush on him then but he got marketed as a young Redford (right down to a sequel to Sundance Kid, I think) and he didn't have that gravitas. He was perfect as the cute nerd in "Hero" instead. (You can see him older but still cute in "Twin Falls, Idaho").

In high school there was ALWAYS the popular girl who decided to be kind of the outcast. Sue was (is) a known quantity.

The obnoxious bike kid that yells Creepy Carrie and gets knocked over by Carrie is Brian DePalma's son but weirdly he was dubbed by Betty Buckley.

#metoo R88. It was always “THE prom” in my day (70s and 80s) now when people drop “THE” is sounds so stupid.

Edie McClurg was fat and ugly and wore glasses, how was she even in Chris’s orbit??

R107, there's always one unattractive hanger-on who inexplicably ends up with the popular crowd.

Though you do get McClurg's wickedly evil laugh moment at the beauty parlor so clearly, she had something Chris liked.

R106 Right? You go to THE hospital, you don't go to hospital.

I hate it, and I hate anyone who says it. Which means every single person under 25 years old, which actually sounds about right.

[quote]King tried to make the book like Dracula, with newspaper clippings, and legal documents and stuff. He wasn't entirely sucessful. But he sure created a character and story that will resonate down through the ages.

He also had a bunch of continuity errors in the book. This wikia page has a list of them

r88 Chiming in as yet another one who fucking cringes when I hear (or read) "Going to prom", instead of "Going to the prom". Though I suppose it does work well as an age identifier, as noted by r109.

Get off my *the*!

Great thread OP, thanks!

The IMDb page says there was no shower of stones at the end of the 1976 version, but I swear the house had some stones fall on the house and then it caught on fire- or am I confusing it with the other versions?

Ughh this film makes me feel bad. I hate it !

The prom scene before the fire really upset me as a teen. The making fun of Carrie upset me, as I was made fun of a lot as a kid and it resonated. Very few films show just how nasty kids are, even if the actors were all noticeably older than high school age.

r112, there was a flashback filmed of young Carrie and the shower of stones, but it was cut out, thus giving a confusing continuity to the stones falling through the ceiling at the end.

See "Notes and Trivia" at the link:

[quote]Mostly due to limited budget, several aspects from the original script were changed such as:

[quote]Young Carrie In the original ending, Carrie is visited by Sue after she kills her mother and comfronts her. Sue than witnesses the house crumbling from the rain of stones. The incidents of the rain of stones in both the past, when Carrie was a child, and in the present, when she destroys her house. Both scenes were cut.

Edie was also a 40 year old teenager. And a total bitch in real life.

[quote] [R106] Right? You go to THE hospital, you don't go to hospital.

In the UK, you go to hospital.

And you go to school, not “the school.”

Gotta love the DL. Only here will a discussion about a movie from the 70s turn into a debate over an article (the)!!

Betty Lynn slapped the fuck out of Nancy Allen as she wanted to get her claws into De Palma, Nancy bet her to his cock, so she slammed her with the slap, this came out on the last thread on Carrie

R118 that's bullshit. Because one can be "schooled." One cannot be "promed."

No cock but Amy Irving tells the story about how she shared heartache issues with Betty on the way to the set one day -- and then Betty later used them out loud in a scene to get a reaction from Amy. What a bitch.

[quote]Carrie goes to John's in Westover to buy material for her prom dress. But later, when Frieda asks her where she has bought it Carrie says that she has made it herself and that she has bought the material for it at John's in Andover (pg. 135).

The lying little [italic]bitch.

McClurg was 30 or 31 at the time of filming. She was born in 1945.

I always liked this book and film but didn't it look like the budget was about $5K?

I think the low budget adds to the film's effectiveness. The aura of cheap exploitation belies the fact that we're actually in the hands of quite a great director. You've got hot, sexually active teens, (literally) buckets of blood, and a girl with secret, magic powers. And we end up being devestated by the story.

To the person who was unaware of Betty Lynn's stage work- listen and learn, my fellow gay.

Stick with it to the end. Trust me.

In the novel there are some survivors of the the prom (Sue Snell is nowhere near the prom; she's home alone); some students and faculty escape through the "back fire doors." One of the surviving faculty members is Miss Desjardin. The only injury that she suffers is a bloody nose. She rushes towards Carrie to help her but Carrie, due to her heightened awareness, sees that inside Ms. Desjardin is as amused by her bloody appearance as everybody else there (the whole student body erupts in hysterical laughter at the sight of the blood drenched Carrie) and telekinetically strikes out at her, punching her in the nose.

I always thought killing Ms. Desjardin off in the movie was dumb. It served no purpose and didn't add anything to the story, and it made Carrie look like a mindless killer who even kills people who are nice to her.

John Travolta starred in his first breakthrough film role with Betty Buckley. The woman who would go on to replace Travolta's deceased first love, Diana Hyland, as the mother on the show, Eight Is Enough.

Oh the irony. Hollywood truly is a small town.

R129 'deceased first love'..........jesus idiots still buy that bullshit fantasy?

I was being polite to Travolta and respectful to the late Ms. Hyland R130.

We all know what is implied when a hot, young male star who can have any woman he wants opts for an older woman.

And what is there to "buy"? Travolta has not been the "it" guy for a very long time and Ms. Hyland passed away a very long time ago. Nobody even remembers these two, or Travolta's on-screen weeping when he collected Hyland's Emmy for her.

R132 The three of us remember them, and the fantasy fuck bollocks

Another Betty Buckley masterpiece from her Broadway career:

I thought killing off the teacher in Carrie was effective in the film. Remember in the prom scene, everything is from Carrie's perspective. She is in shock, thinking that everyone is laughing at her but her perception is warped because her life of bullying and the trauma she has suffered is clouding her judgment.

Carrie sees red and she's had enough of the bullying and her powers overwhelm her. It's like she's in a catatonic state (which Spacek did so brilliantly).

I thought what happened in the novel was more believable. After the pig blood is dumped on Carrie, the group assembled at the prom is at first stunned in shock; somebody starts to laugh and then that starts everybody laughing. A survivor admits she laughed too, and explained it this way; after seeing something so horrible it either "laugh or cry, and who could bring himself to cry over Carrie after all those years?" Having Carrie hallucinate the prom goers laughing (except for the detestable P. J. Soles character) and then killing them all just made Carrie seem murderous and crazy. In the novel, she had just cause to want to kill everybody at the prom; in the movie she has no cause at all.

When Phoebe Waller Bridge (writer of Fleabag and Killing Eve) was asked what her favorite period film is her answer was Carrie.

"It's weird. William Katt was cast as the hot hunk."

I wouldn't call him a "hunk," but he was beautiful and sexy in that Roger Daltrey-ish way.

I think Katt was well cast here. He had nice chemistry with Spacek and he had a great smile. You could see why Carrie would grow to feel comfortable with him.

I like the ambiguity of Tommy and Carrie's scenes at the prom. There's a sense that he is kind of falling for her.

I agree R139. In the Carrie musical, there's a big number where Carrie sings about her growing feelings for Tommy at the prom (I think maybe it's called Unsuspecting Hearts, not sure tho) and Tommy gets a verse where he expresses he's having feelings for Carrie, and like, what the hell is going on??

She looked beautiful at the prom. And, he found her not to be weird, but shy and endearingly nervous. Tommy for sure had budding feelings for her, and he invites her to an after-prom party, which I'm sure had been unthinkable to him just an hour before.

I loved that she killed that dumb fuck principal.

Picture it: 1983. A Saturday night in Clark, New Jersey. I was almost 13, just at the age when my parents stopped hiring baby sitters for me and my sister and paid me 50 cents an hour to watch her.

It was at my grandparent's house, and everyone had gone out for dinner. My sister was in another room watching TV. At that point, my grandparents had cable, and we didn't, and Carrie was on Showtime. I really didn't know anything about it, except it was a horror movie, and rated R. I wasn't allowed to watch it, but of course, I did.

I was in junior high at the time, and picked on and bullied very badly. Every goddamned day of my life. Actually, one of the worst cases of bullying I know of was me. It hadn't been so bad in grammar school, and later in high school it pretty much abated, but from grades 7 to 9 my life was pretty hellish on a day-to-day basis. And home life was no respite either.

I sat there, alone in my grandparents bedroom growing more and more upset watching Carrie go through all that. I have never felt as much empathy for a fictional character in my life. I completely, and I mean completely understood what Carrie White was going though, in a way that I don't think I even can now as an adult.

As the prom plot is revealed, I'm seething with anger at the students. I'm sitting there rageful at what they're about to do. I can't even comprehend it. As empathetic as I felt for Carrie, I felt just as much anger at her classmates. I'd never, before or since, been in such thrall of a movie. Imagine, the way Brian De Palma edited the movie- and the music, I'm on the edge of my seat, brimming with anger and pity. I was completely in De Palma's ... uh... palm. He HAD me. Sue realizes what's going on, the music, the editing, she tries to tell Miss Collins, but gets thrown out. I think I shouted "No!" out loud when that happened. And then the blood came.

(Continued below)

I don't think I fully understood about Carrie's powers up to that point. I remember gasping when she, covered in pig's blood, looked up and slammed the doors shut with her mind, to the sound of those quick Psycho violin screeches. Then, watching it at 12 years old, what got me was the sound. There's a split screen, and Carrie looks at the lights overhead, and turns them RED- it was the sudden electrical hum of those red lights, Carrie realizes her full power, and what she was going to do with her full power. I swear to God, my heart had been racing right up to that point- but that low pitched hum sound that started when the red lights went on caused a sudden and complete calm come over me.

I sat there and watched Carrie's carnage not with any sense at all of "GET 'EM!" but each time she killed someone, or turned the hose on someone, or made the place go up in flames, I very calmly thought "good." "good." "good." "good." I believe Miss Collins' death shocked me somewhat out of that, but basically that was my feeling until she flipped Chris and Billy's car- what THAT happened, I stood up and CHEERED.

Then the end. I had no idea what was coming. I'd been pretty freaked out by Carrie's mother, and seeing the fire around that INSANE statue of Jesus with the glowing white eyes. Finally the house was gone and we saw Sue's dream. Holy fuck. I must have jumped up ten feet in that bed. Nothing, NOTHING in my life has ever scared me as much as Carrie's hand coming up from those rocks. I sat there soundless, motionless though the credits. Into the preview for the next movie. I was paralyzed with fear. I think maybe after fifteen minutes, I got up the courage to get up from the bed, leave the room and check on my sister.

That is my Carrie story and how wonderful to be COMPLETELY manipulated by a movie in the way a master like Brian De Palma intended. I think there's a short window when we're young, and we understand things, but haven't seen too many movies yet, where you can be so completely manipulated by a director. I also had the pleasure of seeing Psycho at around the same age and Hitchcock did it to me too.

By the way, not sure if any of you would, but please don't feel bad for me about the bullying stuff. As I said above, it basically stopped in high school, and I joined the drama department, did the plays, won awards, ect. I know, a typical story, but whaddaya gonna do?

Oh, and while Carrie's violence was very cathartic for me at the time, on that night in 1982, I've always been non-violent. Never even been in a fight.

I taped Carrie off that HDmovie channel last week. I just watched it again. They aired the 2002 version right after it but sadly I didn't realize that so I didn't tape it. The original airs again tonight.

I watched that scene op mentions very closely and Amy Irving never snickers. Tommy does when Norma comes in and won't leave until Miss Collins tells her to go.

There is a continuity problem in that Nancy Allen is planning the attack before Tommy gets Carrie to agree to go to the prom. I guess you could assume that Norma figured it out or heard gossip as to why Miss Collins is meeting with Sue and Tommy and she told Chris. But that is just me trying to justify the continuity problem perhaps.

Funny thing is Travolta gives the worse performance in the film and he became the biggest star. He's sort of hammy and over the top a lot.

Thanks for sharing that PattiFan/r142-3. Very beautifully expressed. My experience was much like yours although maybe not so cathartic. I desperately wanted Carrie's powers after seeing the movie so I could make my tormenters suffer the way they'd made me suffer. It wasn't until I went away to college that I slowly started to trust people again.

[quote]"It's weird. William Katt was cast as the hot hunk."

Not really. He was a hunk. God, you people watch too much porn.

Smelling of whiskey....

I should've killed myself when he put it in me. After the first time, before we were married, Ralph promised never again. He promised, and I believed him. But sin never dies. Sin never dies. At first, it was all right. We lived sinlessly. We slept in the same bed, but we never did it. And then, that night, I saw him looking down at me that way. We got down on our knees to pray for strength. I smelled the whiskey on his breath. Then he took me. He took me, with the stink of filthy roadhouse whiskey on his breath, and I liked it. I liked it! With all that dirty touching of his hands all over me. I should've given you to God when you were born, but I was weak and backsliding, and now the devil has come home. We'll pray

R6 But then the hole is left exposed and unfilled

It was still believable in 1976 that the daughter of a fundamentalist-Christian fanatic would attend a public school. In 2002 or 2013? No way. Home-schooled Carrie would never have even met those bullies.

I was a kid and we all went to a sneak preview on Halloween night before it ever opened so I knew how great it was. Then Rex Reed for The New York Daily news HATED it and claims the screening audience he saw it with hated it too. He then proceeds to tell the entire story including the Mother's death scene. He was traumatized by the shower scene. I wish I could post the whole review to show what a fool he was.

"Carrie" a thoroughly ridiculous sick joke that is now polluting the screens...

Sissy Spacek ..."gives her all but has been so badly directed that her idea of scaring the audience to death seems to be a widening, hypnotic stare that makes her look like a unborn albino crocodile. Piper Laurie , absent from the screen for half a decade slobbers and mumbles her way through the trances of the mother in an embarrassing and incoherent fashion, creeping through doorways like one of the TV Munsters in an advanced state of psychopathic hysteria...

R150 In the 2013 remake it was said that Margaret homeschooled Carrie until the state government intervened and said she had to be placed in a public school.

R151 I was just going to ask if the fact that a girl's menstrual cycle was a major plot point was upsetting to some people. Apparently it was. Very much so, in the case of Reed at least.

R148 It is so refreshing to seem someone appreciate good, old-fashioned morals, especially in this day and age.

Mrs. White obviously didn't believe strongly enough or else she wouldn't have sinned and she wouldn't have been the cause of her husband's sin. That's okay, God smite-ed her in the end. God sees all and He hears all.

Interesting. Surely Rex was a object of ridicule at some point in his childhood. I guess at that point he was too old to get back in touch with it. Watching human cruelty, particularity when expressed so nakedly, is a visceral experience. That mixed with sort of low budget exploitation feel the movie gave must have been a unique experience at the time. Rex wasn't up to it.

I wonder if he ever revisited it in light of it's later acclaim and now near classic status.

I know what OPs talking about. In their discussion with Miss Collins, Sue wants to present a united front with Tommy. Sue's very gung ho about the idea. At some point, Tommy says something that suggests he doesn't fully why Sue wants to do this. She turns to him and chides him for it, at which point he chuckles and says "What? I SAID I'd do it!"

OP thinks that that can be interpreted as a snicker, but I don't see it and I don't believe that was the intent.

Fantastic movie. William Katt was smoking hot.

And we elders, then teens, jumped out of our SKIN during the last scene! It was before audiences had come to expect that sort of surprise.

I used to LOVE showing Carrie to people who hadn't seen it before. They jumped at the hand coming up every time.

R96, yes. I love that movie and it never gets played.

R158 It was late in the evening when I saw 'Carrie' on television for the first time. After it was over I was told to take the garbage out. Out to the dark backyard, near the dark garage where I had to dump the garbage into an dark garbage container. I'm sure you can guess what was going through my mind.

Am I the only one who prefers The Fury to Carrie? I know Carrie is the superior movie, but The Fury is more fun to watch and has a better storyline. It's such a great popcorn movie. DePalma's movies from that era are so damn entertaining and exciting to watch.

R161 I haven't seen The Fury, bit I will now.

I need to give Blow-Out another chance. Nancy Allen's Hooker character is SO stylized... the way she talks I just couldn't buy into. But people do rave about Blow-Out movie to me, so I'll have to give it another chance at some point. I know Pauline Kael just adored it.

Nancy Allen was blousy in many roles; it's her lane.

haha did you mean "lousy" or were you doing a joke there?

R162 "Blow Out" is very underrated. Nancy Allen isn't great in it, but Travolta is, and the ending of the movie is like a gut punch.

[quote] In the novel, she had just cause to want to kill everybody at the prom; in the movie she has no cause at all.

Hon, it's not "just cause" to slaughter people just because they laugh at you.

R166, I think R136 was trying to say her motivation. That she had more of a motive to kill in the novel than she does in the movie. While I think King's description of everyone actually laughing is interesting, I don't think it would've worked for the movie. I don't think it would've been believable.

The way I see the movie, after going through 12 years of torment and misery at the hands of these people, only to then have what appears to be the cruelest prank in the history of the American public education system played on me, was motivation enough for her to flip out and kill everyone.

R157 I was working as an usher at a movie theater complex that showed it. We were required to open the doors as the closing credits of each film would start. It was easy to know when to do that for Carrie because everybody screamed at that scene.

"Hon, it's not "just cause" to slaughter people just because they laugh at you."

Sweetie, the prom incident was just the tip of the iceberg. Carrie was abused and tormented by most, but not all, of her classmates all through her miserable life. Stephen King went into detail about the abuse she took; her peers:" putting peanut butter in her hair when she fell asleep in study hall, the pinches, the legs outstretched in school aisles to trip her up, the books knocked from her desk, the obscene postcard tucked into her purse." She goes to summer camp in a pathetic attempt to belong and fit in; while swimming they shove her head under the water and keep doing it until she starts to scream. After "a thousand practical jokes" had been played on "ol' prayin' Carrie" she comes home from summer camp a week early, "her eyes red and socketed from weeping." After years of this treatment she's humiliated beyond all measure at the the prom and finally snaps, striking out everywhere with her telekinetic power. I'd say she had reason to do so.

The thing with DePalma, if you haven;t seen his previus movies you must see them letterboxed. He is the master of the splitscreen and if it's not widescreen you are really missing half the movie.

so, the candle scene at the end. an expression of Mrs. White’s mental illness and/or funeral foreboding for Carrie?

I remember reading somewhere that DiPalma lifted the killing scene of the mother from a foreign horror film. I don't know if it's true.

R171 Wonder how long it took Mama to light all of those candles. "Damn it! Now my black dress is singed. Shit! I accidentally blew 10 of them out! OH LORD FORGIVE A SINNER HER SINFUL LANGUAGE! WE'LL BE HOME SOON LORD! ME AND CARRIE!"

No wonder poor Carrie didn't have any hip clothes, her Mama spent all of their spare money on candles.

Sue Wants Tommy to Take Carrie to The Prom

"They're all gonna laugh at you!!!"

"I liked it....I LIKED it!!"

I always get a little laugh out of how Mrs. White just barges into Sue's house and puts her purse on some piece of furniture. So rude!

Dirty pillows!

Currently included with Prime Video

The first sin was intercourse.

Actually, the first sin was eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and Good and Evil, which God had specifically prohibited. He had said nothing about intercourse: in fact, in "Paradise Lost," Milton shows Adam and Eve having sex freely and innocently long before Eve eats the apple.

But Margaret White did not seem to know that.

Piper Laurie thought it was a black comedy. DePalma had to tell he no, it was a horror film.

I thought Piper Laurie brought chewing the scenery to the next level. She was way over the top.

I love Priscilla Pointer as Mrs. Snell trying to cope with Margaret White.

"I'll drink to that!"

[quote]Funny thing is Travolta gives the worse performance in the film and he became the biggest star.

I remember hearing back during "Greatest American Hero" that William Katt was kind of a jerk to deal with, which, if true, may explain why his career didn't go very far. But I agree he was hot back in the day.

R183 I thought Piper Laurie delivered a great performance, an underappreciated performance. Think about how hard that part was to play.

I don't think Laurie's performance is underappreciated. It was nominated for an Oscar and it's still being discussed today (hence, here). I do agree with r183 that it was over the top.

She also earned Golden Globe nomination so she did something right.

Some people ARE over the top. Like perhaps a certain actress with the initials J.C.?

The first sin was pride.

I loved the Superstar blue paint parody of Carrie.

I'm the only person here who's met PJ Soles.

Dear OP, you've got the title wrong.

This is the original "Carrie".

I thought Piper Laurie's portrayal of Margaret was the over the top. But, I like it more than Patricia Clarkson or Julianne Moore's portrayals in the remakes. For some weird reason I kept thinking of Clarkson's Margaret portrayal last summer when Sharp Objects was airing.

Watching Clarkson and Moore play that role just reminds you of how brilliant Laurie was. Her performance is most definitely over the top and campy, but you never, for a second, don't believe that she's a real person. She's playing a real human who happens to be a bit much. Clarkson and Moore's performances barely even register in my mind. They were completely forgettable.

I suppose it makes sense that they wanted to go the complete opposite direction, but I found them both lacking menace. I felt like Carrie could take them, whereas Laurie was a big, imposing, psychotic presence. I remember Moore's Margaret just kinda made me sad. She seemed to be suffering from some sort of depression. Clarkson's just seemed like a fun-free schoolmarm.

R192 What was she like?

She was once married to Dennis Quaid.

Piper Laurie's performance was perfect.

She should have won the GG, the Oscar, the SAG, the BAFTA . And a Tony. She was that good!

I remember when TBS had that Dinner and Movie thing years ago they aired Carrie and PJ Soles and her daughter were guests during the dinner segments. The daughter wore a baseball cap like the one PJ wore in the mvoie.

^ I meant to type "movie"

Piper Laurie is pitch perfect in Carrie. Yes, it's not a naturalistic performance, but her over-the-topness worked for the character, and the movie. I give her and DePalma all the credit in the world for going for it, and having it pay off in spades.

Piper has plenty of quiet moments too so it all works. She and Jodie both gave iconic film performances and either should've won over Straight's solid but soap opera acting.

Amy was so beautiful, like a pre-Raphaelite painting come to life.

[quote]I'm the only person here who's met PJ Soles

I've met Sissy Spacek, John Travolta, Piper Laurie, Amy Irving, William Katt, Nancy Allen, Betty Buckley and Edie McClurg. Do I win? Actually it's my favorite move and have been lucky enough to meet them all and talk about "Carrie" with them. I told this story before here, my friend has a box of Tampax signed by P.J. and Nancy Allen, they both laughed when asked to sign and did with no hesitation.

Spill R203!

For those who don't know, Priscilla Pointer (Mrs. Snell) is Amy Irving's mother in real life.

and Amy Irving's sister sings the song that Carrie dances to at the prom something like "I never dreamed someone like you could love someone like me."

I think the sister wrote the song too.

I met Betty Buckley once and discussed the laughing at Carrie scene. She said she didn't want to film it but De Palma promised her there would be an effect that makes it clear that she isn't really laughing. She said people don't always get the effect and she's often asked if Miss Collins really laughed at Carrie.

Threads like that used to pop up all the time on imdb message boards as new generations discovered the film. Why is Miss Collins laughing often was a thread title.

I wish would Betty Buckley would track down Judy Greer to slap her.

Have there been any movements to ban this film? If you take away the telekinesis element (and the crazy mama), the story reads much like some of the school shootings.

R209 I don't know if there have been movements to ban the film. Even with school shootings, it's too late to ban the film because it has a following and critics liked it.

But, the book has been banned in some schools both public and private for different reasons. This site lists some of the schools that banned it. I don't think my middle school or high school library ever had any Stephen King books.

PJ is just like her characters onscreen--fun, charming and playful. She doesn't disappoint.

PJ was very dependable in playing a good bitch on the screen. She is a DL icon.

I met PJ Soles at the 40th anniversary screening in LA mentioned above. Met Nancy Allen as well. Both were super nice and looked beautiful.

[quote] I'm the only person here who's met PJ Soles.

I met her at a meet-and-greet event years ago at a video store--I have her autograph.

I've met PJ and she's a doll, but I've heard rumors that she's a Trump supporter. Someone told me she'd posted a live video on her Facebook page the night he was elected ands was acting like it was the second coming of Christ.

I watched the movie for the first time in years thanks to this thread. I didn't remember how much of the movie is the prom and aftermath, I thought it was maybe the last 20 minutes or so!

John Travolta looked revolting in this. The guy who played Tommy was hot!

I don't say this very often, but I really do believe Carrie is a perfect movie. Everyone is perfectly cast, it was the perfect project for De Palma at that time, the music score is perfect...everything is perfect. I wouldn't change a frame.

R215 gross.

R217 we didn't need those gross shots of the naked chicks at the very start

[quote] I really do believe Carrie is a perfect movie. Everyone is perfectly cast, it was the perfect project for De Palma at that time, the music score is perfect...everything is perfect. I wouldn't change a frame.

I can't agree.

The scene with Tommy and his two friends trying on tuxedos is ridiculous, and has nothing to do with the rest of the film.

Otherwise, I love the movie.

Tommy should have been naked!

De Palma says he doesn't like the tuxedos scene either. He says he was young and liked to play with film techniques so he put that little fast forward thing in. Now he regrets it.

R219 That was just DePalma's sexual fantasy of what goes on inside of a high school girl's locker room. Just a bunch young babes standing around chatting. I'm surprised there wasn't a tickle fight thrown in. This movie focused on "chick stuff", DePalma obviously wanted to give young het guys a reason to see the film.

I don't mind it, builds up on the excitement for the prom. Also, I agree there are more than 73 people at prom. Did Carrie perform any bigger acts of telekinesis during the novel? It seemed in the movie she only broke a bulb, mirror, moved an ashtray and pushed her mother. Seemed like a big leap in skill for her to suddenly be able to wreck carnage?

[quote] That was just DePalma's sexual fantasy of what goes on inside of a high school girl's locker room.

It's fascinating to realize that anyone's sexual fantasy could involve Edie McClurg.

R225 Edie was fully dressed and standing at the big mirror while the others were doing their full-frontal nudity.

Lol R225

Who was the ugly had in the baseball cap at the prom who laughs first?

R227 That was PJ Soles who played the smirky, Prom King & Queen contest fixer, Norma.

Thank you! I hate that bitch even more than Chris, she's a vicious lackey

r224 didn’t she also knock that insolent kid off his bike?

R230 Yes Carrie knocked the little shit who was harassing her off of his bike. And then walked past him in silence.

R229 Vicious lackey, definitely. Wonder if PJ Soles would have been the better choice to play Chris.

Sorry, I forgot about the kid in the bike! It's still a big jump up in her capabilities

R233 If I had a nickle for the number of times have I wished I had Carrie's powers while in the presence of obnoxious kids.......

Ed9e is seated ion a bench and wrapped in a towel, drying her hair, while trying not to be seen on camera ogling the hot girls around her.

I always loved the opening scene (and I'm a gay man), because it makes you think you're watching some sort of ridiculous soft porn and then BAM - period blood. It's actually sort of genius in that way. Right from the start, De Palma is toying with the audience. He's like "oh, you like those tits, huh? You like that bush? How about when it's bleeding, you perverts?"

I don't think the locker room scenes in the other versions were anywhere near as effective, especially the most recent one where Carrie is pretty much fully clothed in a towel. It's not quite as shocking and terrifying as being fully exposed, bleeding, and having everyone turn against you.

Poor Carrie was terrified and thought she was bleeding to death. She frantically and desperately reaches out for help and is assaulted and degraded in response. The book and this movie, well done.

At first I thought the locker room scene was too much. But watching it again, it seems kind of like a ballet or an animated version of an ancient Greek painting. Young women who don't have the pressures yet of working or parenthood, playfully having fun in the most natural state, in the modern form of the public paths,...the scene then suddenly offset by panic.

R232 In this article PJ said she read for the Chris part and that the Norma part was expanded from the original script.

I also recall Amy Irving auditioned for Chris too.

"I always loved the opening scene (and I'm a gay man), because it makes you think you're watching some sort of ridiculous soft porn."

I always though the opening scene had a kind of sweet innocence; the soft, lovely music accompanying the images of young high school girls after their gym class, talking and laughing and teasing each other. I didn't see it as "pornographic." I thought the scene evoked the innocence of youth.

Great article R239. Thanks for posting it.

I think the opening scene is terrific. It sets the mood perfectly. Carrie is coping well enough, enjoying her shower - and then the blood. It shows how completely isolated she is at school and in life because her mother never taught her about periods.

It perfectly sets up her place at school, how Chris and (at first) Sue treat her (I love the shot of Miss Collins calling out Sue and Sue has no response because she knows what she's doing is wrong).

Remember DePalma and Lucas had a joint casting session where all the hot young actors came in to read and they divided up the ones they wanted for each's film. So Amy Irving read for Sue and Chris AND Princess Leia all on the same day. William Katt read for Tommy AND Luke Skywalker. For some reason, I don't think Carrie Fisher read for any of the "Carrie" roles, though, or I could be wrong.

I always loved that the runner up for Princess Leia was, drum roll, Teri Nunn, future lead singer of Berlin. She got further than Jodie Foster and many others.

That PJ interview really is great upthread. But she's wrong about Amy Irving being the one DePalma originally had in mind for Carrie, it was another girl who'd done some TV and I can't remember her name for the life of me. But something wasn't quite right. Sissy fought for a reading via her husband and went in and sniped the role at the 11th hour. I bet that original girl has never seen many Sissy Spacek films since.

Terri Nunn should have had a bigger acting career. She was really charismatic in Thank God It's Friday.

I like Sissy Spacek's story of how her husband was hired as art director first and she read the script he brought home. She then told him to tell Brian that she'd like to play Carrie thinking that he'd jump at the chance to have her do it since she had had a big success with Badlands and Carrie was kind of a lower budget film so she thought she was almost like doing DePalma a favor by taking a role that agents and stuff would say was beneath her.

When he didn't really jump at the chance to hire her it made her feel all rejected which she carried into her audition. DePalma says once she read it was ridiculous that he even thought of hiring anyone else. (He thought Spacek was too sympathetic and the audience would like her and want to take care of her. Carrie in the book was more off putting to people. Spacek's sympathetic quality is what really made people relate to the character.,,,,and DePalma almost missed that.

I love all the TV ripoffs about outcasts that followed especially Bad Ronald. Brilliant film. The Spell was ok too. (Pigs, elephants and dogs!)

Spacek was the perfect choice. Like r246 brilliantly stated, Carrie needed to be sympathetic especially for a 90-minute film. Nobody would have sat through the film if Carrie was off-putting.

It's also a case where, although she was in her 20s at the time, Spacek was totally believable as a teenager. At least, to me she was.

Those girls were debauched, showing their dirty pillows and hairy eiderdowns in public like seething jezebels!

And always remember R249, first comes the blood and then come the boys.

IT'S NOT TOO LATE GIRLS! COME TO MY HOUSE ON FRIDAY NIGHT AND WE'LL BURN ALL OF YOUR SINFUL WHORE CLOTHES AND WE'LL PRAY! WE'LL PRAY TOGETHER!

If you don't I'll spend the night pacing around the kitchen chopping produce and then I'll light about a thousand candles and plot how I am going to "save" you all.

[quote]It's also a case where, although she was in her 20s at the time, Spacek was totally believable as a teenager. At least, to me she was.

I also thought she was believable as a teenager. Edie McClurg looked like the school librarian.

In the novel, Carrie is a bit more cynical and hardened from all the years or torment and really gets off on when she hurts people. I remember her being quite happy when she knocked the kid off of his bike and it's written that she's smiling and laughing throughout the prom massacre. She's not the sweet, tormented soul Spacek played. It was a genius choice to make her more sympathetic. That's what makes the film work in my opinion. It goes against what you'd usually expect from a character like that.

I feel like the only time she became sympathetic was when she went home to her mother and turned into a scared little girl.

R224, Carrie basically destroys the entire town in the book. King mentions- maybe in "Danse Macabre"- that he wishes that they had kept Carrie's full, destructive walk home in the film.

The full town destruction would have been cool, but I don't mind her just setting the gym on fire and killing Billy and Chris on the way back home. I will give that recent remake credit for drawing out Chris and Billy's death. That's one thing I liked about it - they really made those assholes suffer.

From the novel as Carrie goes to town:

had never seen her before, but somehow I just knew it was her, it was Carrie White, I can't explain it. She had started downtown, and lemme tell you, she looked God awful. She was wearing some kind of fancy party dress, well, what was left of it, and she was completely covered with blood. She looked like she just crawled out of a terrible accident. But then I looked at her face, and she was grinning. It wasn't happy though, it was a wicked grin. I never saw such a grin. It was like The Devil's grin. It was like a death's head. And she kept looking at her hands and rubbing them on her dress, trying to get the blood off and thinking she'd never get it off, and how she was going to dump blood on the whole town and make everyone pay.

"Carrie walked out the Church and stood in the middle of the road and watched the flocks of people in their night clothes running in the distance. They were streaming towards downtown, they had come to see what happened to their town, and most also came to die. "Animals, filthy beast, let them burn. Let the streets of this God for saken town be filled with the smell of their sacrifice, their misery, their blood". "FLEX", and just then she saw the street powerlines come crashing down on the crowd of people, releasing purple and white sparks in every direction that reminded her of fireworks. The wires tangled and littered the streets like pick up sticks and the people began to scream and panic. Some had accidentally stepped on or touched the wires and immediately went into marionette like electrical dances that looked funny to her. She chuckled and laughed to herself, "Let them all look funny!" Some had already slumped into the street, their robes and pyjamas smouldering. "That will give them a dance, now everyone can have a Prom tonight!" and finally, she turned back and headed home to Momma, to fully complete her destruction"

She really sounds evil in the book. V smart choice to make her sympathetic in the movie, I don't like her at all as written!

So I guess in the book, Carrie goes home directly to kill her mother, whereas in the movie, she tries to bond with her mother, her mother stabs here, and it's goodnight nurse.

[quote]r163 Nancy Allen was blousy in many roles; it's her lane.

There's only one Blousy in this town - -

[quote]r180 The first sin was intercourse.

SAY it, woman!

[quote]The scene with Tommy and his two friends trying on tuxedos is ridiculous, and has nothing to do with the rest of the film.

I love that scene and it got a big laugh every time I saw in the theater. It does have everything to do with the film, it shows the kids having a good time and care free anticipating the prom oblivious to what's coming.

Never heard DePalma regretted the tuxedo scene, any link?

[quote]r190 The first sin was pride.

The first sin was when the price of datalounge membership was raised - -

Another masterstroke was having Carrie bring destruction right there from the stage after the bloodbath. In the book she runs outside first then starts the fire while watching through the windows.

The clip of her walking off stage and calming escaping the pandemonium is iconic!

I met Amy Irving around 1996 and her hair was dyed a very harsh blonde. I was thinking 1.) you can certainly afford a better colorist, and 2.) you are NOT a blonde in any way, shape or form ... WHY do you even WANT to be blonde??

Nothing about pride being the first sin in the Bible. There's no real backstory for Satan in the Bible--that's all later exegetical tradition that makes him a proud former angel.

In the Bible, the first human sin is disobedience.

Margaret White is really a mishmash of crazy Christian cults. She's a little bit evangelical, with the dramatics and the Bible-quoting (accurate or not), but she's also super-Catholic-y with the statues and the candles. She also looks puritanical/witchy in the long black gown. I wonder if this was an intentional choice or just sloppy inconsistencies. Was her denomination ever stated in the novel? Did they go to a church or just pray in that crazy house?

R253 that would've been great, but I don't think the special effects in the 70s could've done it very effectively. It would've been cheesy.

Ditto R254. The one really good scene in that yawnfest.

"In the Bible, the first human sin is disobedience."

And poor Carrie learned that the hard way R264.

Margaret White has been described as a "fanatical Christian fundamentalist".

Stephen King left out what shaped Mama's attitude toward sex.

Was Mama sexually abused as a child? Was Mama abandoned or abused by her mother which caused her to see all women as "bad"?

Or maybe Mama was born with a chemical imbalance in her brain.

I think De Palma, a former Catholic himself, brought out that gothic stuff with the robes and candles and more Catholic imagery, but Margaret in the book seems like a mix of Baptist, Pentecostal, and good old fashioned mentally ill. Like a classy crazy evangelical she took all the parts that worked for her, focused on the ones she was obsessed with, and made up her own weird denomination.

Carrie is certainly destructive in the book , and terrifying, but she's also quite sympathetic. After her utter ruin at the prom, enduring the ultimate humiliation, she snaps. And who could blame her? Her entire life has been nothing but abuse, and abuse and more abuse, both from her crazy mother and her peers. Anyone reading the book would get a better idea of just how tortured she was and understand why she went on her rampage.

I'm one of the lucky few who got to see the 1988 Original Broadway Cast of Carrie. Debbie Allen did the choreography, Darlene Love played the gym teacher, of course, La Buckley played Mrs. White, and LeRoy from Fame played the John Travolta role.

It was an uneven evening- with tons of great stuff with Betty Buckley and Linzi Hateley singing. And there were some sexy-ass boy chorus members. But one of the reasons it left one feeling cold was there there was really no way to adequately portray Carrie's meltdown. In the cinema, it's so cathartic to see Carrie finally get her revenge. To see her send Chris and Billy to a fiery grave of twisted metal and broken glass. There was no way to make it satisfying.

In face, the whole prom sequence in the original Broadway cast was completely underwhelming. Billy, Chris, Norma and whoever just run out on stage and dump the bucket on Carrie- that part was so lame. And. red lasers just aren't a good substitute for fire.

The final scene with her and her mother didn't work either. Instead of the house, we simply see Carrie ascend a GIANT white stairway. A stairway to heaven. The one cool thing was the trail of red blood Carrie left behind her on the gleaming white stairway. Ok, the stairway was impressive to look at, but just wasn't fulfilling dramatically. With a better ending, and a better way to do the prom scene, the musical may not have flopped quite so badly.

[quote]Margaret White is really a mishmash of crazy Christian cults. She's a little bit evangelical, with the dramatics and the Bible-quoting (accurate or not), but she's also super-Catholic-y with the statues and the candles. She also looks puritanical/witchy in the long black gown. I wonder if this was an intentional choice or just sloppy inconsistencies. Was her denomination ever stated in the novel? Did they go to a church or just pray in that crazy house?

It's been a long time since I read the book. From what I remember Margaret and Carrie didn't attend a church and Carrie mentioned that Margaret felt churches weren't strict enough. But, in the book it was mentioned that Margaret did allow Carrie to attend a Christian youth camp.

Stephen King said years ago that the Carrie was based on two girls he knew as a child and teen. Both girls were awkward and unpopular. One girl lived with her religious mother. The mother hired teenage King to do some house or yard work. He talked about how there was a large crucifix hanging in their living room and that he found it to be disturbing.

[quote]Wow, thought I was the only one who remembered the 2002 remake. Iirc, it aired on NBC and I agree it wasn't bad.

I liked that the 2002 movie showed the falling stones part from the book. Angela Bettis for the most part played the awkward unpopular girl role well for most of the movie. I didn't like her in the prom destruction scenes though.

When it came to the other parts in 2002 remake- I thought Rena Sofer and Emilie de Ravin weren't all that bad as the gym teacher and Chris.

In the novel, the gym teacher is named Miss Desjardin. Why did they change her name to Miss Collins in the original movie?

r177, I pray you find Jesus.

I wondered that too r275.

I did once see Buckley discussing how they combined the gym teacher with an assistant principal character for the film. (Supposedly they were two separate characters in the book (?) I don't remember.) Anyway Buckley said when DePalma first told her about the part she read the book and thought the gym teacher didn't really do much. Then she got the film script and found they'd combined the two characters and she said that made it really exciting for her and she was delighted that this would be her film debut.

"Collins" is probably just easier to say than "Desjardins" on film.

I LOVE PJ Soles and that her name is Norma. Man, she had Quaid when he was PRIME beef. It’s weird but I get nostalgic over old school names like Norma or Betty or Nancy in the context of ‘80s horror films.

Speaking of prime beef, I was watching “Welcome Back Kotter” yesterday and Travolta was FUCKING unbelievably HOT. I was too young to even notice but was he huge sex symbol back in the day? Like a Brad Pitt or more like a Tom Crusie?

Also, I just saw the Carrie remake from 2002 and it was pretty bad. The ending was ABSOLUTELY ridiculous, Bettis was cross-eyed during the last 30 minutes and their take on the Amy Irving character was...too PC even for my taste.

R279, just watch "Saturday Night Fever" with Travolta prancing around in skimpy black briefs and you'll have your answer.

No one seems to remember the 1978 remake. The made-for-t.v. movie, 'The Initiation of Sarah', starring Morgan Fairchild in the Chris role and Shelly Winters in the role of Mama, except this Mama is a sorority who encourages Sarah to use her powers to take revenge on Morgan Fairchild and her mean friends.

"A withdrawn young girl joins an unpopular sorority in college. It turns out she has psychic and telekinetic powers, and she uses them against a rival sorority."

Then there's the Carrie inspired "Sorority Girls from Hell" short from Lois Bromfield.

"Irma, Irma, Irma, stupid ugly Irma!"

Hope that's not true about P.J. and Trump. Always liked her.

This was the destruction scene from the Los Angeles production of the musical. Carrie sending Chris flying over our heads was terrific

[quote] No one seems to remember the 1978 remake. The made-for-t.v. movie, 'The Initiation of Sarah', starring Morgan Fairchild

New around here?

[quote]Travolta was FUCKING unbelievably HOT.

He's easy to mock these days what with the Clam bullshit and the I'm straight yet I'm displaying my asshole to masseurs and kissing my pilot, but he was indeed white hot in his day.

Hello

The LA Destruction scene was the first time a production of Carrie managed to get that scene semi interesting. I don't know why it took 30 years.

R288 The creators of the musical would not let anyone perform the show again until a few years ago. I know back in the 80's there were mic problems with the blood. The first revival Off Broadway did stupid rear projection of a bucket pouring and used a red light to simulate blood. Then they replaced the Carrie actress with a double for the Destruction. LA really did it well.

I've often championed the musical. It's come so close to almost being legitimately wonderful. I'm not a fan of the scaled down orchestrations for the Carrie/Margaret songs, but the newer revivals have been trying to make it work at least.

The Betty Buckley soundboard recordings of her Carrie songs are amazing

La Buckley is fucking POSSESSED here.

The 2002 tv version was dreadful. In the novel Tommy and Sue were the quintessential. white bread popular high school couple; in this one Sue Snell is for some reason made African American (although she does have the same type of hair as Amy Irving did in the movie) and the actor who played Tommy looked 30 years old. Angela Bettis also looked much older than a high school student; she gave an off-putting performance. Her Carrie looks positively menacing and psycho; she evokes no sympathy at all. She just comes across as somebody you wouldn't want to have anything to do with and you can understand why she's an outcast. And the ending where Sue Snell spirits Carrie away to...where? And to what? Why a Carrie tv series, of course! Thank God in heaven THAT concept never saw fruition. What a dumb idea.

R293 this charming young lad begs to differ.

Yeah I didn't like the 2002 remake. It was just so staid and lifeless. I didn't mind Rena Sofer as the teacher. I thought Patricia Clarkson was fine but Piper's performance is so iconic and ingrained into our minds, it's hard to see anyone else in the role.

I've never found John Travolta hot but I can't deny his incredible charisma in Welcome Back Kotter, Saturday Night Fever and Grease. His performance in SNF is actually very layered and very strong. I also like that Travolta was not shy in showing that Tony could be an absolutely misogynistic asshole.

But based on his performance in Carrie, he really didn't have much to do in this film. His next De Palma collaboration, Blow Up, is excellent and probably Travolta's best performance. He definitely deserved an Oscar nomination for that film.

The 2002 two version was so stupid. Sue Snell takes Carrie under her wing and helps her escape any punishment, even though she's killed her boyfriend, most of her classmates and several hundred townspeople. Was Sue in lesbian love with Carrie? I wouldn't be surprised if that was a plotline in this piece of crap.

R1 maybe she was just rubbing her face on his crazy 70’s pube-fro?

R296 I don't think Carrie killed him in that remake.

" I don't think Carrie killed him in that remake."

Tommy LIVED in that one? How did that happen? In the book he's knocked unconscious and dies when the school goes up in flames. How does he manage to survive the carnage? What a stupid remake!

R285 Well, yes. Yes, I am.

R285 Well, yes. Yes, I am.

R285 Well, yes. Yes, I am new here, actually.

OK. Got it!

Sorry! Didn't see my hilarious response the first two times I posted it.

(Waiting for a torrent of feminine hygiene products to start hitting me.)

(Standing by the feminine hygiene product dispenser and waiting for you to get naked and in the shower.)

I rewarched Carrie and the dreadful sequel tonight. The sequel was both worse and more interesting than I remembered it being. Despite being all around awful, I don’t even know where to begin, it felt very current and #MeToo with Rachel’s sex tape being played for everyone at the party. Seeing Amy Irving as Sue was a treat, too bad they killed her off.

The character of Rachel was really awful, they should have done more with her backstory, etc. It was so unbelievable that she’d be Carrie’s half-sister.

2 things I liked about the tv remake: 1) the actress who played Sue. Even though she was black, (I can't say African-american because the actress is canadian), I couldn't get over how much she looked like Amy Irving, and perhaps even more beautiful. I thought she was incredibly striking!

2) I liked the twist of Sue being pregnant at the end. (was that in the book?). As much as I LOVED the original, (I've even created at least two threads myself), it never made sense to me that Sue would miss out on her own senior prom. But if she were pregnant and was starting to show, that could make sense.

"I liked the twist of Sue being pregnant at the end. (was that in the book?)."

No. She's at home and she feels a little uneasy; her period is a week late. When she hears alarms and fire trucks outside she goes out to investigate. She has a minor car accident. Then she picks up on Carrie's presence through some kind of psychic energy that Carrie is giving off. She finds Carrie, who is lying in the parking lot of a roadhouse (she drove Billy and Chris's car into the side of it, killing them both). She has a butcher knife sticking out of her shoulder from her mother's attempt to kill her. She and Sue connect on a psychic level and Carrie sees that Sue meant her no harm by having Tommy take her to the prom. Then Sue FEELS Carrie dying: "she felt as if she were watching a candle flame disappear down a long black tunnel at a tremendous speed. And then the light was gone and the last conscious thought had been "momma I'm sorry where" and it broke up and Sue was tuned in only on the blank, idiot frequency of the physical nerve endings that would take hours to die." Then she runs away, ending up in a field:

"She began to run, breathing deep in her chest, running from Tommy, from the fires and explosions, from Carrie, but mostly from the final horror...that last lighted thought carried swiftly down into the black tunnel of eternity, followed by the blank idiot hum of prosaic electricity.

The after-image began to fade reluctantly, leaving a blessed, cool darkness in her mind that knew nothing. She slowed, halted, and became aware that something had begun to happen. She stood in the middle of the great and misty field, waiting for realization.

Her rapid breathing slowed, slowed, caught suddenly as if on a thorn...

And suddenly vented itself in one, howling cheated scream.

As she felt the slow course of dark menstrual blood down her thighs."

At the 2013 remake had Ansel Elgort.

I liked how in The Rage Carrie 2 Sue is haunted by what happened. (She didn't just get over it because she was young enough like her mother says the doctor told her she would right before the famous dream ending from the original.)

But then when they kill her off so randomly...........it just shows what junk the sequel was. Amazing how they kept trying to improve on the original with a TV series, musical, remake etc.

Leave the classics alone. Carrie is one of the few that kids still watch today and love.

In response to a posting up-thread, I heard Edie McClurg discussing her character on some radio show many years ago, (Stephanie Miller, maybe?). Anyway, she also thought it a little odd that her character would have been friended by the cool kids. So her personal explanation for it was that her character came from a wealthy family and she often treated the other girls.

wait...I'm getting shit mixed up. Were Black Amy Irving and Angela Bettis in a TV remake or a motion picture remake? And the Rage: Carrie 2 was a direct sequel or stand alone with a Carrie reference?

Yes, the first was a TV mini-series remake. Carrie 2 was a direct sequel about Carrie's half sister.

The TV movie was actually a pilot.

R284 God, that production looks awful.

R314 Who in their right mind thought that a Carrie tv show would be a great idea? Good grief. I can't even BEGIN to imagine.

It's been interesting reading this thread. I haven't seen "Carrie" (the original) in years and years. Makes me want to go back and revisit it. I recall she died at the end of the film after her mother stabs her. Did she also die at the end of the novel? And when King said that he wishes DePalma had left the destruction of the town in the film, does that mean DePalma actually filmed that but then left it out? I think that would've been an interesting way to end it, even though I recall that hand coming up out of the grave and grabbing Amy Irving was absolutely terrifying.

R317 Yes, she dies in the novel.

R318, thank you.

[quote]God, that production looks awful.

Shut up Chris, just shut up.

[quote] I recall she died at the end of the film after her mother stabs her.

SPOILER!

R315, if you thought that was awful, you should see the original Broadway version of that scene and even the more recent off-Broadway version. Absolute snores.

Did Carrie always have the same level of power or did it intensify after her first period?

She had English first period Second period was gym class. So it was after second period.

[quote]r281 No one seems to remember the 1978 remake. The made-for-t.v. movie, 'The Initiation of Sarah',

Oh, we remember, alright.

[quote]r292 La Buckley is fucking POSSESSED here.

Seth Rudetsky agrees.

You bitches made me re-watch this yesterday. Great movie!

I'm overly familiar with this film and can't watch it straight through any more. But I'll watch the Piper Laurie scenes.

[quote] Seth Rudetsky agrees.

Oh my God I cannot stand that freak. Everything I hate about a Broadway queen embodied in one human being: obnoxious, loves the sound of his own voice, braying, motormouthed. And he is so fucking ugly.

We live in godless times.

[quote]r329 Oh my God I cannot stand that freak. Everything I hate about a Broadway queen embodied in one human being

Just because he likes SHOWTUNES doesn't mean he's GAY!

R330 I'll drink to that!

to answer r312 (with spoilers)

The Rage: Carrie 2 was kind of a direct sequel. Amy Irving is in that one. It is very similar to the first in that an outcast girl develops telekinetic powers. Irving is the guidance counselor of the high school and she informs the girl that she has the same father as Carrie White (who is now an infamous legend) and takes her to the site of the old high school which is an abandoned wreck now. Irving tries to warn her of her powers but the same thing basically happens and she goes after the kids at her school. It is kind of cool how they have Amy Irving once again pounding on the door trying to get in like in the original film but the fact they kill her off so sloppily is just wrong.

Angela Bettis is in the TV movie that was a pilot. That is a pretty much a direct remake as discussed above with the main difference being that Carrie doesn't kill intentionally. She just goes into a trance when under stress and her powers happen as if she is electric and giving off too much energy. She doesn't know what happens after she blacks out and kills people. She doesn't die in the end. Sue comes and sneaks her out of town and then the two were supposedly going to star in a series where they would flee and try to redeem Carrie's name while presumably having more incidents where she'd go into a trance and kill. (if they ever even thought it out that far.)

The movie never shows what happens to Amy Irving after Carrie starts killing people. She is seen when Carrie pulls those two guys back into the room once the killing starts but that is it until the end. Did she just go home?

I think the original screenplay had a scene where Sue shows up at Carrie's house and they have a confrontation but it was never filmed.

R334 I believe you're wrong. Betty Buckley spots Amy under the stage, pulls her out and is dragging her out of the gym while Amy is trying to explain to her about the bucket of blood. She tosses Amy out of the gym just as Carrie locks the doors and the destruction starts. In essence, the gym teacher saved Sue's life.

I’d think Sue stuck around outside until the place burst into flames and the ambulances arrived - she’d want to see what happened to Tommy.

In the book she encounters the dying Carrie somewhere outside, after Mama Margaret stabbed her. (Maybe Sue’s walking home?) Anyway, she’s with her when she dies.

Sue is called telepathically to Carrie as she lies dying by the wrecked motel she was conceived in. She has just killed Chris and Billy at this point.

(The novel depicts Carrie quite wilfully destroying the town after leaving the burning prom and purposefully going home to kill her mama).

Sue allows Carrie to enter her mind and understand she never meant her any harm or had any part in the prank. Carrie dies, calling out for her dead mama.

The implication is Sue may be pregnant but at the end of the book she starts to bleed.

Interestingly, in the novel, I think Tommy dies and part of why Carrie loses control is she thinks these people deliberately killed him. Hope I'm not miss-remembering that part.

Also of interest is Mrs White's death isn't as dramatic or symbolic in the novel. Carrie slows down and stops Mama's heart, giving her cardiac arrest. The film really improved a lot of elements.

Another improvement is Sissy Spacek's portrayal. In the novel Carrie is described as overweight with greasy skin and acne. She is observed smiling and looking like she's enjoying all the killing she's doing or the pain she can inflict at will. Making her sympathetic went a long way to the movie's success, IMO.

De Palm's idea of Carrie crucifying Margaret is way better than the book's. Piper giving out all those orgasmic groans of pleasure were the icing on the cake.

Put it in me! Again! Ahh, Again! Arawaa, Again!

Piper Laurie's death scene is one of the best death scenes of all time. I still find it incredibly haunting how she's moaning and groaning and basically getting wet and having a sexual release from death. It's somehow sad, scary, pathetic, and hilarious all at once.

r324: Witch. You've got Satan's power.

Both Sissy and Piper's performances are examples of two great actors completely bringing their own stamp to their characters. Probably why the later versions/sequels just don't work as well because Sissy and Piper hang over them because they were perfect.

I think Sue gets the idea to have Tommy take Carrie to the prom in that scene where Miss Collins chews them out.

I've always liked that moment. Buckley asks Chris who is taking her to the prom. She says Billy Nolan. Buckley comes back with isn't he the lucky one? (great insult to use by the way)

Then she asks Sue who is taking her. Irving says so sadly Tommy Ross. Miss Collins says yeah right. Irving looks so sad and guilty and Buckley looks like she's about to cry. The implication being of course Amy would have the cutest, nicest jock in school as a boyfriend while Carrie is suffering. I always liked that little moment between Buckley and Irving. Lot said with few words.

"There' s just ONE little catch..." The way Buckley practically sings that line. I love it!

"In the book (Tommy')s knocked unconscious and dies when the school goes up in flames. "

No, the book states that Tommy is killed when the bucket hits him and crushes his skull. There was leftover frozen blood in the bucket, the lip at the bottom of the bucket directly hit Tommy and he was dead when he hit the stage.

Posting this comment to read to read the thread later. Datalounge doing what it does better: talking about movies and actresses.

Buckley is so good in this movie. She's really a wonderful film actress, yet every time I've seen her on stage, she's strangely cold and aloof and I never really connect with her. Incredibly singing voice, though.

"Datalounge doing what it does better: talking about movies and actresses."

Especially now that imdb stupidly shut down their discussion boards. What the fuck is it for anymore? Besides making money off of sad actors who pay to post their photo monthly.

Anyone want to start up a thread on "Death in Venice"? Finally saw it (after attempting in my youth more than once) and loved it. Might need a little age to get this one.

Even though I've seen it 10000 times, this thread has inspired me to pop this in

I love the terrible CGI steam on the edited for TV version

Cheesy song thread!!!

r353 you are VERY lost

I am pretty sure I once read that King was disappointed that Miss Collins was killed at the prom. As was stated earlier in the thread, Miss Desjardins survived.

R355 King is a great writer but tends to have odd responses to his adaptations. The man RAVED about the Under the Dome TV show, which was steaming horseshit.

King also preferred some stupid TV movie remake of the Shining to Kubrick's theatrical adaptation. He's a great storyteller but he has horrible tastes.

R357 He probably preferred it bc it followed the books story to the letter. Crap acting, sets and cinematography plus waaaaay too long a run time, but to the letter of the book.

R352 and what confuses me about that is that De Palma actually shot a TV version of that scene that was shown on the initial TV broadcast. I don't know why other stations don't use that version when they show the film.

I remember the version they'd show on TBS and TNT being really horribly edited. They just literally cut off half the screen and put a black box around it.

Anybody here see the 4th episode of Euphoria? It just aired. I believe the director was paying homage to De Palma. Especially the way the last sequence was filmed. And he used a Pino Donaggio score. Definitely influenced.

This open-matte version of Carrie really needs a Blu Ray release. No picture lost on the sides but lots more picture at the bottom and top including Sissy's ginger pussy.

I remember in my second grade class, the day after Carrie aired in 1978, this black girl Fern was likely the only kid in the class who was allowed to watch it. I overheard her telling the plot to Carrie to someone. 8 year old me didn't know what to make of it. Pigs blood? Poured on a girl? HUH?

I feel badly about Fern. On the playground behind the school, someone had built a bunch of tires in different shapes that we would climb. Someone had painted one of the tires orange. Seeing it for the first time, I commented "That's a strange color." And Fern turns to me and says "It's MY color and I like it!" I was too dumbfounded to clear up what I meant. Sorry, Fern. You were beautiful exactly was you were.

Carrie The Musical had two main problems:

1) Tough to do those specific effects on stage. Dumping a bucket of blood onto actors on stage is just logistically problematic...and, it's the key scene in the story. That, and throwing tampons at a naked teenage girl in a gym shower. And, burning down a school gym. And....

2) The Musical had these beautifully gorgeous songs for Carrie and Margaret to sing and their story was very powerful and dramatic. But, the stuff set in the high school all felt like a third rate version of "Grease". The two plots just don't blend well in a musical format.

R364 I forget how they did the shower scene but I loved the LA production (minus the bleacher seats we had to sit on)

And at the 40th Anniversary screening at the Ace Hotel for Nancy's charity, she looked amazing. I still get emails from them. I don't want her to hate me for unsubscribing.

Thanks R46: one of my favourite soundtracks, yet I didn't know that or recognize her voice.

Jawbreaker (1999) connections. Both William Katt and P.J. Soles play Liz Purr's parents who decided there deceased daughter at home.

Then Fern/Vylette played by Judy Greer jokingly talks about getting pig's blood. Greer plays Miss Desjardins in the 2013 version of Carrie.

[Quote] Greer plays Miss Desjardins in the 2013 version of Carrie.

She certainly wasn't the worst thing about the 2013 remake.