Acquired by Doubleday and published in 1974,Stephen King’s landmark novelCarrieremains one of the author’s greatest achievements. The book quickly became a bestseller and received uniformly positive reviews and critical acclaim. This success was equaled by an adaptation that followed in 1976 when it was adapted bySistersdirectorBrian De Palma. A huge box office success for New World Artists,Carrieearned two Oscar nominations forSissy SpacekandPiper Lauriewithfilm critic Roger Ebert praising the movie: “Brian De Palma’s “Carrie” is an absolutely spellbinding horror movie.” Almost 50 years andcountless adaptations later, De Palma’s 1976 adaptation of the Master of Horror’sdebut novelremains the best and most loyal King adaptation — by a Maine country mile. While writingCarrie,King nearly abandoned ituntil his wife, Tabitha, convinced him to follow it through.
Brian De Palma makes only minor changes to King’s source material, even with King having hadlittle to no involvement or creative inputwith the movie’s production. He was a fledgling writer at the time, new to the business, and wasn’t even invited to a screening. He caught a preview ofCarrieand recounts how he found it a heartening experience. Even with the changes in the story’s transition to the big screen, De Palma retains the book’s essence and excises the clunkier elements.In Visualizing ‘Carrie’,the director admitted he only picked up a copy ofCarrieafter a friend recommended it. The adaptation process ran smoothly withLawrence D. Cohenpenning the screenplay to make a more unpredictable, leaner movie. The framing device of detailing the massacre via press coverage and survivor accounts was removed. There was the possibility it might have interrupted the narrative flow of the movie and it worked much better when the audience couldn’t see what was coming.
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What Are the Differences Between Stephen King and Brian De Palma’s ‘Carrie’?
King based the character of Carrie White ontwo girls he was acquainted with in high school. This served as the basis for the tale of an abused girl who unleashes a telekinetic fury on her tormentors. The main difference between the book and the film is the director opting out of employing the book’s framing device. In the book, Carrie’s destruction of her hometown forces the locals to relocate. However, this wasn’t a viable option for the movie for economic reasons. Margaret White’s (Piper Laurie) backstory and relationship with her telekinetic grandmother were also expunged and a scene with a young Carrie asking neighbors sunbathing personal questions was filmed but ended up on the cutting-room floor.Betty Buckley’s condescending PE teacher became a composite character – amalgamated from the principal and gym teacher in the novel. Sue Snell (Amy Irving) and Carrie’s relationship in the movie is less nuanced and Irving felther character’s interiority had been lost in the adaptation. There is a confrontation between Carrie and Sue (who is trying to save the doomed girl) in the final act that didn’t make it into the film. A dream sequence was added instead.
The Locker Room Scene in ‘Carrie’ Stays True to the Book
The primary similarity between the film and the source material is the most controversial scene. One of the earliest scenes isCarrie’sinfamously brutal locker room sequence. In it, Carrie White (Spacek) gets her period, sees the blood, and panics. Carrie has no idea what is happening and tries reaching out to the other girls. Instead of helping, they gang up on Carrie and start chanting “Plug it up!” and throw tampons at her. The sheer level of humiliation that Carrie is subjected to and the total lack of remorse shown by the perpetrators shocked moviegoers. This was the intention of King with the novel, to show how unrelenting the abuse and trauma in Carrie’s life is. De Palma could have easily played down this scene since showing it visually could’ve proven more upsetting than what King wrote. But the director stays true to the novel and does not hold back in showing the full extent of how harassed and victimized Carrie is at the beginning of the story.
Sissy Spacek Becomes Carrie White
For your information: Brian De Palma did not want Sissy Spacek in the role of Carrie. According toActing: The Making of Carrie,for many of the cast, it was their first film and everyone committed to their roles. De Palma shared a casting session withGeorge Lucas– De Palma was searching for his Carrie and Lucas was looking for his Luke Skywalker. Though reluctant to cast Spacek at first, he eventually relented when she gave a fantastic audition. Can you imagine anybody else inhabiting the role? Spacek has always excelled at character acting and here, she imbues Carrie with genuine pathos and vulnerability. What made her performance stand out is that shebecameCarrie White: the timidity, the physicality, the inevitable rage, and the trauma. It never felt like watching a performance, but rather gaining an insight into this girl’s life. Spacek’s Carrie is such a well-rounded character and not just a victim of circumstance. We see a whole emotional range over the course of the movie.
How Did Brian De Palma Stay So Loyal to Stephen King’s Novel?
It is no easy feat to capture the spirit (and personality) of a book and then successfully translate it to the screen. At the time, Stephen King was not a household name, he was a new, largely unknown writer, and De Palma had no obligation to retain the integrity of the source material. Yet, he adaptedCarriein a way that didn’t only honor King’s vision but kept the tone of the novel and stuck to King’s original intention of making Carrie the hero of her own story. De Palma could have taken the easy route and depicted Carrie as a murder-mad psychotic outsider. He even manages to steer clear of portraying the villainous Margaret White as a stereotypical religious harpy; instead, she is depicted as a woman struggling with arrested development issues and suppressed trauma. Another way he stays close to the book is in the screen creation of the evil Chris, Carrie’s main tormentor and perhaps the only character with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.She’s a great villainand again, it took guts for De Palma not to soften her hard edges.
Carrieisn’t only the most loyal adaptation just because it’s the first. The film truly captures the spirit of King’s tale of a tortured teenage girl who develops telekinesis and makes her story universal and relatable. Except for a few, the characters and themes are identical and are kept intact in the translation to the screen. Had De Palma had a larger budget and more shooting time, he might have made a film that adhered even closer to the book. King has an uncanny knack for making the unbelievable believable and the most marginal characters seem like your family members or close friends. Whether it’s the snapshot of youth inThe Body(adapted asStand by Me) Annie Wilkes inMisery, who elicits sympathy from the reader despite her actions, or a woman trapped figuratively and literally by monsters inGerald’s Game.King is not only The Master of Horror, but he also has a profound insight into the human condition. The adaptations mentioned above are also pretty loyal to their original incarnations but don’t come close toCarrie. Both the book and movie are loved in equal measure.
Readers always felt at a distance from the literary Carrie – the framing device took up a lot of the story. You can’t say the same for the film Carrie, her story is in the foreground with everyone else orbiting her until the movie’s shocking, poignant conclusion. Carrie has become an iconic figure in horror history. But we sometimes forget Carrie is not really a monster and never was — and De Palma conveyed this brilliantly.
