Not only does Carrie have the honor of being the first Stephen King book, but also the first movie, released just two years after the book, launching a huge line of adaptions of varying quality which I have the honor (?) of exploring during this mad project. Although the movie is generally well regarded even to this day, the original Carrie, in my opinion, is nothing special, but not awful, and gave me plenty to think about.
The movie's first half seems a bit fetish-driven, something director Brian De Palma has taken flack over through his career. The girl's locker room opening scene is like something out of a teenage boy's fantasy: topless towel-fights and everyone totally at ease in their unclad skin moving around one another comfortably. Since even King's narrative was a little skittish around the locker room scene, I was able to accept it for what it was, but it was followed by an awful lot of torso-shots of the girls' gym class in action. In spite of all the goofy camp in the first half of the movie, Carrie was without a doubt sold as a "scary" movie for the time. Bear in mind this is 1976, so the cinematography, fashion, and so forth is clearly dated, as well as audience expectations of what constitutes a scary movie. I recall reading that movies like The Exorcist and Jaws had to have barf bags on hand in the theaters, and it wasn't entirely unexpected if somebody ran out the doors screaming mid-movie. So, unfortunately, when it was time to wreak havoc on the school (and Mrs. White), my jaded modern-day inclination was more toward laughter than fear. I will admit, having read the book and knowing in general what was going to happen, I tensed up a bit during the happy part of Death Prom 1979, wondering how all these poor kids were going to experience their on-screen executions. I can only imagine what somebody who hadn't read the book (or seen the poster or didn't know a thing about the story) would have reacted to the violent turn of the events.
While I watched this for the fact it was an adaptation of a Stephen King novel, one must also accept the film as a Brian De Palma creation. De Palma is an uneven director at best, and his worst movies seem to stick in my memory more than the "good" ones. Also, at this time, his name was probably carrying about the same weight as King's, seeing that 'Salem's Lot, novel #2, had only been released the prior year. Although Stephen King wasn't involved in the screenplay (or it would appear any aspect other than writing the novel it's based on), this isn't necessarily a bad thing. King has a history of throwing his support or involvement behind inferior adaptations and questionable projects and his own screenplays aren't particularly stellar. All of this considered, it is possible they could have gone off the rails and done something really different, but the changes from the book are more cosmetic than anything. For example, Sue, Tommy, and Ms. Desjardin (renamed Collins here) seem more genuinely nice to Carrie, and Mrs. White is played up as more of a heartless psychopath. The big change from the book, other than tossing out the unadaptable snippets from fake "sources", is putting the end object of Carrie's rage on her mother. In the book, scheming Chris and Billy are the ultimate baddies, and here Carrie blows them up en route back to her home without much of a second thought. Things that were off about the movie? A few choice bits include the fact that the high school kids, played by adult actors, seemed more like adults pretending they were in high school. I know that casting actual teens would have scuttled the star power of the movie, and probably put the production into questionable legal territory, but it could have been a little bit more believable. And if you really want to feel old, check out current pictures of the actors, who are all in their sixties now.
The ongoing fascination with Carrie lives on with the 2002 TV and 2013 feature film remakes, which I plan to watch. There is a 1999 sequel to this movie called The Rage: Carrie 2, which I have no intention of seeing, but feel free to tell me if I'm being close-minded. But how am I ever supposed to move on?
Finally, for any fans of the TV show The Middle, doesn't John Travolta's Billy look just a little like Charlie McDermott's Axl Heck? Maybe more than a little?
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