The 1976 film, Carrie, starring Sissy Spacek, has gone down in history as one of the most recognizable horror films in history. The shocking image of a woman covered in blood with wide open eyes is well known as the image of horror.
In the last blog post, we discussed the book Carrie by Stephen King, and the movie adaptation was a quick hit. Carrie was King’s first novel that he ever wrote while he was still an unknown author. So when this unknown writer became a hit, people lined up calling for a movie adaptation. In just two years, the movie was made and released to the public who were delightfully horrified by it. I will provide a link to an article that describes just how much Carrie changed King’s life (here).
For me, this is one of Stephen King’s best adaptations for his books. Like Gerald’s Game from one of the first blog entries, it was a bit shorter than his usual novel, so the screenwriters did not have to cut out as much as they normally would. Also, as I said in the last blog, a lot of the novel Carrie includes things like articles and witness testimonies from the events in the novel, while the movie can skip that and just show the audience what happened. For a more in-depth analysis of the book versus the movie, I will provide a link to a comparison (here).
Like with Gerald’s Game, once the screenwriters were able to take out the superfluous additives, they were able to focus on the more important aspects.
The movie’s acting… is alright. There are some standouts such as Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, who plays the mother. Also, John Travolta made his debut in acting in Carrie as the bully, Billy. However, other than those few roles, I found myself becoming bored if they weren’t on screen.
The movie is really well-made; despite the fact that it came out over forty years ago it still only feels slightly dated. But dated in a more retro sense as opposed to cheesy. I thought the characters were well represented in the movie. For instance, the audience could really believe Sissy Spacek (Carrie) as being a loner girl that was a victim of bullying.
The audience really feels sorry for Carrie, so when the finale happens you find it hard to feel bad for the bullies. Carrie was just a girl who wanted to finally feel normal and accepted for once and it was taken away from her.
The special effects were also interesting while watching. The audience can tell when things are fake, but at least they kept with book loyalty. Like the scenes in the climax where Carrie commits her mass destruction, it was complete chaos. There were explosions, fires, electrical sparks flying everywhere. It really captured the disaster and mayhem that the reader felt during this moment.
All in all, I thought that the movie version of Carrie was pretty good when compared to the book. It captured the right emotions and the cast played their parts well. It definitely earns its spot as one of the horror movie classics. It is also impressive to me as a fan of Stephen King that he was able to have a movie adaptation to his name only two years after his first book was published.
Come back next week at King’s Korner where I will talk about my absolute favorite book by King; It.
Carrie was always a movie I wanted to see, especially because of how lauded it is by many. If it is similar to Gerald’s Game in terms of accuracy, I want to check it out. It will be interesting to hear your thoughts on IT, as well.
Well written review of the movie! I was very interested to see how similar the book and movie truly are. I believe people nowadays are too quick to call these older movies, “bad movies” when in fact they are very impressive for their time. In addition, it was very interesting to find out that the movie was released just two years after the novel. That is insane! I look forward to reading your future posts!