Mitchell - Carrie

DEVILS ADVOCATES

ALSO AVAILABLE IN THIS SERIES

The Descent James Marriot

Let the Right One In Anne Billson

Saw Benjamin Poole

The Silence of the Lambs Barry Forshaw

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre James Rose

Witchfinder General Ian Cooper

FORTHCOMING

Antichrist Amy Simmonds

Black Sunday Martyn Conterio

The Blair Witch Project Peter Turner

Halloween Murray Leeder

Near Dark John Berra

Nosferatu Christina Massaccesi

Psychomania I.Q. Hunter & Jamie Sherry

The Thing Jez Conolly

DEVILS ADVOCATES

CARRIE

NEIL MITCHELL

Acknowledgments

Neil Mitchell would like to thank John Atkinson of Auteur Publishing for his support and input during the writing of this book. Thanks are also due to fellow Devils Advocates Anne Billson, James Rose, Ian Cooper and Jez Conolly. For various reasons a doff of the cap is proffered in the direction of Alan Hodge, Glenn Ward, John Berra, Gabriel Solomons, Scott Jordan Harris and Hel Jones. My parents, family and friends have my utmost respect and undying appreciation for encouraging me during this, and other, projects.

First published in 2013 by

Auteur, 24 Hartwell Crescent, Leighton Buzzard LU7 1NP

www.auteur.co.uk

Copyright Auteur 2013

Series design: Nikki Hamlett at Cassels Design

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the permission of the copyright owner.

E-ISBN 978-1-906-73392-6

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-906733-72-8

CONTENTS

Brian De Palmas tenth feature length film, Carrie (1976), was adapted for the screen by Lawrence D. Cohen from Stephen Kings 1974 debut novel. Produced by Paul Monash and released by United Artists, the film starred Sissy Spacek in the title role alongside Piper Laurie as her mother, Margaret White. The supporting cast featured early or debut big screen appearances by Amy Irving, Nancy Allen, William Katt, PJ Soles, Betty Buckley and John Travolta.

SYNOPSIS

Bates High School teenager Carrie White is the shy, friendless outsider among her classmates. Class rebel Chris Hargensen acts as the ringleader in making the girl the butt of their jokes. In the locker room after a gym class Carrie has her first period. Unaware of what is happening to her a terrified Carrie appeals for help but is instead mocked by the other girls, including the normally well behaved Sue Snell, who throw tampons and sanitary towels at the helpless girl. Gym teacher Miss Collins comes to Carries aid and admonishes the rest of the class for their rowdy, cruel behaviour. As she tries to calm Carrie down a lightbulb blows above their heads.

Further strange incidents begin to happen around Carrie at times when the put-upon teenager is under stress. Her unhappy home-life, dominated by her mother Margaret, a Christian Fundamentalist, adds to Carries feelings of oppression and alienation by and from those around her. Sue Snell, feeling guilty for the part she played in Carries cruel humiliation, conceives a plan to make it up to the troubled teenager by asking her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, on whom Carrie has a crush, to ask the girl to the prom. Having been banned from the prom by Miss Collins for acting out in the detention given to the girls for their actions, Chris, along with her delinquent boyfriend, Billy Nolan, hatches her own, malicious, plan for Carrie.

Carrie defies her mothers objections and accepts Tommys invitation to the prom. Growing in confidence and seeking acceptance from her peers, Carrie is also becoming aware of her latent telekinetic abilities abilities her God-fearing mother attributes to being the work of Satan. When one final appeal by Margaret White fails to dissuade her, now openly rebellious, daughter from attending the prom, the pieces of Chris plan begin to fall into place. Chris friends rig the voting in the prom King & Queen ballot, ensuring that Carrie and Tommy are the winners. Carries fairytale evening, including kissing Tommy on the dance-floor, reaches giddy new heights when the winners of the ballot are announced. Taking to the stage to be crowned Queen alongside Tommys King, Carrie believes herself to have finally been accepted as one of the crowd. Unbeknownst to Carrie, Chris and Billy are hiding under the stage, preparing to pull a rope attached to a bucket of pigs blood Billy placed in the rafters above the stage.

At the moment of coronation, Chris yanks the rope and the blood drenches the unsuspecting girl, the bucket knocking Tommy unconscious on its way down. With her dreams crushed by this latest public humiliation, and believing everyone to be laughing at her, Carrie snaps, unleashing her telekinetic powers with a murderous fury. Returning home, Carrie is forced by her mother into one last, bloody display of her supernatural powers.

CARRIE

When that hand comes out of the grave in Carrie at the end. Man, I thought I was going to shit in my pants.

Those words, spoken by Stephen King when asked about the scariest moments in the films adapted from his work in a 1986 interview with American Film magazine, is a sure fire, and telling, seal of approval from the Master of Horror that Brian De Palmas Carrie is perhaps the finest adaptation of Kings work. That King, who admired Stand by Me (1986, Reiner), The Shawshank Redemption (1994, Darabont), The Green Mile (1999, Darabont) and The Mist (2007, Darabont), but was disappointed in many of the adaptations of his work, including Stanley Kubricks take on The Shining (1980), instantly referred to Carrie and to a sequence entirely absent from his novel speaks volumes for De Palmas success in both adapting and adding his own idiosyncratic fingerprints to Kings material. The 2006 documentary, Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (McQueen), has special effects maestro Tom Savini openly admitting that the end sequence of Carrie directly inspired the coda sequence of Sean Cunninghams Friday the 13th (1980). That someone who has devoted his entire career to devising and delivering ever more technically impressive and visually gruesome effects and set pieces for horror movies was so struck by Carries simple yet devastating final moments is, like Kings reaction to the same sequence, profoundly telling. Carrie not only garnered the director his first critical and box office hit, elevating him into the same league as fellow movie brats Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, but secured Academy Award nominations in the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories for Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie respectively. The adaptation also helped lodge the name of Stephen King firmly in the publics consciousness, a place it has remained ever since.

Much like the conflicted personality of its central character,