Carrie (1976)

In this article, we will be looking at 2019’s book “1001 Movies to See Before You Die” and going through each film in a random order that I have chosen. We will be looking at what constitutes this film to be on the list and whether I think this film deserves to be here at all. I want to make perfectly clear that I won’t be revealing details from this book such as analyses by film reporters who have written about the film in question, so if you want the book itself you’ll have to buy it. But I will be covering the book’s suggestions on which films should be your top priority. I wouldn’t doubt for a second that everyone reading this article has probably watched many of these movies anyway. But we are just here to have a bit of fun. We’re going to not just look at whether it should be on this list but we’re also going to look at why the film has such a legacy at all. Remember, this is the 2019 version of the book and so, films like “Joker” will not be featured in this book and any film that came out in 2020 (and if we get there, in 2021). So strap in and if you have your own suggestions then don’t hesitate to email me using the address in my bio. Let’s get on with it then.

Carrie (1976) dir. by Brian de Palma

With a screenplay written by Lawrence D. Cohen adapted from the great novel by Stephen King, Brian de Palma directs Sissy Spacek as the eponymous protagonist of a horror classic about a girl with telekinesis powers who is violently bullied at school. With a budget of only around two million dollars, it went on to make around thirty four million dollars in the United States and Canada alone. So that is a pretty good profit.

It has a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with the critics' consensus reading the following:

"Carrie is a horrifying look at supernatural powers, high school cruelty, and teen angst—and it brings us one of the most memorable and disturbing prom scenes in history."

Roger Ebert weighed in on the movie and loved it. He stated that the film was and "absolutely spellbinding horror movie", as well as an "observant human portrait."

New West Magazine had the prophetic statement of the year 1978, stating that the film was a 'horror classic' right here:

"...it's a horror classic, and years from now it will still be written and argued about, and it will still be scaring the daylights out of new generations of moviegoers."

But not all the reviews that first came out were good. The Village Voice, at the time, did not have many good things to say about the movie and stated this: "...there are so few incidents that two extended sequences are rendered in slow-motion as if to pad out the running time ..."

At the Academy Awards, the beautiful Sissy Spacek would be nominated for the Best Actress Oscar but lost out to Faye Dunaway and Piper Laurie would be nominated for Best Supporting Actress, but lost out to Beatrice Straight.

Personally, when I first watched this film, I was really impressed. Honestly, I had waited to watch the film when I was about sixteen because I wanted to read the book first and then compare them. The book, unlike other Stephen King books, is actually quite short. So when I did finish it - which was within a day - I actually waited to watch the film for a week or so in order to come back to the comparison when I could be bothered to write about it. I do not know what Stephen King thought of the film for a very long time until I heard that about ten years’ ago he stated that it was a ‘very good film’. I have to say though that he seemed to like this film more than he liked Stanley Kubrick’s take on “The Shining”. If you actually read Stephen King’s criticism on “The Shining” you can actually see why he did not like it and it is very understandable. But “Carrie” has to be one of my personal favourite adaptations of a Stephen King novel for the screen. After “The Shining”, of course.