Carrie [Blu-ray]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

This classic horror movie based on Stephen King's first novel stars Sissy Spacek as Carrie White, a shy, diffident teenager who is the butt of practical jokes at her small-town high school. Her blind panic at her first menstruation, a result of ignorance and religious guilt drummed into her by her fanatical mother, Margaret (Piper Laurie), only causes her classmates' vicious cruelty to escalate, despite the attentions of her overly solicitous gym teacher (Betty Buckley). Finally, when the venomous Chris Hargenson (Nancy Allen) engineers a reprehensible prank at the school prom, Carrie lashes out in a horrifying display of her heretofore minor telekinetic powers. Many films had featured school bullies, but Carrie was one of the first to focus on the special brand of cruelty unique to teenage girls. Carrie's world is presented as a snake pit, where the well-to-do female students all have fangs -- even the reticent Sue Snell (Amy Irving) -- and all the males are blind pawns, sexually twisted around the fingers of Chris and her evil cronies. The talented supporting cast includes John Travolta, P.J. Soles, and William Katt. One of the genre's true classics, the film was followed by a sequel in 1999, as well as by a famously unsuccessful Broadway musical adaptation that starred Betty Buckley, the movie's gym teacher, as Margaret White. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: A
• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Theatre Wide Screen)
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Features:
  • cc
  • Original theatrical trailer

AWARDS

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

•     Nominated Best Actress - 1976 (Sissy Spacek)
•     Nominated Best Supporting Actress - 1976 (Piper Laurie)

• Hollywood Foreign Press Association

•     Nominated Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Pic - 1976 (Piper Laurie)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Sissy Spacek - Carrie White
       Piper Laurie - Margaret White
       Amy Irving - Sue Snell
       William Katt - Tommy Ross
       Nancy Allen - Chris Hargenson
       John Travolta - Billy Nolan
       Betty Buckley - Miss Collins
       Sidney Lassick - Mr. Fromm
       Stefan Gierasch - Principal Morton
       Priscilla Pointer - Mrs. Snell
       Michael Talbott - Freddy
       Cameron de Palma - Boy On Bicycle
       Anson Downes - Ernest

• Director:

  Brian De Palma

• Producer:

  Paul Monash

• Screenwriter:

  Larry Cohen, Lawrence D. Cohen

• Book Author:

  Stephen King

• Cinematographer:

  Mario Tosi

• Composer (Music Score):

  Pino Donaggio

• Editor:

  Paul Hirsch

• Production Designer:

  Bill Kenney

• Art Director:

  Jack Fisk, Bill Kenney

• Associate Producer:

  Louis A. Stroller

• Set Decorator:

  Robert Gould

• Costume Designer:

  Rosanna Norton

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Bert Hallberg, Dick Vorisek

• Makeup:

  Wes Dawn

• Special Effects:

  Gregory M. Auer, Ken Pepiot

• First Assistant Director:

  Donald Heitzer

• Stunts Coordinator:

  Richard Weiker

REVIEW:

• Stephen King's first novel was also his first work adapted for the screen and, with the arguable exception of The Shining, is still the best, thanks largely to a remarkable performance from Sissy Spacek as Carrie White and a surprisingly subtle, intelligent presentation by director Brian De Palma. De Palma wisely doesn't focus on Carrie's strange power to move objects with her mind in the first act. Instead, he emphasizes her miserable existence as a high-school outcast with a remarkably awful home life, and Spacek's performance brings Carrie to painfully vivid life. Carrie White personifies every high-school student who didn't fit in, and Spacek makes her sympathetic without making us wonder why people pick on her; when Carrie finally takes her revenge, Spacek transforms her into a monster with a strange dignity, at once terrifying and heroic. De Palma presents the story in clear, well-paced fashion, for the most part avoiding the all-too-obvious homages to other filmmakers that often mark his work and (with the exception of the split screen for Carrie's rampage at the prom) laying off distracting visual trickery, letting his cast and Larry Cohen's screenplay do the work. Often regarded as a watershed of '70s mainstream horror, Carrie is at the same time one of the truest and most painfully perceptive films about the high-school caste system; nothing would touch it in this regard until Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse in 1996. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi