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Spoilers (4)
Sissy Spacek wasn't considered for the role of Carrie until her husband, art director Jack Fisk, convinced director Brian De Palma to allow her to audition. Until that, De Palma was wedded to the idea of Amy Irving playing Carrie; when Spacek got the part instead, De Palma gave Irving the smaller role of Sue.
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Betty Buckley, who plays the gym teacher in the film, went on to star as Carrie's mother in the ill-fated Pitchford/Gore musical version of Carrie. The song "When There's No One" from the show is included on Buckley's Sterling records release "Children Will Listen". No official cast album exists, although several unofficial recordings have been made.
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The name of the high school is Bates High, a reference to Norman Bates from Psycho. In addition, the four note violin theme from Psycho is used over and over in the film.
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The dizzying camera shot during the prom scene was achieved by placing William Katt and Sissy Spacek on a platform that was spinning in one direction, while the camera was being dollied in the opposite direction.
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Initially, P.J. Soles was only cast for two weeks, but after she hit Sissy Spacek over the head with her red baseball hat during the volleyball scene, Brian De Palma decided to keep her around longer.
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The pig's blood dumped on Sissy Spacek was karo syrup and food coloring, although she was willing to have real blood dumped on her.
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The script called for a model of the White home to be crushed by a hail of rocks. The filmmakers spent an evening trying unsuccessfully to pull off the effect, and as dawn approached, they abandoned the rocks and decided to burn it down. They liked what they saw so it stayed in the film.
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Sue Snell and her mother are played by real-life daughter and mother Amy Irving and Priscilla Pointer.
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George Lucas and Brian De Palma held a joint audition for Carrie and Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. There is a long-standing rumor that originally, Sissy Spacek was cast as Princess Leia, and Carrie Fisher as Carrie, but when Fisher refused to appear in nude scenes and Spacek was willing to do them, they switched parts. However, Fisher refuted this story in a Premiere magazine article called "The Force Wasn't With Them," about actors who auditioned unsuccessfully for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. That article quoted Fisher as saying, "Not only do I love being nude, I would've been nude then... But anyway, it's total bullshit [that Fisher refused to play Carrie]."
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Amy Irving, who played Sue Snell, originally read for the part of Princess Leia, and William Katt, who played Tommy Ross, originally read for the part of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope.
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Betty Buckley provides the voice over ("Creepy Carrie! Creepy Carrie!") for the little boy on the bike that chastises Carrie on her way home.
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John Travolta drives a 1967 Chevelle SS 396 hardtop in this film, and in Pulp Fiction, he drove a 1964 Chevelle Malibu convertible.
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Nancy Allen claims that she never realized that her character was going to be so evil until she saw the finished film, she thought that she and John Travolta were playing such self-centered, bickering morons that they were there for comic relief. Piper Laurie also thought that the character of Margaret White was so over the top that the film had to be a comedy.
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The fake blood dropped on Sissy Spacek kept drying and adhering to her skin because of the hot lights. The only solution was to hose her down when the substance got gluey.
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For her screen test, Sissy Spacek rubbed Vaseline into her hair and didn't bother to wash her face. She also wore a sailor dress (which her mother had made for her when she was in the seventh grade) with the hem cut off.
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When Carrie flips Billy's car, the interior shot shows them spinning along with it. This effect was not achieved by actually rotating the actors in a car but by simply spinning the film frame in post production.
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Sissy Spacek asked Brian De Palma how he wanted her to react when Carrie first realizes that she is bleeding in the showers at the start and De Palma told her "It's like you've been hit by a truck." Spacek talked to her husband Jack Fisk (art director), who as a child had been run over by a car when he was standing in the streets looking at Christmas lights a neighbor had put up, and used his description of the experience as a basis for the scene.
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Many of the girls present in the locker room were originally hesitant to appear nude in the film, but after Brian De Palma showed them the nude shots of Sissy Spacek, they became more confident.
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Brian De Palma wanted Betty Buckley to really slap Nancy Allen. Because Allen couldn't get the reaction De Palma wanted, Buckley ended up slapping her as many as thirty times.
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The uncredited band that performs at the prom is named "Vance or Towers". The uncredited song that they perform, "Education Blues", is available on their 1975 self-titled album.
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There was originally a scene where Carrie as a little girl is caught talking to a woman sunbathing in the backyard by her mother. Margaret drags Carrie inside and Carrie makes stones rain on the house which tied with the original ending of her burying the house in a shower of boulders. The scene was dropped because the stones didn't have the right effect.
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In Carrie's house, the statue of a religious figure shot with arrows represents St. Sebastian. It is not a crucifix and does not represent Jesus Christ.
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Amy Irving admits that she originally hated the script when she first received it. After seeing the finished film, she thought it was simply 'magic' and loved it.
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Amy Irving was originally rather disappointed that many of her larger scenes were cut. A scene featuring Irving and William Katt in the backseat of his truck was cut, for reasons unknown.
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Originally, Brian De Palma had used the split screen effect extensively during the prom scene. Disappointed with the results, he re-edited most of the scenes into full frame shots leaving only the few split screen moments that he felt worked.
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The ring that Amy Irving wears throughout the movie was a gift to her from Stephen King the author of the book the film is based on.
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The film that Tommy and Sue are watching on TV when Tommy agrees to take Carrie to the prom is Duel at Diablo.
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Screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen went on to collaborate with composer Michael Gore and lyricist Dean Pitchford and create "Carrie: The Musical", which debuted with the Royal Shakespeare Company, directed by Terry Hands and choreographed by Debbie Allen in Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom in 1988. Later that same year, the production was transferred to Broadway, where Betty Buckley replaced Barbara Cook as Margaret White. The Broadway run only lasted five performances, and it is considered by many to be the most spectacular flop in Broadway history. However, Linzi Hateley, who played the title role in her Broadway debut, won a Theatre World Award for her performance.
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The film's original trailer, now available on the DVD, shows an alternate take of Carrie in the shower stall from the beginning and the original voice of the little boy taunting Carrie from his bicycle (overdubbed by Betty Buckley in the finished film).
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(8 February 2007) Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) and Tommy Ross (William Katt) love story inspired Sergi Rubió's Laia Laiona (2007)
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(10 December 2006) Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) and Tommy Ross (William Katt) love story inspired Sergi Rubió's Madison Class of '64 (2006)
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Linda Blair auditioned for the role of Carrie but turned it down fearing being typecast. Jill Clayburgh also auditioned for the title role, but was passed over. Farrah Fawcett also auditioned for the part, but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts from Charlie's Angels.
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Bernard Herrmann, who had been nominated for an Oscar for the music to De Palma's previous film Obsession, was slated to compose this score but passed away the December before the film was completed.
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Stephen King based Carrie White on two girls he knew while at school, both were social outcasts from deeply religious families and both died while still in their twenties.
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According to the audio commentary on the DVD, Carrie is a composite of two girls Stephen King knew, though only one of them was a classmate of his. Prior to the publication of Carrie, his first published novel, King had been an English teacher. The second girl who inspired Carrie was one of his students.
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According to the DVD extras, Betsy Slade was Brian De Palma's early choice for the role of Carrie White based on the strength of her appearance as a teenage girl seeking an abortion in the film Our Time. Sissy Spacek's screen test was so persuasive, however, she ultimately won the role.
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In a 2010 interview with "The A.V. Club", P.J. Soles said that Steven Spielberg often came to the set at Brian De Palma's invitation because DePalma told him that there were "a lot of cute girls down here." Soles said that Spielberg asked out most of the women on the set, Soles included, and Amy Irving was the only one who accepted. Irving and Spielberg were married from 1985-1989 and had one son together.
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Not one of the actors or actresses who portrayed high school students in the film was in his or her teens. In fact, some were as old as 25 or 26 at the time of filming.
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The song played at the prom while Tommy and Carrie dance was performed by Katie Irving, the sister of Amy Irving.
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Betty Buckley was 28 at the time of filming, only two years older than Sissy Spacek, and three years older than Nancy Allen and P.J. Soles, who play her students.
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Stephen King got the idea for Carrie while working in a laundry. Some of the characters, like Carrie's religious fanatical mother, were based on people who worked there with him.
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After King wrote the manuscript for Carrie, he shelved it and got to work on his next novel, Salem's Lot.
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King was reluctant to send Carrie to a publisher because it sounded (to him) the least marketable of all his manuscripts to date. But horror was a hot commodity what with successes like The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby so the novel became a sleeper success. To this day, King doesn't know what would have happened to his marriage and sanity if Carrie had been rejected.
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Sissy Spacek was invited to audition for the character of Sue Snell or Chris Hargensen, but Brian De Palma wanted her for the lead.
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The success of Carrie at the box-office cemented Stephen King's name as an author. King himself was delighted with the film.
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Brian De Palma had to dump a scene from the novel where Carrie blows up petrol stations with her mind, setting the town on fire. The effects work would have been too expensive.
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Spoilers
In the scene where the fire hose kills P.J. Soles's character, the water pressure actually burst her eardrums. Soles is not actually unconscious when her head rolls to the side from the force of the fire hose, but she is in terrible pain and has lost her ability to maintain equilibrium (which is governed by the ear). The director decided to keep the shot in. Soles had no hearing in that ear for about six months afterward, though the eardrum did eventually heal.
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In the second-to-last scene (where Amy Irving lays flowers on Carrie's grave) to make it more "eerie", the shot was filmed backwards - then run in reverse in slo-mo - to give it a surreal effect. This is evidenced by a background automobile traversing the perpendicular intersection backwards, which the viewer can clearly observe as driving in reverse.
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Ever the stickler for authenticity, Sissy Spacek insisted that she - not a double - be the one whose hand shoots up out of Carrie's grave during Sue Snell's nightmare sequence.
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While filming the bloody prom sequence, Sissy Spacek's trailer was parked behind the set. After being covered in fake blood, for continuity purposes, Spacek refused to wash the effect off. She elected instead to sleep in her bloody clothes for three days of filming.
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