At this point in Stephen King’s career, it’s hard to imagine anyone not recognizing his name, at the very least. Even those who aren’t into horror stories or the genre are surely familiar with some of his non-horror adaptive works, like The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption, or Stand by Me.
King has had more than 60 books published, 30 of them being #1 bestsellers, and he’s totaled more than 350 million copies sold throughout his career. He’s also had almost 90 movies made based on his novels, novellas, and short stories, with the two-part adaptation of IT becoming #1 and #5 on the highest-grossing horror movie list, together making more than a billion dollars.
It’s probably safe to say that no other writer has cemented themselves in the pop culture zeitgeist as well as King has. His work has infiltrated every media form imaginable, both on literal and inspirational levels.
It’s difficult to believe that all this greatness within the literary world, the horror genre, and pop culture started over 50 years ago when Stephen King’s Carrie hit the bookshelves.
Carrie was almost a “never was,” as King didn’t feel it was good enough to publish and walked away from it before being convinced by his wife to finish the work. Even when it was picked up and published, the hardback release wasn’t a best-selling novel. It wasn’t until almost a year later, when the book was released in paperback, that the masses began to pick it up, especially after Brian De Palma’s adaptation, two years after the novel’s release.
The under-200-page book shot up to four million copies sold within the first two years, hit the New York Times Bestseller list, and set the stage for King’s next few novels: a New England vampire tale titled Salem’s Lot, an absolute mammoth of a good vs. evil story in The Stand, and of course, quite possibly the most well-known novel of his entire career, The Shining.
The Shining was particularly tied to King’s first book, as Carrie ended with the memoir of one of the book’s characters describing the existence of people like Carrie White, those who could use their brains to move objects, read minds, and especially in The Shining’s case, have full conversations.
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The use of mind powers would become a major connective tissue throughout all the stages of King’s bibliography, from being the main theme in his classics like The Dead Zone and Firestarter to his recent books like The Institute. Even in his stories and books that don’t necessarily use mind control powers as a main focus, supporting characters with various powers tend to pop up. Examples are Mother Abigail in The Stand and Jake Chambers in The Dark Tower series.
So, why does Stephen King’s Carrie stand the test of time over five decades? Because the themes it touched on then are still extremely relevant today. No, not the telekinesis stuff (although it’s awesome); we mean the themes of bullying and religious horrors.
In so many words, Carrie is very much a school shooter story where the killer has mind powers instead of a gun. There have been 16 school shootings in the US already this year, and several of them as a response to the bullying of the perpetrator. As with most of these cases, you can simultaneously sympathize with Carrie White’s home life without supporting her response. Let’s be fair; it wasn’t just her bullies on whom she got revenge.
By the end of the book, Carrie terrorizes the whole town by basically shutting down and killing hundreds of innocent townspeople before her death. But like in many starts of many real-life events that happen today, the constant, no-holds-barred bullying that happens to Carrie is the match and kindle that started the raging fire (no pun intended).
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The fact that Carrie’s mother, Margaret, was an absolute religious nut job didn’t make matters any better. Margaret believed Carrie was a constant blasphemer, abused her daily, and, by the end, even went so far as to say she was possessed by Satan. This is something that happens to millions of religiously oppressed kids and teens in the US every day, and in Carrie White’s case, you can only poke the bear so many times before it snaps and eats you.
Religious horror and the dangerous effects of its pushers would also be a massive theme in many of King’s stories, including in some of his most memorable villains, like Annie Wilkes from Misery or the detestable Ms. Carmody from The Mist.
Stephen King’s Carrie would also prove to be quite adaptable, as it’s a piece of King’s work that has been adapted for the screen most of the time. The most memorable is the 1976 Brian De Palma film, in which both Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie received Academy Award nominations for their roles as Carrie and Margaret White. The film also starred a young John Travolta as one of Carrie’s tormentors. He would go on a few years later to work as the lead in De Palma’s Blow Out.
In 1999, a strange sequel to Carrie was made, titled The Rage: Carrie 2, starring Emily Bergl and Jason London. The film was an original story that the producers thought was too much like Carrie, so they changed the name to make it a sequel. It’s a more modern version of the same story but takes place at a party instead of the high school dance.
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The first remake of the film was released as a made-for-TV 2002 film, directed by Star Trek: Generations director David Carson, with the screenplay written by Brian Fuller, who would go on to create some amazing TV shows throughout his career, including Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, and most recently, Star Trek: Discovery.
This one starred Angela Bettis and Patricia Clarkson in the Carrie and Margaret roles. While it was mostly well-received, the dialogue was a bit watered down. Producers thought it was “too anti-religious” and asked Fuller to rewrite many of the scenes with a more positive religious spin.
The latest remake of the film came in Kimberly Pierce’s 2013 version, with Chloë Grace Moretz in the title role and Julianne Moore doing a fantastic job as Margaret White. The performances were strong, but stylistically and atmospherically, the film just couldn’t live up to its predecessor.
So, if you haven’t read Stephen King’s Carrie, we recommend taking a day and knocking it out, if anything, just to see where the King of Horror started it all over 50 years ago. King took to social media to express his disbelief at the years since its release.
The book clocks in at under 300 pages and makes for a fast-paced, entertaining, and delightfully horrifying read. It’s a great chance to get an insight into something that has inspired and led to countless incredible pieces of horror history. Long live the King!
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