Stephen King’s first novel and one of his shortest (compare 199 pages here to It’s behemoth 1,138) started life thrown in the trash. Thankfully for horror readers and King himself, his wife Tabitha saved the pages and pushed him to keep Carrie White around. Sheesh. If only the characters in the book and Brian De Palma picture could do the same! But then, I guess, we wouldn’t have such indelible images written into our collective cultural consciousness as the ones De Palma paints in his Seventies adaptation – Jesus on a cross bearing down on Carrie with his big mournful eyes; a young John Travolta looking more meanly beautiful than his current-day beret-wearing implies; and, of course, Sissy Spacek as Carrie drenched in pigs’ blood barraged by her entire high school’s cruelty. As has been posted on a million Tumblr blogs, Twitter dashboards, and Instagram stories, hell surely is being a teenage girl. – James Scott
