IT was a fantastic book, a true page turner (was the first King book I read, and was really the first big book I had ever read). The TV adaptation didn't quite get there because of the ending, and how impossible it was to make that ending on TV at the time, but when the kid gets his arm ripped off it was one of the most effective pieces I've ever seen in TV. That kid really sold it. Tim Curry was also great. The rest of the casting was really only okay, but very good for what TV could get at the time.

Yeah It was great. I used to get excited whenever new King books came out, especially when I had money and could buy them in hardback.

I hate hardbacks. I really really hate them. Can't read while walking.. Can't bend back. I like my books to look read. Hardback is far to nitty.

I'm stopping for the night at the beginning of Part 2: The Prom.

I could finish this book before I go to bed but figured this was a good stopping point.

I had forgotten just how great of a job King did with building up the anticipation/suspense for the Prom. This is 1 of those books that I wish I knew nothing about and was reading it for the 1st time.

Adding the excerpts from the medical journal, case study and Sue's story was a great addition that I think helped make this book so awesome. King could have filled in the pages with more real time events but it wouldn't have built up the "event" as much as the excerpts.

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet,
But Carrie White eats ****.

Huh, that's where I stopped. I'll restart now.

Whilst this thread is literary in nature, I'm going to roll this in to my podcast by watching associated movies and/or TV miniseries. I'll post a link to each monthly cast here as well, but I may discuss the input in this thread about the monthly book in the cast. I may even get you to email me your thoughts in mp3 format so I can add them... We will see if there's any interest in that...

Finished last night.

Such a great book for it being King's 1st. At least it didn't suffer from a lame ending like so many of his books.

Here's my notes and research on this book.


Carrie

I finished it yesterday. It was a reread, but it's been maybe 25 or 30 years since I last read it.
Carrie was Stephen King's First Novel, published 5th April 1974. So it's recently turned 40 years old.

It's written in an semi-epistolary style, made up of the main story, interspersed with newspaper clippings, articles, excerpts from books and so on, and consists of 3 parts - Blood Sport, Prom Night, and Wreckage.


Without getting into the story (surely everyone knows that already), I was vaguely aware King didn't think much of this book. I remember reading in one of his non-fiction works (Danse Macabre, I think) that he can't remember clearly writing it, and it feels to him like it was written while he had the mental equivalent of a heavy cold, or flu. I looked into it further after reading this, and apparently King has said that he finds the work to be "raw" and "with a surprising power to hurt and horrify." He doesn't disown it, but he clearly doesn't think it is a great work. To quote him, "it reminds me of a cookie baked by a first grader — tasty enough, but kind of lumpy and burned on the bottom." King proportedly wrote it in a few weeks.


I also found out it is one of the most frequently banned books in United States schools, and has sold more than 4 million copies since first published.

I think it's a startling and powerful read. It packs a punch. It shows King's ability to make the thoughts and actions of a number of disparate characters (particularly the thoughts) feel authentic and raw. That's part of its power. The other part is how fast it feels, it feels like it's absolutely racing along, even when King is actually teasing out fine detail and touches. I enjoyed the epistolary style, but I like that style anyway - Dracula works really well because if its epistolary style, imo.

It's a real kick in the head book, and I think a strong indication of where King's strengths and weaknesses lie in his future work.


The most ominous phrase in the book: 'Then, inside, the laughter started.'


One other thing I thought was interesting was the few pages King devoted to Billy Nolan's feelings about his car. Man, it could have been the back cover of Christine.

Overall, very powerful.

8/10



I may write more on it later.

Carrie: The Audiobook - read by Sissy Spacek

A rather fine, balanced reading by Sissy Spacek. Audiobook fiction really does work best when done by experience actors, and this is no exception. I'd definitely recommend this as a way to absorb this work, Spacek does a good job.

9/10

Trying to trudge through 'Doctor Sleep' right now. About 70% done. I absolutely loved the shining and I don't know, I guess I'm a little bummed out by the sequel. It's going just kinda boring... I'm going to read pet semetary next or maybe It. Have seen the movies but never read the stories. Just finished Horns by Joe Hill (SK's son) and that was a great book!

It's great that he's still alive and kicking ass. He looks damn good for his age. King4Lyfe

and to go along with the book...

Carrie (1976)

4/5



Basic and crudely-drawn in places, this is nevertheless raw and powerful stuff, raised immeasurably by the performances of Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie. The rest of the acting talent, excepting Travolta, is at best average.

It's like an edited highlights version from the novel, with actually not that much changed up to the blood/prom incident, and Spacek is terrific in the speechless avenging angel role, covered in blood and raining hell down on the tormentors.

After the prom incident, things are different from the source, but some of it is fine, I understand movies need to keep up a narrative drive that isn't so pressing with books, but some of the changes are ridiculous - in particular what happens to the White's house at the end.


Some of the parts that bothered me...I was quite shocked how much some of the sound cues were direct lifts from Psycho. I was also a little uncomfortable with the soft-focus, lingering on what was meant to be high-school girls showering naked (though the fact they were clearly in their twenties meant it wasn't THAT uncomfortable).

Overall, powerful and raw horror, made so much better by a few key performances.

Definitely in on this. Rage is probably one of my favourite stories of all time and I always wonder how nobody has made a movie of it, especially considering the amount of school shootings in the past few years.

From wikipedia:

Carrie 2002

1.5/5



Very poor version with very little to recommend it. The best things by far are two performances, that of Carrie, and her mother. In addition, it's actually nice to see high-school kids played by more age-appropriate actors, however....

It looks massively cheap. The version I saw looked like faded video, and I have no reason to believe it was done on film. The main nastiness has been mostly homogenised into TV-movie bland, and apart from some decent practical effects in some scenes, the special effects are quite poor. There's a scene early on where stones are raining down on a house, which more like a mini-version of Armaggedon. Sheesh. The main bad-guys, Chris and her boyfriend Billy Nolan aren't effective, and it just feels bland bland bland.

Interestingly, Bryan Fuller (Hannibal) wrote the teleplay for that. Is the version you watched available on something like youtube? It was a NBC TV Movie, and in that era I think it's pretty unlikely that it would have been shot on video (we were still about 2 or 3 years away from people starting to shoot HD video experimentally for scripted drama/movie stuff on network TV). Stuff at that time was almost always shot on film, but the final master is always video. It could have just been a bad copy you saw.

It's on Netflix (UK)

It's not available on Netflix U.S., so I can't actually see if it's different than what you're seeing. I can, however, say that there are a few plausible reasons why it looks bad to you. Prior to HD, nearly everything scripted on network TV (outside of some multi-camera sitcoms) was shot on film, and then transferred to 29.97 Drop Frame Timecode videotapes for TV broadcast. If it was shot in the U.S., it was done in NTSC. If it was shot in places like the UK, it would have been done in PAL. In order to get your territory a copy of the NTSC movie, a PAL video conversion would have to be made (or a PAL film transfer would have to be made, which networks might not pay for, though PAL film transfers were the standard for home video for PAL territories at the time), and the PAL conversions are often done poorly (and vice versa), and cause it to not look at all like it's supposed to. As I said, a PAL film transfer is the only way to make it look right, but for something like the Carrie TV movie, it probably wouldn't have been thought of as a good home video property, making it likely go the conversion route. With the advent of HD, a new timecode format came out, called 23.98. With 23.98, you can now transfer the film (or more commonly today, shoot in that frame rate on HD video) to 23.98, and tell the tape deck whether it should be PAL or NTSC (and both versions will look identical). It revolutionized a lot of stuff, and made a bunch of people's jobs a lot easier.

I was once working on a very complex project at a company I worked at that required me to layback audio to a PAL video that had been converted. I found out the hard way that the company that I worked for wasn't doing PAL conversions properly (meaning they didn't alter the speed of the video, which is what true PAL is vs. NTSC).

So, the long story short is you probably got a bad conversion, because NBC doesn't care about the UK. It was still probably originally shot on film.

ok then, but it still looked incredibly cheap because of that. Also, ignoring that, the CGI looked bad.

this clip was the kind of quality I saw.

Carrie 2013

3.5/5



Not as bad as some say, and suffers from the same strengths and weaknesses as its previous versions - they've cast well for Carrie and her mother, but the rest of the characters just aren't effective or striking enough to really amp up the drama. I will say they also cast Miss Disjardin quite well in this one though.

I have no problem with this story as a remake - I think it's actually a good, simple and raw story that suits being remade or reworked every generation or so - but I do hope that next time they actually cast and write the secondary characters better.

Moore's version of Mrs White was interesting, she wasn't as strident as either the book or the previous movies, but she was slightly more insane - the self-harming was probably the only genuinely gruesome element to the movie.

Finally, this was supposed to be closer to the source than De Palma's first take...come on, it was clearly an update of that movie, and not the source material. Who are they trying to kid?

That's a horrible conversion, and it looks like a really bad conversion of film to me. Cheesiness of other stuff is a whole other animal, obviously.

haha. i was already doing this before i found the thread. i have read most of stephen kings newer books, the first being Green Mile when i was 8 or so. now i have been reading starting from the earliest and moving forward chronologically. im currently on the Running Man and according to wikipedia i have 19 more to read then i will have read them all.

i have liked them all so far and havent had any books or endings that i didnt like. what i like about stephen kings endings is how they are so unpredictable and sometimes atypical.

its hard to pick favorites but of the early books, i really liked the Long Walk. it was such an interesting novel idea and written in an intriguing way.

of the newer books, Cell actually made me sleep with my light on, which shows the strength and impact of that one, great book.

loads of other greats as well, such as Lisey's Story with, again, such novel content.

id say half or so of the audiobook readers do a great job (i prefer audiobooks over books and listen over reading 90% of books lately). see It and the Dark Tower series for some pretty splendid voice acting.

i suppose if i did have to pick a favorite, it would be the Dark Tower series.

i always find that after finishing a stephen king book i get the urge to write. so far i hve never completed anything, and the furthest i have ever gotten is 28 pages in a one-night frenzy that i never picked up again. i hope that somehow i will find the motivation to complete a story someday!

i guess i will comment on carrie as that is the current thread point. i read this on paper during a snowboard trip in the canadian rockies about 7 yrs ago. i remember feeling like i was thinking, "come on carrie, you gonna take all that bull**** from those rubes? take a stand and give them what for!" or at least something along those lines. as she kept getting pushed harder it felt like there was an impending doom on the horizon and then BAM. the snapping point had been reached and the ****show arrived. i loved the vengeful conflagration and it was very satisfying to see Carrie going full throttle.

The set pieces of Carrie are powerful - the shower torment, the prom, and going back to mother. I do think Carrie is a story that can be redone as a movie every generation or so.