Critically discuss the strategies of exploitation cinema as they apply to Brian DePalma’s Carrie (1976) .
By Neil Hogan
Exploitation movies have become such a part of popular culture that the average person might think that is all there is. However, for a movie to reach this kind of identification, studios employ a number of strategies. This essay will look at some of these strategies in relation to the 1976 film Carrie, directed by Brian de Palma, and how it helped it to become part of popular culture and achieve cult status. It will also touch on the idea that Carrie should not be considered a horror movie.
So, what is an exploitation movie? Firstly ‘exploitation movies’ is not a genre. It is an industry. This is a particular style of movie production, where films can be made cheaply to make money quickly. (Roche 2015). Generally, exploitation films ‘exploit’ something. Either romance, violence, sex, a big star, political or social anxieties, or just do stir things up with some controversy. As the definition is vague and broad, it’s possible to make an argument that just about any Hollywood movie is an exploitation film. While there are a number of strategies employed in creating an exploitation movie, theatre companies do rely on a tried and true story telling system first to have a scaffolding to make it work. Classical Hollywood narration is common, and there is usually a dual plot structure, usually involving a romance along with a different plot line. (Bordwell, 1986)
Classic exploitation explores the titillation aspect, featuring taboo subjects and adult only themes. Lurid material would give them an edge and would also be used in their promotional campaigns. The goal was to quickly replicate the success of others while the interest in the subject was still trending. Studios constantly surveyed the market for anything they could quickly exploit. Exploitation movies also usually featured no a-list stars, nor high art. Low production values, minimal decoration, sometimes the producer was also the director and may even play a part in the production. (Mathijs, 2011)
In the more modern era of exploitation films, after the MPAA film censorship laws were introduced in 1968, traditional exploitation films fell to independents, while companies like United Artists had to work within these new restrictions. Studios had to come up with new strategies to combat these problems in the New Hollywood era. One of those strategies was to open a movie in multiple cinemas at the same time. Another was to focus only on the presold concept. Another was to market the same movie in different ways to different demographics.
Carrie was a product of the pre-sold concept. The book by Stephen King had been a moderate success and Brian de Palma was so taken with it he bought the full rights from King. This lowered the risk and meant that a studio would be happy to invest money in production of a film that was already a success in another medium.
De Palma had already had some experience with exploitation films, having made Sisters (1973) and Phantom of the Paradise (1974), and knew to include certain things in his movie to make it more appealing, but still be within the restrictions afforded by film censorship. In one of the opening scenes of Carrie we see inside the girls’ locker rooms as they undress and shower after playing volleyball. Rather than make this scene something that looked like pornography, de Palma chose to make it dreamlike, with steam concealing much of the women’s bodies, and the scene quickly changing to one of terror as the main protagonist Carrie (Sissy Spacek) inexplicably starts bleeding. When I first saw this scene I thought, as Carrie had been billed as a horror, that Carrie was suddenly undergoing stigmata or some other supernatural situation. To then find it was simply her period was quite a letdown. But I assume that, for audiences in the much more puritanical and naïve 70s, (the era of Jimmy Carter and the rise of fundamentalist Christianity in the States) this kind of scene would have been a shock, and would have generated much word of mouth promotion for the film; a great strategy.
Stephen King’s story also delved into the dangers of fundamentalist Christianity, by including a character called Margaret White (Piper Laurie) that was more evil than good in her ways of spruiking the bible’s teachings. De Palma then took this character and other characters and situations to emphasize religious symbolism and imagery throughout to further encourage reactions. Keesey (2015) analysing the Christian motifs in Carrie wrote “the tampon “stoning” of Carrie” , “Carrie retaliates by telekinetically crucifying her mother with knives” and “the “fallen nature” of adult sexuality”. There was also a lot of blood, symbols of sacrifice, and other references to the Christian bible throughout, likely helping promote Carrie even further through offending the Christian right as the old saying goes ‘Any publicity is good publicity.’
De Palma also knew to push harder on the prevailing fears of men at the time who were coming to terms with women taking their jobs, being more independent, and not wanting to remain at home as housewives. This strategy of preying on the anxieties of the masses encouraged more women to see the film and more men to talk about it. As the movie focuses more on the development of the female characters, it could be seen as a feminist movie. In fact, the movie has most of the male cast as bit players, doing the bidding of women or being simply useless. This kind of aberration compared to other movies of the time not only gave Carrie that extra edge it needed to be noticed at the cinema, but also enabled it to make it to cult status and become part of popular culture.
It could be said there was a lot of heart, some transformative acting from the lead, Sissy Spacek, and many other elements that took this movie out of mere exploitation status. As a perfect example of De Palma’s take on the story, “nearly 75 of the film’s 90 minute runtime is devoted to character-development, so that when the carnage finally lets loose, the audience is fully invested in the fate of the characters.” BLK STG (2016). De Palma spends much of the movie on character development before the shock ending, so we get to see all the goals of the different characters, a rarity for a movie that usually focuses on just three characters.
Another strategy to sell the movie and make it more popular is to create a great movie poster about it. Usually exploitation movies focus on marketing to teenage boys. However, the posters for Carrie took a different tack. Marketers took the unusual path of promoting to both boys and girls in the same poster. A picture of a girl in a prom dress for the girls on the left and a picture of the same girl covered in blood on the right for the boys. Even the taglines were targeted to two different groups. The tagline for the girls was “Take Carrie to the prom” and the tagline for the boys was “If only they knew she had the power” In addition to this, the movie was first released on Wednesday 3rd November 1976 (before going wide two weeks later) within the final Halloween week, and labelled a horror, even though it wasn’t originally made as one. The strategy here was to sell it like so many other horror movies that were part of the cycle of movies every October / November. While Carrie’s content could have meant a release anytime during the year, studio executives decided that the final scenes were enough to consider it a horror movie and it has been labelled that ever since.
When the movie was first released, Brian de Palma said “Horror films are Hammer films, vampires and Frankenstein. I love those pictures, but I don’t feel it’s exactly what I’m doing.” Stephen King, five years later, also rejected the horror category. “It’s largely about how women find their own channels of power, and what men fear about women and women’s sexuality.” King (1981), Eggert (2013) also wrote: “The 1970s elevated the horror genre from lowbrow entertainment to artistic heights with titles like The Exorcist (1973) and Jaws (1975), and just like those pictures, labeling Carrie as just “a horror film” does it an injustice.” BLK STG for Derry Public Radio said, “And the reason it’s so good is because the story revolves around the characters, not the horror.”
So, while the studio executives were smart in promoting it as a horror, it has continued to remain in the public consciousness and been referred to again and again in popular culture because it is much more than a horror movie. “Carrie effortlessly straddles and frequently blurs, the line between exploitation trash and serious-minded cinema” (Paul O’Callaghan, BFI.) By de Palma not completely making Carrie an exploitative movie, he has raised it to be something higher. A real movie, albeit one that has been labelled a horror. This could be the main reason the movie earned over US$33 million when it only cost US$1.8 million to make.
So, we know that strategies were used before the movie was even made to make sure they could recoup their investment. Let’s now look at what happened after the release of the movie. Carrie is arguably one of the most well known movies of all time, not only thanks to Stephen King’s prolific works, and Sissy Spacek’s seminal performance, but also for the cult status the film has garnered over the years. “The reason why both book and film worked was that the action took place in a familiar setting, high school. Since Carrie, there have been more high school horror movies than you can shake a pom-pom at, but in 1976, after the success of Carnal Knowledge (1971), American Graffiti (1973) and on television Happy Days, awareness of high school culture was at a new high.” Collins (2000). Dan Bentley-Baker, in his article ‘What Is Cult Cinema? A Checklist’ came up with eight points that could easily enable anyone to work out whether a movie should get cult status billing or not. Of these, Carrie fits into six of them. Marginality: Features telekinesis; Suppression: It was R-rated for its bloody violence, disturbing images, language and some sexual content; Transgression: It talked about periods, showed single mothers, featured a female protagonist which was almost unheard of at the time, and explored fundamentalist Christians in a toxic, negative light. It also explored the idea of a teenager killing other students in schools. (On July 12th, 1976, nine people were shot and seven of those died in a school in Fullerton, California, making killing students in a high school a sensitive subject at the time.); Cult Following: There are a lot of websites devoted to Carrie, and before that there were some fan clubs; Quotation: Lines are remembered by fans and have been repeated in TV shows and movies that have followed, as homage to Carrie. Some iconic lines in Carrie include “Plug it up!” , “You suck” , “These are godless times” and “They’re all going to laugh at you.”; Iconography: Carrie helped stimulate the careers of Sissy Spacek and John Travolta. It also led to Stephen King becoming a star writer and having many of his books turned into movies. So we can see from Bentley-Baker’s list that Carrie is a cult film and as a result of this honour, features heavily in popular culture.
When a movie becomes a cult it quickly becomes influential as those who have seen it in the industry want to pay homage to it. In this sense, the 1976 Carrie film has had references in other movies and TV shows. Thanks to IMDB’s list of movie connections, we can see over 500 references to the movie since its release. Everything from the Carrie poster appearing in TV show scenes to repeated recreations of the scene of Carrie’s hand coming out of the ground at the end of the movie in other movies. There is also a lot of mention of the pigs’ blood from the movie by other movie and TV show characters.
In conclusion, thanks to the many exploitation movie strategies employed by the United Artists to promote Carrie, we can see how it not only became a success, but also garnered a cult following that made it part of popular culture and referenced in other movies and TV shows which continues to this day.
References
Bentley-Baker, D. “What is Cult Cinema? A Checklist.”, Bright Lights Film Journal, July 31, 2010, viewed 18 October 2019, <https://brightlightsfilm.com/what-is-cult-cinema-a-checklist/>
BLK STG 2018, Carrie (1976), Constant Readers Powered by Derry Public Radio, viewed 18 October 2019, <https://constantreaders.org/home/carrie-1976-brian-depalma-sissy-spacek-stephen-king-blk-stg-movie-review>
Collins, A 2000, Carrie Review, Empire Online, viewed 18 October 2019, <https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/carrie-review/>
Eggert, B, 2013, Carrie Essay, Deep Focus Review, viewed 18 October 2019, <https://deepfocusreview.com/definitives/carrie/>
IMDB 2019, Carrie (1976) Connections, IMDB, viewed 18 October 2019, <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074285/movieconnections>
Keesey, D, 2015, Brian De Palma’s Split-Screen. The University Press of Mississippi
King, S, 1981, Danse Macabre, Everest House, USA.
Mathijs, E & Sexton, J, 2012 Exploitation and B Movies. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, p143-150.
Oxford Bibliographies 2011, Exploitation Film, OUP, viewed 18 October 2019, <https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199791286/obo-9780199791286-0096.xml>
Roche, D 2015, Exploiting Exploitation Cinema: An Introduction, Transatlantica, viewed 18 October 2019 <https://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/7846>
Shyong, F, 2016, “Cal State Fullerton killer’s hospital transfer sparks protests from his victim’s families” Los Angeles Times, viewed 18 October 2019 <https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-fullerton-killer-transfer-20160819-snap-story.html>
