The negative for Detective Belli was to be made in a lab in L.A. from materials supplied by the Italian distributor, and I was dispatched there in late 1971 to make sure everything was copacetic. Brian De Palma was also in Hollywood then, editing his picture Get To Know Your Rabbit. It was Brian's first studio picture, and he hadn't been able to hire me to work on it because I wasn't even in the New York union, not to mention L.A.'s.

I called him to say I was in town. He invited me to come see a rough cut of his movie, which he was screening that afternoon out at Warner Bros. I went and watched the picture with Brian, his editor, and his producer. When the house lights went up, all eyes turned to me, since mine were the only fresh eyes in the room. The producer asked me what I thought, and I tentatively offered that there was one scene in particular I thought they could do without, a scene in which Tommy Smothers is up in a tree.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, a silence fell on the room, and I could feel a kind of tension. Brian thanked me, and we made a date to get together for dinner later. He explained to me that night that the scene I had mentioned had in fact been the subject of a bitter struggle between Brian and the producers, Brian wanting it out, them wanting it in. They wrongly assumed that Brian had told me what to say. I went on to give Brian a more detailed list of suggestions, which hadn't seemed appropriate to offer in front of anyone else.

I returned to New York and shortly thereafter left Sig Shore's employ.

"What I remember about it is, it was fun to be on that set," Travolta says in the video, in regards to Brian De Palma's Carrie. "I didn't realize how significant that movie was going to be. Because not only, it got two Oscar nominations, and became a contender in history for maybe one of the better horror pictures ever made. It launched me, but it satisfied a lot of film history. This was a movie where, not unlike Grease, it was just a bunch of young, new actors, that were joining some thoroughbreds, and having at it. You know, and De Palma at the helm, and all for, all about fun. So, I think Carrie was an important movie on many levels, for sure. And the movie was a far more well-made movie than I had anticipated it would be. You know, it became an instant classic."

Meanwhile, the Star Tribune's Chris Hewitt includes Margaret White in his list of "7 best movie moms"...

In an homage to another scary movie mother, "Psycho," teenage Carrie (Sissy Spacek) attends Bates High School. She's bullied there but things are worse at home, where her zealot mother (Piper Laurie) terrorizes her. Laurie is brilliant in Brian De Palma's thriller because it's clear this unstable mom believes she's doing her job — protecting her daughter.

Eric Eisenberg at Cinema Blend
Adapting Stephen King's Carrie: Is The 1976 Horror Movie Still Queen Of The Prom?

As any Stephen King fan can attest, it’s a pretty magical thing to see the Master of Horror’s work properly realized on the big screen, and Brian De Palma’s Carrie, even more than 40 years after its original release, is not just still excellent, but reigns as one of the all-time great King adaptations. It locks into the disturbing heart of the seminal novel, making you feel every ounce of its protagonist’s pain, and burns images into your brain with its legendary third act – from the site of Carrie on stage drenched in pig’s blood, to the slamming doors, to people being burned, electrocuted, and crushed. No CGI required; just simple, practical effects, and it leaves an everlasting impression.

While it was made with a nothing budget, the film is visually spectacular, with cinematography that is both smart and stunning, and editing that is striking (the use of split-screen in the climax is a brilliant stroke, as you only feel more enveloped in the chaos as your eyes dart back and forth across the screen). The movie is most famous for its chaos, such as the brilliant hand-held camerawork as Carrie emerges from the gym showers desperate for help from any of her peers, but aesthetically it’s also gorgeous and poetic, with striking moments including Carrie being relegated to the background in an early classroom scene, her literally thunderous confrontation with her mother, and Margaret’s dead body holding the same position as the St. Sebastian statue in the prayer closet.

Not exactly being an epic (of which Stephen King has written many), the real power of the material comes from its characters, and the performances delivered by Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie are still flooring. Laurie’s Margaret remains one of cinema’s great psychologically terrifying villains, driven to pure madness by her zealotry, and Spacek both breaks your heart and sends chills down your spine when she reaches her breaking point. The movie doesn’t have the capacity to give the audience the full access to the Whites that the book does – for example, deeper insight into Margaret’s religion-driven psychosis, the story of how Carrie was conceived, and incidents from the girl’s childhood – but thanks to the actors’ genius turns you can perfectly read and understand their damage and pain as though it were psychically communicated.

It may not be traditionally frightening, and probably won’t induce nightmares in modern audiences, but Carrie remains haunting and affecting. Combined with its incredible significance in the history of Stephen King adaptations, it’s notably impossible not to put it on a pedestal, but that’s also exactly where it deserves to be. It’s a deeply dark and disturbing story as the author originally wrote it, and while the film presents a very different experience, it’s a masterclass in cinematic horror.

Sisters was made in 1973, the same year that Dukakis and her husband, Louis Zorich, helped found the Whole Theater Company in Montclair, New Jersey (the first photo below, dated from 1973, shows Dukakis in the front chair with the rest of the company). In Sisters, Phillip is running errands for Danielle when he spots the 4 Corners Bakery, and asks the worker inside to decorate a birthday cake with the names Dominique and Danielle. The lady turns her head back to Dukakis, telling her this guy wants her to write names on a cake. "I'd like to see you try!" Dukakis scoffs back at her, and the co-worker take it as a challenge (and we get a classic eerie suspense queue from Bernard Herrmann). Later, as Grace begins investigating Phillip's murder, she stops at the shop with her mother, and asks the lady about the cake. The lady cannot even remember the names she wrote on the cake(!) but, even during a busy moment, Dukakis pulls herself into the conversation to say the she remembers the names: Dominique and Danielle.

Excerpt from a 2003 New York Times brief by Margo Nash about Dukakis promoting her autobiography:

The trim 72-year-old actress with the throaty voice and direct manner has appeared in more than 40 films, 100 plays and 26 television movies. She has played parts ranging from her Oscar-winning role in 1987 as Cher's mother in ''Moonstruck,'' which made her famous, to the transsexual landlady in television's ''Tales of the City'' and ''More Tales of the City.'' She has also directed, taught acting, helped found five theaters, including the Whole Theater, and won numerous awards.

She and her husband, Louis Zorich, were Manhattan theater actors when they moved to Montclair in 1970, seeking a peaceful place to raise a family. They also wanted to start their own theater company, and so with other acting couples, founded the Whole Theater.

The company's first play was ''Our Town,'' in 1973. For the next 17 years, the theater produced five plays a season, including the works of Pirandello, Euripides, Eugene O'Neill, Samuel Beckett, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Lanford Wilson and many others, in productions that were critically praised. Among the actors performing were Jose Ferrer, Colleen Dewhurst, Blythe Danner and Samuel L. Jackson, as well as Ms. Dukakis and Mr. Zorich.

Excerpt from New York Times obit by Anita Gates:

Olympia Dukakis was born on June 20, 1931, in Lowell, Mass., the older of two children of Constantine and Alexandra (Christos) Dukakis, both Greek immigrants. Her father worked in various settings, including a munitions factory, a printing business and the quality control department of Lever Brothers. He also founded an amateur theater company.

Olympia graduated from Boston University with a degree in physical therapy and practiced that occupation, traveling to West Virginia, Minnesota and Texas during the worst days of the midcentury polio epidemic. Eventually she earned enough money to return to B.U. to study theater.

Even before she received her M.F.A., she threw herself into her new career, making her stage debut in a 1956 summer stock production of “Outward Bound” in Maine. She moved to New York in 1959 and made her New York stage debut the next year in “The Breaking Wall” at St. Mark’s Playhouse.

Her first screen appearance came in 1962, on the television series “Dr. Kildare.” Her first movie role was an uncredited one as a psychiatric patient in “Lilith” (1964). She received an Obie Award in 1963 for her role as Widow Begbick, the canteen owner, in Bertolt Brecht’s drama “A Man’s a Man” and another, 22 years later, for playing the grandmother of Mr. Durang’s character in “The Marriage of Bette and Boo.”

Along the way she married Louis Zorich, a fellow actor who had appeared with her in a production of “Medea” in Williamstown, Mass. Together they helped found the Whole Theater Company in 1973 in Montclair, N.J., where they lived while bringing up their children. The company produced the likes of Chekhov, Coward and Williams for almost two decades. Ms. Dukakis also taught acting at New York University.

The film certainly embraces all the carnage and bloodshed (Michael B. Jordan gets one hell of a last stand towards the climax that brings to mind Brian De Palma’s Scarface), but it’s also not endorsing the rationale that brings him to these predicaments.

It’s rare that an original movie and its remake are both great films. But such is the case with “Scarface,” in both its 1932 and 1983 incarnations. It would be a fun double bill or, better yet, these films would best be watched on consecutive nights.

What’s good about seeing both over a short period of time is that the films inform each other. In the original, Paul Muni plays an Italian, but not a real Italian — more like a kabuki Italian. Al Pacino plays a similarly exaggerated Cuban. The violence of the 1983 version tells us how the 1932 film was perceived in its time: It was considered one of the most violent films to date. And both movies deal tangentially, but unmistakably, with what it’s like to be an immigrant in America.

I prefer Brian De Palma’s 1983 version – it’s a beautifully vulgar masterpiece – but an equal case could be made for the Howard Hawks original. Watch both and decide for yourself.