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This introductory chapter takes on Brian De Palma's signature split-screen as the basis of discussion, with the intention of focusing on De Palma as a man divided. The split-screen is used here as a figure for the stark divisions within De Palma and his works. Four of these divisions are followed as thematic threads running throughout the book—as the key contrasts which underpin this analysis. These main themes or key contrasts are: Independence / Hollywood, originality / imitation, feminism / misogyny, and humility / megalomania. Furthermore, the chapter contends that while De Palma's movies are usually viewed as being devoid of biographical resonance, his movies are in fact profoundly connected to his life, but often in a metaphorical way, much as dreams act as strange reworkings of moments from our waking life.

This chapter examines the many elements of De Palma's work incorporated into Passion (2012), which in itself can be considered as a summa of his films, even constituting a kind of career retrospective in itself. The film centers around a rivalry between three women—the executive Christine (Rachel McAdams), her assistant Isabelle (Noomi Rapace), and Isabelle's assistant Dani (Karoline Herfurth). And among other things, Passion uses the repertoire of themes and techniques that De Palma frequently explores: female twins / doubles, voyeurism, long takes, video surveillance, and so on. Interestingly, the movie also turns to the cinematic conventions of film noir, furthering the uncertainties and ambiguities underlying the plot, including the lingering image of the dead female body present in De Palma's other works.

This chapter presents a detailed analysis of Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976). The director's stylistic approach to adapting Stephen King's source material is the primary reason that the finished movie has engendered such a variety of critical reactions as well as its narrative resonating so deeply with viewing audiences. Carrie is a tightly controlled, rhythmical exercise in audience manipulation that constantly confounds audience identification and expectation. Though certain set piece sequences — the shower room sequence, the ‘Last Supper’, the prom massacre, Sue's nightmare — offer the clearest avenue for assessing De Palma's vision of the material and the subsequent critical readings of them, the film works as a complete narrative because of its integration of gentler, comedic, and romantic sequences. Duality — of scenes, techniques, characters, motifs and symbolic imagery — is a strong influence throughout, tying together opposing forces, reflecting alternate viewpoints, and periodically reminding the audience that none of the principal figures are clearly defined ‘character types’. Similarly, the dominant text and underlying subtexts addressed in the complete movie and in its individual sequences reveals how Carrie can alternately be viewed as pop culture, mythologised horror, and politicised cultural critique. By looking at its key themes/motifs and their deployment in specific scenes/sequences, including how themes/motifs bleed into each other and how scenes/sequences play off each other, a complete appreciation of De Palma's enduringly resonant movie can be gleaned.

This concluding chapter looks back into De Palma's oeuvre in order to chart a brief history of his life and his attempts to move forward from the rivalries of his past to the compassion that he hopes for his daughters' futures. It also examines the public reception of De Palma's works, particularly his lack of awards and distinctions in comparison to his peers, such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg. De Palma, after all, has argued himself that he cannot be acknowledged as a “Great Director” by the public because of his frequently controversial, anti-establishment stance in his films. Hence the chapter delves into De Palma's own attitudes toward filmmaking, highlighting his own struggles to move past competition and emphasizing that he is a great director in his own right.

This chapter discusses the surrounding forces, both individual and collective, which led to the writing and subsequent filming of Carrie (1976), giving a clear picture of its place within the popular culture of the era and offering an insight as to how Brian De Palma and his cast and crew capitalised on numerous factors to bring Carrie to the big screen. As with all movies that attain a lasting resonance and/or reverential status, there is no single defining attribute that led to Carrie's standing as a classic, but rather a convergence of diverse determining factors. Talent, happenstance, timing, and prevailing social, cultural, and political climates and mores are all equally influential elements that affect a movie's reception. In Carrie's case, these factors gestated in the fledgling career of horror novelist Stephen King, De Palma's ambitions (commercial and artistic), the climate of unrest in America in the early 1970s, and the wave of homegrown nihilistic horror movies that both commented on and reflected the country's troubled psyche at the time. Along with the ‘paranoid conspiracy’ thrillers and pointedly political movies of the time, the horror movies released in America in the 1970s were at the forefront of cinematic responses to a sustained period of cultural upheaval, social turbulence, and political disenchantment.

This chapter examines Carrie's transition from page to screen, which involved numerous changes to the style and tone of Stephen King's novel decided upon for creative and budgetary reasons by Brian De Palma and screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen. Alterations to the final shooting script (the second draft of the adaptation) were brought about by a combination of time constraints, on set improvisation, and decisions made during post-production editing. Though the studio approved the second draft, a fairly rare occurrence in Hollywood, United Artists would waver on the project in other areas. Even given the horror genre's commercial and critical successes during the period, United Artists were, perhaps understandably, unconvinced that the adaptation of a debut novel by an experienced director still looking for a major commercial success was worth risking any more than the figure allocated. It is telling that the only real problem De Palma had with the project was in relation to those controlling the marketing of the movie. For De Palma, Carrie was a serious movie, with serious points to make about the cruelty of teenagers, the insidious effects of religious fervour, and the state of contemporary American society, regardless of it being wrapped up in supernatural trappings. United Artists, however, marketed Carrie as cheap popcorn entertainment.

This chapter highlights Carrie's legacy. The influence of Brian De Palma's Carrie, in terms of themes, structure, and milieu, would be felt across not just the horror genre but also the comedy genre in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Carrie's focus on adolescents, its ‘final scream’ sequence, pre-occupation with bodily emissions, victim/hero/monster central character, contemporary settings, and pop culture references within a genre-straddling narrative would be referenced by and provide the inspiration, in one form or another, for a multitude of subsequent movies. The high school, or other educational establishment, became a regularly used setting, with the Queen Bee, school jock, nerdy hangers-on, ineffectual adults, delinquent boys and sexually promiscuous (bordering on nymphomaniac) girls all becoming stock-in-trade characters. Carrie's distinction lay not in it being the first horror movie to centre on a group of young people ‘under vicious assault’ in a contemporary setting or in it being the first to use psychic/supernatural powers as a central narrative theme. What Carrie did was popularise its distinct elements within its singular narrative that film-makers, of horror, comedy, or comedy-horror films, then used, consciously or unconsciously, as noticeable elements in their own films.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Brian De Palma's tenth feature-length film, Carrie (1976), which was adapted for the screen by Lawrence D. Cohen from Stephen King's 1974 debut novel. Produced by Paul Monash and released by United Artists, the film starred Sissy Spacek in the title role alongside Piper Laurie as her mother, Margaret White. Carrie White is a richly complex character that engenders a range of contrasting emotions in the viewer. Much like the conflicted personality of its central character, Carrie is a film with more than one identity and stands out even within the dominant American horror films of the 1970s. The visual romanticism, lyricism, and moments of humour that De Palma used to counteract the movie's more horrifying moments has seen it cited in academic and critical circles as an influence on both the cycle of teen-oriented horror movies and the gross-out teen comedies that emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This book details Carrie's journey from the page to the big screen, a journey that has seen it become a highly important part of its director's oeuvre and a classic of horror cinema.