A harrowing coming-of-age story masquerading in horror movie drag, Brian De Palma’s masterpiece stars a 26-year-old Sissy Spacek as small-town outcast Carrie White — a sheltered, picked-on wallflower with a deranged religious zealot mother at home (Piper “Dirty Pillows” Laurie) and a telekinetic gift triggered by a rage she’s just beginning to grapple with. De Palma’s suspenseful, vise-tightening Rube Goldberg-meets-Alfred Hitchcock pig’s blood at the prom climax gets all the attention, but this sympathetic love letter to teenage misfits everywhere wouldn’t work without Spacek’s wide-eyed vulnerability and King’s deep understanding of the humiliations of adolescence and popularity that every teen knows all too well.

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