Sissy Spacek in Carrie. Photograph: Ronald Grant
Chosen by Edgar Wright, collaborated with comedian Simon Pegg on hit films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.
I always describe Carrie as the Grease of horror movies: it resonates with all ages because everybody remembers their awkward teenage phase and can watch it and say – I was the bully or the victim or the person who did nothing.
It explores how apocalyptic your rage can be as a teenager. Carrie’s not a killer, she’s a girl who has been bullied and through a terrible confluence of events ends up burning the school down.
It doesn’t have someone being killed every 20 minutes and then a climax. It builds slowly to one huge climax at the prom. School bullies have fixed the prom so that Carrie White will win, and they can humiliate her by tipping a bucket of pig’s blood over her in front of the whole school.
The scene and the excruciating build-up to it is one of the greatest set pieces of all time, full of suspense, with a monumental payoff.
A master class in mise-en-scene.
A crane shot sets up the sequence so you know where every character is positioned and that the bucket of blood is above Carrie and Tommy’s heads.
Once the plot is set in motion Pino Donaggio’s score takes over. The resulting sequence is pure opera.
De Palma planned the sequence for months and battled the studio over the time spent on filming it. But it was worth the blood, sweat and tears. It still leaves audiences speechless.
