Fifty Years After the Prom, Sissy Spacek Brings Carrie to the Academy Museum

Carrie White’s prom night turns 50 this year, and the party is on Wilshire Boulevard. On Thursday, November 19, the Academy Museum will screen Carrie in 4K with Sissy Spacek in person for a conversation about the role that earned her a first acting nomination.

Brian De Palma’s 1976 film, written by Lawrence D. Cohen, follows a shy teenager who gains telekinetic powers and is tormented by her classmates and her religious mother, Margaret, played by Piper Laurie. It builds to what the museum calls one of the bloodiest prom scenes made for the screen. Spacek and Laurie were both nominated for Oscars, and Spacek went on to win Best Actress for Coal Miner’s Daughter. Amy Irving and William Katt co-star.

The American Film Institute, marking the anniversary, notes that Carrie was the first feature film adaptation of Stephen King’s work, drawn from his first published novel. De Palma was given final cut, and Marcia Nasatir, the United Artists executive who championed the project, told AFI Fellows in 1980 that the final scene was his idea.

Spacek has always seen more in the character than a horror villain. “I didn’t want her to just be this weirdo,” she said in an interview from the AFI Archive. “The most special thing about the character to me was that there was hope for her. There was a possibility for her to be neater than everybody.”

The anniversary arrives in a season when Carrie is everywhere. Mike Flanagan’s eight-episode series adaptation, starring Summer H. Howell as Carrie White and Samantha Sloyan as her mother, premieres on Amazon on Wednesday, October 7. In its review, The Hollywood Reporter notes that, unlike most of King’s work, Carrie was adapted perfectly on the first try, and credits the De Palma film with a career-topping performance from Spacek. Velvet also covered Lugosi’s Cape and a Facehugger, the Academy Museum Opens The Horror Show.

The film runs 98 minutes, and tickets start at $5.