Brian De Palma/USA 1976/98 mins

Brian De Palma’s famous adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie takes pride of place in Dead By Dawn’s Friday Matinee. This story of teenage angst, bullying and psychic powers is an unforgettable vision of memory, nostalgia, intimidation and blood is back on the big screen for one day only, and needs to be seen to be experienced.

In the classic tale of Carrie, the eponymous awkward teen (Sissy Spacek) suddenly develops telekinetic powers after she starts menstruating. But these powers soon become a dangerous gift as the upcoming senior prom, her overly religious mother (Piper Laurie) and the school bullies come together to create a devastating ending that no one will ever forget.

De Palma’s 1976 adaptation of King’s novel is a film that many of us are already familiar with, and remains one of the best big screen adaptations of King’s work to date. While the film has undoubtedly aged, in terms of its style, fashion and narrative, the themes that it contains are still so relevant today. While High School thankfully remains a distant memory to many people, it remains a difficult and sometimes brutal rite of passage for many young people, and while everyone’s experience of secondary school will be different, it’s still an unpleasant memory for many people. This memory, largely absent of nostalgia is what gives Carrie its power; we’ve all been an outsider at some point, we’ve all felt like we’ve been rejected and humiliated by our peers. While few people can claim that their high school experience left them with certain gifts, Carrie is the ultimate dark fantasy that lies dormant within every rejected and sidelined awkward adolescent.

The now iconic image of Spacek, wide-eyed and drenched in blood has become one of horror’s most recognisable and terrifying sights, but she is not the villain; instead she is a victim of high school hierarchy, her fanatically religious mother, and a world that she cannot understand. King’s story perfectly equates the onset of menstruation, the most natural act of the female body, with two of the most unnatural of happenings, telekinesis and murder. Spacek is sublime in the role that defined her, but it’s Laurie in her turn as Carrie’s religious and domineering mother that really makes this film a hallmark of horror cinema.