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" Every Wednesday we show you a great scene from film history you may remember, you may not \u2014 and then we break it down for you. Prom Dress. Pig&amp;#039;s blood. Psychokinetic retribution.  The disaster climax of the original 1976 Carrie is \u2014 like any top-tier, truly unforgettable scene in cinema \u2014 so well-known that you don&amp;#039;t even have to see it to know it. It&amp;#039;s like the horse head in The Godfather or the silhouetted flying bike in E.T. It&amp;#039;s been referenced and indexed and parodied (and soon, remade) so exhaustively that it no longer seems like a part of the movie. It stands alone. It belongs to the culture.  And though you know what&amp;#039;s coming, the scene still works fantastically. Even when the film was released, everyone knew what was going to happen. (Stephen King&amp;#039;s source novel sold one million copies when released in paperback in 1975.) Director Brian De Palma&amp;#039;s mastery here isn&amp;#039;t in satisfying our expectation for teenage-psychic carnage. It&amp;#039;s in delaying it.  As Sissy Spacek&amp;#039;s unlikely prom queen takes the stage to be crowned, De Palma toys with us to the point of cruelty. He slows the scene down, lingering on Carrie&amp;#039;s smiling, oblivious face, and the wide-eyed gazes of the cool kids plotting to take her down as the melodramatic music swells. He shows the bucket of blood. Then the scaffolding propping it up. Then the string running along it. It takes forever. America&amp;#039;s foremost auteur-prankster, De Palma seems to be teasingly punishing our bloodlust. It&amp;#039;s totally mean. And totally memorable.      Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a24002/carrie-climax-scene/>