For the film’s final shock, Sue Snell visits the ruins of Carrie’s home and imagines Carrie’s bloody hand erupting from the rubble. Brian De Palma shot the sequence backward to create its uncanny, dreamlike movement, but the image required Spacek to appear as though she were buried beneath the remains. Instead of using a stunt double, Spacek insisted on performing the shot herself. Crew members placed her in a box beneath the rocks and gravel while the material was piled over her, a task De Palma later described bluntly: “We had to bury her.” To make the situation more acceptable to the director, Spacek’s husband, Jack Fisk, handled the burial. The scene was not the result of a supernatural incident or a genuinely dangerous burial, but the extreme practical method became one of Carrie’s most memorable pieces of production lore.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
Sissy Spacek Insisted on Being Buried Alive for Carrie’s Nightmare Ending
Sissy Spacek / Carrie (1976) / 1970s
For the film’s final shock, Sue Snell visits the ruins of Carrie’s home and imagines Carrie’s bloody hand erupting from the rubble. Brian De Palma shot the sequence backward to create its uncanny, dreamlike movement, but the image required Spacek to appear as though she were buried beneath the remains. Instead of using a stunt double, Spacek insisted on performing the shot herself. Crew members placed her in a box beneath the rocks and gravel while the material was piled over her, a task De Palma later described bluntly: “We had to bury her.” To make the situation more acceptable to the director, Spacek’s husband, Jack Fisk, handled the burial. The scene was not the result of a supernatural incident or a genuinely dangerous burial, but the extreme practical method became one of Carrie’s most memorable pieces of production lore.
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