America is celebrating its 250th anniversary this summer, and while movies haven’t been around that long, they’ve existed long enough to have their own gold anniversaries.
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1976 was a great year for movies, with instant classics like The Omen, The Bad News Bears, Freaky Friday and Network delighting audiences and winning a few awards here and there.
It’s a testament to how great ‘76 was for film that none of those pictures are on Watch With Us‘ list of the five movies turning 50 in 2026 that you need to watch right now.
From inspirational dramas like Rocky on Netflix to thrillers like Marathon Man on Prime Video, these films have stood the test of time and have earned the right to be called a “masterpiece.”
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High school was never more hellish than it was in the original Carrie – and that’s even before the prom dance massacre that made this movie so famous. Directed by Brian De Palma from a novel by then-newbie author Stephen King, Carrie depicts the pretty awful life of telekinetic 16-year-old Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), who is relentlessly bullied by her peers and is terrorized at home by her religious fanatic mother, Margaret (a fantastic Piper Laurie). Salvation comes when the school’s hot jock, Tommy Ross (William Katt), asks her to the prom, but it’s just another way for her peers to humiliate her. Carrie can only take so much, so when she’s pushed over the edge, everyone who has ever made her suffer will pay with their lives.
What’s remarkable about Carrie is how restrained it is – well, until the bloody, Grand Guignol finale. For the bulk of its running time, it’s pretty much a standard coming-of-age drama, albeit one with a mounting unease and dread lurking around the corner. You know something bad is going to happen, but you don’t know quite what until the end, when Carrie – and De Palma – unleashes their apocalyptic fury in an orgy of pig’s blood, practical effects, and split screen shots. Spacek and Laurie were nominated for Oscars at a time when the horror genre wasn’t recognized at all by the Academy, and their performances still have the power to evoke sorrow, pity and sheer terror. The fake-out ending is the cherry on the top of a horror classic sundae – even happy endings don’t end happily in Carrie.
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This story was originally published June 15, 2026 at 6:05 AM.