The 7 Greatest Brian De Palma Movies You Should See

Brian De Palma is a movie legend. The guy's done everything from Stephen King to "Mission: Impossible," while helping net Sean Connery an Oscar for his role in the 1987 hit, "The Untouchables." In honor of his very underrated "Carlito's Way" turning 25 this week, here are his best films that you need to see at least twice.

'Carrie' (1976)

Worst. Prom. Ever. The first Stephen King novel to be filmed was also one of De Palma's first big hits. It made a star of Sissy Spacek (as the tiular telekinetic teen) and brought Piper Laurie out of retirement for what became her signature role as Carrie's terrifying mom. De Palma is often accused of slavishly imitating Hitchcock, but the techniques he developed here for scaring audiences out of their seats were all his own.

'Dressed to Kill' (1980)

Yeah, it's an overt homage to (or theft from) Hitchcock (particularly "Psycho"), but no one else would have the nerve to mix sex, violence, voyeurism, psychoanalysis, and gender fluidity the way De Palma does here. Angie Dickinson gives a career-best performance, with Michael Caine's surprising shrink not far behind.

'Blow Out' (1981)

Here, De Palma pays homage to both Antonioni (the title echoes his "Blow-Up") and Coppola ("The Conversation") in this meditation on filmmaking, exploitation, and political paranoia. It also works as a straight-up thriller. Travolta plays a movie sound engineer who stumbles into a conspiracy involving a political assassination, a sex scandal, and a serial killer (a never-creepier John Lithgow). Downbeat but thoroughly satisfying.

'Scarface' (1983)

In this update of the 1930s gangster classic, Oliver Stone's lurid, cocaine-fueled nightmare of a screenplay -- and Al Pacino's notoriously over-the-top performance -- find their counterpart in De Palma's camera work at its most operatic. 

'The Untouchables' (1987)

The true history and the TV show that inspired the movie both get short shrift here, but who cares? In De Palma's hands, David Mamet's script about the Al Capone-Eliot Ness face-off makes for larger-than-life drama. (Who but De Palma would lift the Odessa Steps sequence from silent 1925 classic "The Battleship Potemkin" for his climactic train-staton shootout?) Robert De Niro (whom De Palma discovered a quarter-century earlier) makes a charismatic villain, and Kevin Costner became a star as his nemesis, but the movie belongs to Sean Connery (in his Oscar-winning performance) as Costner's seasoned mentor.

'Carlito's Way' (1993)

If Tony Montana had done hard time and come out older and wiser, he might have become Carlito Brigante, the mature, wary crime boss trying to cheat destiny in this underrated drama. Pacino's performance is magisterial, though Sean Penn nearly steals the film from him as Carlito's weasel lawyer. De Palma, too, seems more mature, directing with subtlety but complete self-assurance.

'Mission: Impossible' (1996)

Another adaptation of a 1960s TV drama that, thanks to De Palma, was a lot smarter than it needed to be. The magician's trickery practiced by spy Tom Cruiseis matched by the director's own narrative sleight-of-hand. The movie's central action set piece -- Cruise's acrobatic hack of a terminal in a CIA vault -- whose staging De Palma borrowed from the classic heist film "Rififi," has in turn served as the blueprint for every techno-thriller made since.