King Kong falls from Empire State Building
cancer-stricken Debra Winger dies in hospital
Bonnie and Clyde riddled with bullets
Walken loses Russian roulette in The Deer Hunter
Titanic sinks and DiCaprio drowns
Bambi’s mom shot by hunters
Alec Guinness blows up The Bridge Over the River Kwai
Susan Hayward gets the chair in I Want To Live!
Nazis melt in Raiders of the Lost Ark
dirty cop suffocates in corn silo in Witness
Scarface goes out with a bang
Wicked Witch melts
Alan Rickman’s skyscraper plunge in Die Hard
Cagney goes up in flames in White Heat
Wallace Shawn’s wine poisoning in The Princess Bride
Robocop criminal gets toxic waste bath
David Warner’s decapitation in The Omen
John Hurt’s bursting stomach in Alien
telekinetic Carrie sends knives into her mom
Travolta shoots backseat passenger in Pulp Fiction
airbag accidentally deploys, killing Final Destination 2 girl
Mr. Big expands and pops in Live and Let Die
Psycho shower scene
shark attack on female swimmer in Jaws opener
Sonny Corleone gunned down at tollbooth
Darth Vader strikes down Obi-Wan Kenobi
Dr. Strangelove’s Slim Pickens rides nuclear bomb
babes chase sexist off cliff in Python’s Meaning of Life
Willem Dafoe’s fatal battlefield collapse in Platoon
Tom Hanks shot on bridge in Saving Private Ryan
Thelma and Louise drive car off edge of Grand Canyon
Russell Crowe’s death match in Roman coliseum
King Kong falls
Bonnie and Clyde shot
Bambi’s mom shot
Hayward gets chair
Nazis melt
Wicked Witch melts
Rickman’s fallShawn’s
poisoning
Hurt’s
bursting stomach
Travolta shoots passenger
airbag in Final Destination 2
Psycho shower scene
Vader kills Obi-Wan
Pickens rides bomb
Dafoe dies in battle
Crowe stabbed
Bonnie and Clyde shot
Bambi’s mom shot
Wicked Witch melts
Rickman’s fall
Hurt’s bursting stomach
Psycho shower scene
Vader kills Obi-Wan
Crowe stabbed
Bonnie and Clyde shot
Rickman’s fall
Psycho shower scene
Vader kills Obi-Wan
Bonnie and Clyde shot
Psycho shower scene
Psycho shower scene
Pretty boy freezes, entire female population weeps. Still, Leo’s death leaves you with a sinking feeling that you’ve been manipulated. Bambi wins because it treats the loss of a parent without condescending to kids. The emotional trauma of baby boomers is a small price to pay.
You know Bonnie and Clyde are not long for this world. But you expect the cops to stop shooting at their writhing bodies after the first hundred bullets. Rickman’s skyscraper plunge is a blue-screen moment of brilliance (we want the Rolex on his wrist) but no match for the brutality of that ambush. The last look between Beatty and Dunaway cinches it.
Travolta shooting Marvin in the backseat is
one of Tarantino’s most ingenious killings. For a split second
you see genuine regret, then it’s back to business. But Alien’s
much parodied stomach explosion is wet-your-pants freaky. You’ll lose
your stomach contents. Alien lives.
Modern filmmakers, take note. The secret to shocking an audience is not found in a bucket of blood. Hitchcock uses heart-pulsing music, 70 different camera setups, and more than 90 editing cuts to craft 45 seconds of unadulterated terror. Hitchcock proves that with game-winning shots or death, timing is everything.
Janet Leigh reportedly stopped taking showers after making Psycho. John Hurt, as far as I know, doesn’t freak out when indigestion comes on. The shower scene slices up the alien threat.
There are better Bond flicks than Live
and Let Die, but not a more inventive demise than evil Mr. Big swallowing a compressed-air shark bullet that explodes. Satisfying but not as smart as knocking off a character via their own airbag.
Sonny comes to a bullet-riddled end at a tollbooth (is that Coppola “sampling” Bonnie
and Clyde?). An old guy who simply allows his foe to strike him down is no match, right? But this is no ordinary senior. This is Obi-Wan Kenobi pulling off the ultimate Jedi mind trick: becoming more powerful after death.
A pair of Academy Award winners take aim at
each other. Dafoe’s elegiac Christ-like collapse in 'Nam affirms that
war is hell, but Crowe’s final victory after his fatal stabbing argues
more forcefully that payback’s a bitch. Maximus moves on. Toga party!