Halloween is fast approaching.
So, we think it's about time to pay our respects to some
of classic horror cinemas deceased.
These are the top ten death scenes of all time.
[MUSIC]
>> We have to get off of here.
No, don't push the button.
Don't, don't push the button.
>> Starting us off at number ten,
what better way to kick off a best deaths list than with the series that built its
reputation on creatively killing off its characters with Final Destination.
But with so many choices, it's hard to pick just one.
We could go with the pole through the head, or
the glass from above from number two, the iconic bus death from the original, or
consummately tasteful death by rectal prolapse from the final destination.
But our number 10 pick has to go to final destination 3's death by tanning bed.
Little known fact, the alternate Japanese title for
Final Destination 3 is called Final Death Coaster, which is first of all awesome.
But second of all, fitting because,
just like all Final Destination films, three follows a group of
teens after they narrowly escape a deadly incident as death hunts them down to
settle the score which in this installment took place on a rollercoaster.
So naturally when Ashley and Ashlynn, two ditzy cheerleaders get off the roller
coaster before it leaves the station, death comes to claim his due.
And his strategy makes for the best death in the series of hilarious and
bloody executions.
Locked in their tanning beds as the control unit ticks up from golden brown to
extra crispy, Ashley and Ashlynn get what's coming for them in the form
of a fiery UV filled death that no amount of SPF could have prevented.
Of course, this is Final Destination, so
careful viewers should have seen this coming.
Like when they're over exposed photograph looked like they were on fire,
their stalker told them they were smoking hot or the music they picked for
the stereo was Love Rollercoaster.
However, these two did not, and the result is both an awesomely ridiculous death,
and a rather effective skin cancer PSA.
>> What in God's name are you talking about?
>> Your son, Mr. Thorn.
The son of the devil.
>> Modern movies aren't the only ones to kill off their
characters in creative ways.
For our number nine, we can wind the clocks all the way back to the 1970s
with The Omen to see death sneak up on unsuspecting victims in everyday ways.
The Omen might very well be the inspiration for
Final Destination Rube Goldberg style assassination.
When two parents lose a baby during childbirth, they adopt a replacement.
The problem is that it turns out he might just be the antichrist.
And when people start dying, including this runner-up suicide at a child's
birthday party, they get suspicious.
So they set out to find a way to kill the child slash devil.
Of course, the devil is not the biggest fan of their plans,
so he starts to pull some supernatural strings to put his adversaries to rest.
And when a photographer takes up the mantle to kill the boy,
he finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, squaring off against the wrong
antichrist, as a cart full of sheet glass empties its cargo and
takes off his head in one, fell, slow motion swoop.
Awesome.
>> They'll see, they'll see and they'll know and
they'll say, why she wouldn't even harm a fly.
>> Next who better to honor for
onscreen death than the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock.
And while the death by pecking from birds was a pretty horrifying way to go,
it's pretty much impossible for us to pass up the shower death from Psycho.
[NOISE] >> Aah!
>> We've said it before and we'll say it again, but Marion Crane's murder is one of
the most terrifying, shocking, and effective pieces of cinema ever shot.
These legendary three minutes took seven full shooting days for
78 setups which were ultimately compiled into the 50 cuts
that plunged into viewers' eyes like a kitchen knife.
All the while with Bernard Herrmann's iconic score assaulting their eardrums.
It's an incredibly violent sequence, but
what's most surprising is that there's no actual visible violence.
The closest Hitchcock gets is a reversed shot that
almost looks like that knife is plunging into Janet Lee's abdomen.
And as for the blood, it's all chocolate syrup.
Hitchcock didn't think the viewers could stomach a death this horrifying if
the blood was full on crimson.
And he might have been right,
because it's hard to imagine something more terrifying than this.
But if you're curious you can always check out Gus Van Sant's full color,
shot by shot remake.
>> Annie?
>> Now, the success of Psycho, specifically the shower sequence,
was actually the birth of a whole new sub-genre that you
know today as the slasher film.
Yep, you can pretty much just thank Hitchcock for
all of your childhood nightmares if you haven't already.
Because, by the mid to late 70s, slashers really started to hit their stride,
complete with a slew of badass deaths.
1974's Texas Chainsaw Massacre had audiences quaking in their seats
when Leatherface sledgehammered a case of the tremors into William Vail.
And while that death just narrowly misses our list,
the brutal impaling from John Carpenter's equally ground breaking Halloween doesn't.
Michael Myers' embodiment of pure evil is often credited with kicking off slashers
in the biggest way possible.
And with his brutal slang of Bob it's not hard to see why.
Creeping suspense followed by a final surprise.
This Halloween death feels far more violent than it actually is,
with very little shown on screen by design.
A trick carpenter admitted he nicked from Hitchcock.
But there's hardly a better filmmaker to borrow from when it comes to scaring
the [BLEEP] out of audiences.
Moving forward with our slasher film history lesson because let's be honest,
no one knows how to kill like a good slasher villain.
We're taking a look at the next decade, the 80s.
Following up on Halloween,
the early 80s were known as the Golden Age of the Slasher.
And with deaths like Kevin Bacon's from Friday the 13th, we get it.
But for our number six, we actually have to give it to Johnny Depp's
death from the original Nightmare on Elm Street.
Believe it or not,
the film about people being murdered in their dreams is based on a true story.
Wes Craven was actually inspired by a string of mysterious
deaths to Southeast Asian men, who would first spend days and
days binging on caffeine in a desperate attempt to keep themselves awake,
before inevitably passing out and falling asleep.
Only to startle themselves awake, screaming out from their nightmares and
then die.
Really, this is a true story.
To top it all off, examiners couldn't determine any cause of death.
The CDC ended up calling it Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome,
or Asian Death Syndrome for short.
Of course we don't think they died quite like Johnny Depp, sucked into the dream
world through their mattress, and expelled upwards in a geyser of blood.
The geyser, by the way, was shot in a revolving room set that allowed them to
turn the room upside down in order to pour red water toward the ceiling.
The result is probably one of the bloodiest deaths of all time.
And a necessity of any best death's list worth its salt.
[MUSIC]
>> [SOUND] >> Ugh.
Hello.
>> By the time Nightmare on Elm Street came and went,
slashers had saturated movie screen everywhere.
>From the classics that make up this list,
all the way down to some pretty low-quality, low-budget bombs.
Audiences were exhausted, and the late 80s and
early 90s saw slashers all but disappear.
Gone was the box office draw, the critical acclaim, and
the sense of novelty and ingenuity.
The genre had gone stale.
Reenter Craven with a couple more crazy ideas.
First came the new Nightmare which set a horror film in the real world with
the fictional Krueger victimizing the actual Craven.
The movie didn't get much traction, but it set the self referential groundwork for
what was to come.
And that was Scream.
The horror film about people who watched horror films.
Scaring audiences while engaging them with their own conventions.
And while we have to give an honorable mention to the doggy door decapitation,
what better choice for
our number five death than the opening slaying of Drew Barrymore from Scream.
Not only is this action-packed, 12-minute opening an awesome way to kick
off the franchise, but the climactic killing is one for the history books.
Drawn out and painful with one last hope for rescue, the whole thing gives a big
nod to the scene that set it all in motion, Hitchcock's Psycho.
It's not just the shots of the raised blade that give it away, but
the fact that they killed off a top-billed star so early in the film just like Hitch.
[MUSIC]
>> [SOUND] >> Hello, Amanda.
You don't know me but I know you.
I want to play a game.
>> Slashers are great but if you browse through horror movies lately you know that
there aren't too many modern slashers making much noise.
No, after a brief resurgence following Scream,
horror films took a slightly different turn in the early 2000s.
Yes, we're talking about splatter films or gore films or
as they're so lovingly referred to by critics and fans alike, torture porn.
And while series like Hostel have made us revert our gaze in disgust with
quite a few ridiculous deaths.
Our number four slot has to go to the torture porn mack daddy with Saw, but
what death to choose?
There are so many and they're all so horffically gruesome.
There's the bone cracking finish to Sam from Saw 5.
Tim's twist ending in the rack from Saw 3, or
the unfortunate incident of the flammable jelly from the original Saw.
And you know we're suckers for a classic here at Cinefix.
But, for our number four we're picking Saw I's reverse bear trap
death because it harkens to the original 2003 Saw short that inspired it all.
And while it might have been an even gorier death if Shawnee Smith's jaws had
actually been ripped open by the trap, watching her dig from the stomach
of a sedated yet still alive victim is still a pretty close second.
>> [SOUND] >> Hello?
Now I'm thinking this thing doesn't take credit cards.
>> Now if you are a fan of the self reference meta-horror and
camp from Scream, you're going to love our number three.
Because after Scream came and went and the slasher film died down again,
this time replaced by torture porn.
A new filmmaker took up the mantle to revitalize it and this time,
his name was Joss Whedon.
Whedon had said that interviews he was kind of angry at the state of horror films
in the 2000's,
the devolution of the horror film into a long series of sadistic come up and sees.
So, he took the mantle and did something about it.
Enter the Cabin in the Woods, one of the most original horror films in decades.
Now, if you haven't seen the film yet, we don't wanna spoil it for you.
So either skip ahead about a minute, or
just hit pause and watch the whole thing right now.
For the rest of you still watching, you've either seen the movie already, or
you like to live life on the edge, so don't say we didn't warn you.
And while the film plays out quite a bit like a like a slasher in its early stages,
it quickly switches gears to something far more badass.
And if you've you've seen the movie you know there's only one scene we could be
talking about.
And that is the awesome elevator massacre that includes just about
every single horror monster from every single horror movie ever made.
There are zombies, cenobites, werewolves and even a giant cobra and
they're all escorting a group of guards to their untimely demise.
For horror fans it's pretty much the ultimate death scene.
And for that we have to honor it as one of the best of all time.
[MUSIC]
But enough of the horror film history lesson, we've got two more entries on
list and you can bet that there gonna be both awesome and horrific.
And if you heard us mention John Carpenter without honoring the defibrillation scene
from The Thing, you'd be right to long for the sweet horror death release that comes
with a monster bursting from the chest cavity of it's victim.
However, for our number two we've gotta go with a chest bursting that's just a little
bit better.
And if you haven't guessed by now, we're talking about Alien.
>> [NOISE] >> Aah!
>> Aah!
God!
>> Probably one of the most shocking and sickening moments in cinema history.
Legend has it that audience members at the initial test screening,
either burst into applause or
raced to the bathroom heaving, depending upon the constitution of their stomachs.
And it wasn't just a surprise to audience members, it came as a shock to the actors
too because Ridly Scott didn't tell his cast what was going to happen.
Now, they weren't dummies,
they'd read the script, and they knew something was coming.
But they just didn't know what or how.
So when the chest burster made good on its namesake, their reactions were genuine.
Especially Veronica Cartwright, who actually passed out when she was hit
with a stream of the six gallons of blood they pumped out of him each take.
And if none of that is gory or gross enough for you, you should know that
the guts inside the prop body on the table are actual guts from cows.
They had to rush shooting because the film light started to cook them, and
the entire set began to reek.
But it takes just one look to this absolutely historic death scene to
know that it was all well worth it.
>> [SOUND] >> And finally ticking down to number one,
we want to ask a difficult question.
>From this list so far, we know that cinema can render death terrifying,
shocking, disgusting, funny, brutal, dramatic, dark, and endlessly scary.
But can death be beautiful?
It's a dangerous question to ask, but
there are some movies out there that take horror and
aspire to elevate it to the level of art with some death scenes to match.
Like the death of Hallorann from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, the terror,
violence, and abruptness, of the scene is truly the work of a virtuoso, but
we're not sure it's beautiful.
Of course there's also the skylight stabbing and
hanging from Dario Argento's Suspiria.
Which uses vivid colors and
beautiful cinematography to create a death unlike any other in recent memory, but
the lifeless corpse at the end still says gore more than it says beauty.
No, for our number one we're going to the pool scene from Let The Right One In.
>> [FOREIGN]
>> If there's one thing the films on this list can illustrate is the different
approaches that film makers take to showing violence versus withholding it.
Where films like Saw stand at the forefront of throwing gore in your face,
others like Psycho and Halloween tend toward suggestion.
But Let the Right One In takes withholding to the extreme.
Sustaining a gorgeous long take all the way through a massacre without showing any
of it, with the audience only gradually becoming aware of what's happening.
And while a few floating body parts keep us firmly planted in the horror genre,
the scene is far from gratuitous.
It's artful, and
it took a fearless decision on the part of the filmmakers, but it led us here,
which is why we think it's the number one horror death scene of all time.
So what do you think?
Do you disagree with our choices?
Did we leave out one of your favorite deaths?
Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to subscribe for
more Cinefix movie lists.
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