100 GREAT CINEMATIC DEATHS
by john cribbs, ian loffill, paul cooney, marcus pinn, christopher funderburg & stu steimer
JOHN CRIBBS (cont'd):
5 Memorable Suicides (Or, Ghosts You Shouldn't Listen To)
24. Alain Cuny in La dolce vita & Joseph Wheeler in Satyricon
Italians love their suicides. There's the patricidal Edmund's plunge from the bombed out building in Germany Year Zero...Steve Cochran's swan dive off the refinery which prompts "il grido"...the drowning of Fabrizio's friend that haunts him throughout Before the Revolution...Peter Neal's phony slicing of his own throat at the end of Tenebre. Most memorable are these from two films by Fellini where unbridled hedoism and manic barreling towards destruction, matched by the movies' manic pacing, are fueled by the director's personal fear of death. Life is a circus, Fellini figured, and when the circus sputters to a close you might as well die. Hence the disturbing fate of Marcello's well-off, happily-married, Sanskrit-enthusiast friend Steiner, the proud papa of two beautiful kids who harbors a strange melancholy. The murder-suicide of his family by Steiner, eerily proped up in a chair as paparazzi circle the corpse for the best angle, is a grievous moment of shame for epicurean Marcello, who looked up to his friend as having secured the kind of stability, health and happiness he himself has never been able to even fathom. This loss of faith ultimately inspires Marcello to launch headlong into the ultimate pillow-wrecking binge that makes up the film's final reel, Steiner's death haunting the rest of the running time and making the heedless fun seem dark and pitiful.
Fellini set the same kind of sobering scene smack in the center of the rotting stomach of Satyricon, a seemingly endless procession of drinking, fucking, torturing, food-fighting, premature-burying and hermaphroditic demigod-kidnapping. In the middle of the madness there's a refreshingly quiet interlude in which the unnamed head of a patrician villa, to escape the wrath of newly-instated Emperor Nero, sets his slaves free and sits on a bench outside his house to slit his wrists. Enjoying a final meal with his wife, who he pleads not to follow him in death (she does anyway), the patron enjoys a peaceful departure prior to the lead characters turning up, instigating a threesome with a remaining slave girl and setting the wheel of decadence back in motion. It makes for a more peaceful end than the disturbing death of Steiner and his kids, the couple left where they lie like a pair of fallen Roman statues.
25. Kyôko Kagawa in Sansho the Bailiff
Quite simply, the most beautiful suicide ever filmed. For siblings Zushio and Anju, children of a wrongfully-exiled governor abducted as children and forced to spend their lives as slaves of the sadistic title steward, life is nothing but torture. Their shared hardship has turned Zushio into a cruel overseer who punishes weaker servants, but failed to move Anju away from the virtuous teachings of her father. Such is her shatterproof humanity that it restores her brother's faith and convinces him to escape so that he can search for their lost mother; afterwards, he'll return to rescue Anju from Sansho's clutches. No sooner has he left, to safeguard his destination from her inevitable torture session, Anju lowers herself gracefully into the water, ripples sent forth from around her body to spread the supremacy of her sacrifice across its immaculate surface. There have been several notable movie suicide-drownings (Sterling Hayden in The Long Goodbye, Bruno Cremer in Under the Sand, William Eadie in Ratcatcher), attempted suicide-drownings (Michael Simon in Boudou Saved from Drowning, Holly Hunter in The Piano) and phony attempted suicide-drownings (Kim Novak in Vertigo) but none quite match the majesty of Mizoguchi's masterpiece, in which base cruelty is met with obsinate compassion.
26. Rachel Roberts in O Lucky Man!
"I've had enough," is the simple resignation of housewife Mrs. Richards, who prepares herself for casual suicide as Malcolm McDowell's Mick Travis pleads with her from the ledge outside the window to reconsider. Cleaning up the place one last time for her husband ("I'll not have him saying I did wrong in the end"), she gets the kids settled before she does the deed, her preparation an eerie forerunner to the unbearably drawn-out family suicide in the final reel of The Seventh Continent. Unimpressed by Travis' daredevil tactic of climbing on the ledge to stop her, or the philosophical poetry he recites to try and convince her that life's worth living ("There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow! Hamlet!"), Mrs. Richards sets about with a tired resolve that inform her banal final words: "Tell Harry to leave a note for the milkman...two pints." Then she walks off-screen into the next room never to be seen again (her successful suicide reported to Travis via silent film footage later that night.) On a sad note, Rachel Roberts - forever immortalized on screen in This Sporting Life and Picnic at Hanging Rock - actually ended up killing herself in a pretty ghastly fashion, ultimately finding life without drinking buddy ex-husband Rex Harrison unappealing. In the actress' own words: "Everybody has a story...and a scream."
27. Bruce Greenwood in Below
"I put the gun in my mouth...Bang...Bang...It was, like, so really real."
"Well if it was so really real you probably wouldn't get that second shot off."
Yes, we all had a laugh at this brilliant exchange from the timeless Dead Man on Campus, but who knew such a seemingly sensible declaration would be disproven by David Twohy and Darren Aronofsky a mere 4 years later in this haunted submarine film? Bruce Greenwood's American sub commander Lieutenant Brice, forced to confront the colossal guilt of mistaking a British hospital ship for a German freighter, sinking it and murdering his C.O. to cover up a scandal resulting from the friendly fire, is tormented over the course of the movie by ghosts from the wreck. Confronted with his crimes, he ends up on the surface deck of the U.S.S. Tiger Shark in the rain, where he turns his sidearm on himself and manages to fire a bullet into his brain not once but twice.* It could be that his conscience has festered so long with the deaths he's directly and indirectly responsible for only a second shot would end his internal struggle; or possibly he pulled the trigger and, just to make sure the punishment was swift and final, the icy, invisible hand of one of the haunting spectres gave it an extra tug. Whichever the truth, it lies with Brice at the bottom of the cold depths of the sea, along with the answer as to whether the movie would have turned out better if every scene was as savage and spine-tingling as its last one.
* I should mention that the editing in this scene is weird and possibly suggests only a single fatal shot, repeated from a different camera angle, but personally I like to think Greenwood got that second shot off.
28. Louis Garrel in Frontier of Dawn
Hipster photographer Louis Garrel, racked with guilt over the earlier suicide of lover Laura Smet, starts seeing her image in the mirror urging him to "join me." Smet, a moody model/actress, may have been high maintanence, but the conventional relationship with Garrel's current pretty-but-boring-fiance promises nothing but a predictable, uninteresting life. Realizing this, he allows himself to be swayed by the spirit and plummets to the pavement...immediately after, Smet's sad face is replaced by that of a grotesque demon. Garrel's acceptance of the plunge is the very definition of unsatisfied desire, and its equation to death: we want most what we can no longer have.
29. The Leopard Man (1943)
There are so many memorable death scenes in Val Lewton's RKO productions that I could fill at least half of my list with moments from his 1940s horror films – the off-screen murder of a street singer in The Body Snatcher, the premature burial in Isle of the Dead, Karloff's demise in Bedlam, Wesley carrying Jessica's body into the sea in I Walked with a Zombie. But I'll go with The Leopard Man. The killing of Teresa Delgado, a daughter of a poor working couple in Mexico, returning home from buying a sack of cornmeal for her father’s supper, hailed by William Friedkin on the DVD commentary as "one of the greatest horror sequences ever filmed."
Finding the first store is closed, Teresa goes across the arroyo to the big grocery. She takes a short cut through a dark passage under the rail track and it is on her return that she sees the escaped leopard following her. The girl runs, dropping the cornmeal on the way. Out on the street she finds the door of her home locked. The girl begs for her mother to open the door but after a blood-curdling scream and a pounding sound behind the door, the mother realises too late the very real danger her daughter is in. The door is jammed so her brother hammers away at the lock and blood streams in from under the door.
Earlier on, the man at the store remembers her as "the little girl who was afraid of the dark." "I'm not afraid. What could happen to me?" she replies. Besides the masterful tension and atmosphere that director Jacques Tourneur employs, it's seeing the girl confront her fears, the things that terrify and fascinate her that makes it so enthralling and haunting. Death was an important theme to Lewton; it permeates so much of his work. When asked what The Seventh Victim was about, he responded that the message is that "Death is good."
30. Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)
The rape and murder of an innocent girl in the forest is described in 3 brief shots: a wild boar running in the Raillon Woods, a frightened rabbit and finally Claire's legs covered in blood and the live snails she had been collecting. It's perverse, enigmatic and perfectly represents the film's exploration of moral decay.
The Little Red Riding Hood feel of the scene is apparent from the start with Claire first shown eating blackberries. She then sees groundskeeper Joseph passing by, who remarks "Roaming around the woods again?" He offers to take her back but she says she hasn't finished. "Watch out for wolves," Joseph warns her. We then see him with an impulsive look running in to the forest before the animal collage.
"Why did she always go into the woods alone?" one of the servants later asks.
31. Nostalghia (1983)
A local mystic sets a task to cross the shallow water at St Catherine's pool with a lighted candle. His heart condition alluded to earlier in the film, Russian poet Gorchakov finally dies after he places the candle on the ledge. We hear his final gasp off-camera. Apparently some viewers feel his fate is ambiguous, but I'm pretty sure that actor Oleg Yankovsky and director Andrei Tarkovsky himself confirmed he dies at that moment. The entire sequence lasts roughly 8 minutes and we see his growing pains, weakness and frustration but also his determination. It has a quiet intensity and supreme spirituality which is pure Tarkovsky. Three years later, life reflected art when like Gorchakov, a Russian artist in exile, he died from a painfully drawn-out terminal illness in France.
32. Inferno (1980)
He is famed for his elaborate murder set pieces and operatic style and Dario Argento really is at the top of his game here. Sensing she is being followed after a bizarre encounter with an alchemist in a New York library music, student Sara escapes to her apartment building. She meets sports writer Carlo in the lift and, seeing she's rather shaken, he agrees to keep her company. The power cuts off and it becomes more apparent they have an unexpected visitor. Checking the fuse box, Carlo gets a knife in the neck and Sara stabbed in the back, finally clawing through a lit white screen and then dropping to the floor.
During this sequence the film cuts to all sorts of odd imagery - a full moon in the sky, the trademark gloved killer's hands using scissors to snip off the heads of four women on paper cut-outs, a lizard devouring a butterfly, glass breaking and a woman’s suicide by hanging all scored to a glorious Verdi record. This is orchestrated violence, Argento style.
33. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
Major Amberson's grief-stricken monologue. The entire scene is a shot of the Major's face staring into the fireplace, deep in thought contemplating his life and impending death. Following a prior death in the family and facing financial ruin, we hear family members discussing the estate and the deed to the house. Strictly speaking we never witness his moment of passing, but it is very clear what the scene is addressing. It's all there in the wonderful narration by Orson Welles, the lighting, actor Richard Bennett's expressive face and delivery and the final fade to black.
34. Mouchette (1967)
Mouchette, a girl living a tough rural childhood finally finds life too much when her ailing, bedridden mother dies. She ends her life by covering herself in a shroud and rolling downhill into a lake where she drowns. Jean-Luc Godard, in a written commentary/trailer on the film, described it as "Christian and sadistic." Cruel and tragic but also surprisingly tender, it's the perfect ending to the tale.
35. Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
"You don’t know what Death is!" Donald Pleasence shouts at the start of Halloween II to a neighbour unaware of the night of carnage in Haddonfield. Michael Myers certainly had nothing as insane on his mind as what Conal Cochran plans for Halloween night: a druid magic transmission that turns your head in to a pile of poisonous creepy crawlies.
Buddy Kupfer's obnoxious family, who have come for a guided tour of the Silver Shamrock factory, are shown in to a test room where they are to give feedback on TV commercials. The child puts on his mask as instructed and goes in front of the TV set. The broadcast triggers a chip inside the mask causing the child to clutch his head with both hands in great pain. The mask starts to rot, killing "Little" Buddy Kupfer Jr. and when he hits the ground cockroaches, wasps and snakes emerge from the child's head.
This displays the kind of warped logic I love in horror movies: filming nightmares and fears with little regard for exposition. Halloween III was one of several films in the early 1980s where watching television is bad for you (others include Videodrome, Poltergeist and, ironically, Twilight Zone: The Movie.) It was about 30 years too late for cinema to strike back at its rival, but it's certainly a fun and interesting concept.
36. The Missouri Breaks (1976)
Harry Dean Stanton's weary, sad eyed expression is put to incredible use when he is confronted with Death in the form of Marlon Brando's highly eccentric cross dressing bounty hunter Lee Clayton. The man has been hired by a rancher to eliminate Jack Nicholson’s gang of horse thieves. At night time Clayton, wearing a dress, apron and a bonnet, sets fire to the cabin where Cal (Stanton) is resting. A burning Cal makes it out of the cabin to put out the flames in some nearby water and rests by a tree. Clayton asks of the whereabouts of Logan (Nicholson), Cal knowing death is imminent lies that Logan is still inside the cabin. Clayton then unexpectedly pitches his bizarre Crucifix like mace weapon into Cal’s forehead, stating "Old granny's getting tired now." Both actors are illuminated by the nearby bonfire in an unforgettably strange and terrifying scene. The film has been much heralded, and maligned, as a showdown between two acting giants (Brando and Nicholson) but this is the film’s oddest and most memorable scene.
Another death towards this film’s conclusion almost made my list: "You just had your throat cut."
37. Eaten Alive (1977)
The crocodile* eats the puppy. Just when you think that an EC comics-style film with Marilyn Burns, William Finley and a scythe wielding Neville Brand can't get any more deranged.
* Or was it an alligator? I forget.
38. Sanjuro (1962)
Hanbei (the superintendent's henchman) insists he and Sanjuro face each other in a duel. After a long staredown, both draw their swords. Blood explodes from the chest of Sanjuro's rival, who slowly topples over. The gushing blood effect was apparently much bigger than planned on set and cropped up again in Kurosawa's Ran. Avoiding the epic showdown and sword fight we were expecting from the two adversaries it humanises Mifune's wandering samurai, bringing home his ambiguous morality when he acknowledges his reluctance to face Hanbei and his regret when it's over. He realises his opponent is exactly like him,an unsheathed naked sword.
39. Action Jackson - Carl Weathers himself - kicks the shit out of notorious right wing douchebag Craig T (T for Talentless) Nelson before that stupid redneck fuck is shot to death in Action Jackson. (If you don't think policing the mean streets of Detroit is war then you are fucking crazy and I don't got no time for your shit anyway.)
What was harrowing about seeing a villain such as Craig T get his comeuppance? The harrowing memory of what he did to Vanity! Got her hooked on the drugs so he could have his Poltergeisty way with that Nubian angel. Rot in hell Craig T! Coach sucked!
40. "I heard two clicks!" Stupid fuck American paratrooper gets one in the gut and dies after using the little cricket noisemaking thingy in The Longest Day. Lesson learned, Joe!
41. Jim Belushi cleans house and kills the aspirations of lawlessness and disrespect for authority in The Principal. If you don't think controlling a high school in Detroit is war then you are fucking crazy...
42. William Forsythe, right all along about that 5th column saboteur phony poseur Joe Huff/John Stone pig cop scum Brian Bosworth, is silenced before he can make the usually sensible Chains see the light, in Stone Cold.
43. Sam Neill dies...NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! right after taking out the machine gun nest in a fantastically selfless and futile act of heroism in Attack Force Z (Zed).
44. Bill Holden dies at the end of the pretty stupid and implausible Bridges at Toko-Ri....
45. ...wait a minute...Bill Holden dies at the end of Bridge on the River Kwai...after British scum Lady Alec Guiness turns traitor and whines like a little ninny girl for the Japanese to come kill him! Kill him! (Bill Holden should stay away from bridges apparently)
46. Dutch SS man takes a break from the scenic Russian countryside to vacate his bowels. Sits and dreams of tulips and chocolate perhaps when he hears the tinkling of...not pee pee...but glass! Oh my, has that impish Soviet scamp tossed a potato masher grenade into the outhouse? He has! Blown up with his pants down and his ass dirty...not a good way for the smartly dressed Netherlander to go. Soldier of Orange.
47. Laughing Cossack is killed by dueling Frenchmen when he simply wanted to enjoy a chuckle or two at their showdown in The Duellists.
48. Scientist and ass clown Bruce Sabbath bloody Sabbath is turned into a nerdy pulpy mess at the hands of the coldly menacing Andrew Katz in Dutch Kills.
49. George Peppard suffers engine trouble...and soon will plummet to his death in his experimental fighter as knowing German officers look on in The Blue Max. Ursula Andress smolders and somewhere, Holly Golightly looks to find a new gigolo boy toy to replace the gooey mass of Peppard that soon will splatter all across the Pomeranian plains.
50. Alpha bitch Heather drinks the drano and topples into the glass table, smashing it and her dreams of becoming a celebrity sexpot to smithereens in one awesome fall! The war on drugs claims another victim. When will these kids realize that the best high can be found at the local library? Those stodgy old librarians are far too lazy and blind to even notice you slipping behind the secluded stacks to huff a lil' glue and give each other handys. Stick it to the man! Defile some Milton and some Shakespeare and give the next bookworm who rents those dusty tomes a pungent sticky surprise! Heathers.
51. Outback nutjob gets obliterated as the Humongous' hot rod slams head on into the Road Warrior's hard charging Mack truck with him hanging off the grill. First his boytoy sex slave gets a steel boomerang to the noggin, and now this! Bad week in the badlands!
52. Frank Sinatra, old blue eyes himself, the Chairman of the Fucking Board, takes a burst from a grease gun in the back and ruins his leather jacket while ending his life in Von Ryan's Express. He falls flat on his face ring-a-ding dead as his comrades look on all sad. It ain't witchcraft, it's bullshit! The summer wind is gone and it's been replaced with Nazi lead!
53. Brave Sir Robin bravely attempts to cross the bridge of death but is tripped up by a question about Assyria and thus is bravely slain. He will be missed. Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
54. Drummer in Spinal Tap is killed in a tragic gardening accident the authorities deem 'better left unsolved.'
55. Pedro Armendariz uses sniper rifle to take out Bulgarian thug under Anita Ekberg's watchful eye and heaving bosom in From Russia With Love. Sometimes I miss the Cold War.
56. Mads Mikkelson goes down fightin, grenade tossin and machine gun shootin, all the while looking adorable in his pajamas. This scene would have attained perfection if he had managed to kill Hitler with a cereal bowl full of Trix (spoiler alert: he didn't.) Flame and Citron.
57. Very Bad Things: a very tragical death in a very bad movie. Our hero Jeremy Piven, the Piv himself, displays great courage and fortitude when he volunteers to take bachelor party entertainment and 100 pounds of hootchie Kobe Tai into the luxurious Vegas hotel suite bathroom for some on the side suckee fuckee time. Sure, initially he thought her sultry services were comped, but once he found out her cooz came at a price he was still willing to pay premium dollar. You don't get cheap when peerless Asian pootenanny is on hand!
We as an audience are grateful the Piv had the audacity to boldly go where countless other men have been before, but their happy humping interlude comes to a terrible and abrupt end when her petite frame turns out to be a fatal flaw, and her light little body is hoisted while humped and she unwittingly has her head impaled on a bathroom hook. Talk about getting it on both ends! Zoinks!
It's a real blow cause she was the highlight of the movie and I don't even think the Piv had finished at that point. Who is the architect who made those towel hooks so prongy anyway? And all that time I thought her nipples were the perkiest thing in the room! Wakka wakka!
58. Dolph Lundgren Kills Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa In Showdown In Little Tokyo
Everything about Dolph Lundrgen is epic right down to how he kills people in movies. In Rocky IV he shut Apollo Creed's cocky-ass up...permanently. He shot a man's torso off at the beginning of The Expendables and he made a necklace of ears taken from his victim's dead bodies in Universal Soldier. But nothing comes close to the final scene in Showdown in Little Tokyo where Dolph lunges a samurai sword through the main villain's stomach, then picks him up and throws his body (with the sword still in him) on to a rotating fireworks pinwheel.
59. The Fire Extinguisher Scene From Irreversible and The Elevator Scene From Drive
What's that you said about the curb stomp scene in American History X? Please. The skull crush scenes in Irreversible (repeated blows to the head with a fire extinguisher) and Drive (repeated stomps to the face) make Ed Norton look like a little girl. I also find it interesting that both of these scenes end with someone starring off at someone crazily ("La Tenia" looking at his friend's crushed skull as if he's strangely aroused in Irreversible and Ryan Gosling looking at Carey Mulligan like a maniac in Drive.)
60. Grace Orders The Town Of Dogville To Be Executed
I've always been a fan of this movie (and this scene in particular) no matter how much hate it gets. Putting aside the fact that this scene clearly exposed Lars Von Trier's obvious depression and was a clear indication that he just needed a hug, I think a small part of us all wanted the town of Dogville to burn to the ground. I know I did. The more this movie went on the more I wanted something bad to happen to these people and Von Trier didn’t let me down. One by one Grace's father's men shoot everyone in Dogville (men, women, children, babies and even the disabled girl) and then burn the town to the ground. In my opinion, they all got what they deserved.
61. Ian Curtis' Suicide In 24 Hour Party People
Given that just about anyone who contributes to the pink smoke is a big Werner Herzog fan, I assumed the final scene from Stroszek would be taken before I had the chance to claim it so I went with the next best option: Ian Curtis' suicide from 24 Hour Party People, which shows Curtis watching Stroszek moments before killing himself. The imagery of Ian Curtis' legs dangling off to the side after hanging himself with the dancing chicken scene playing in the background is just haunting.
62. Majid Slits His Throat In Cache
I can honestly say I did NOT see this coming. And it’s not like I was bored up until that moment (I was enjoying it very much actually) but once Majid slit his throat I felt a jolt of electricity shoot through my body and I didn’t take my eyes off the screen for the rest of the movie.
63. The Train Scene In Paranoid Park
I know this is supposed to be a list of "awesome deaths" [not necessarily! --ed.] so I feel kind of bad about this one. In no way did the security guard deserve to die. It’s not like his death was “awesome” in any way but the scene itself is quite awesome. The look of horror & surprise on Alex’s face as the security guard slowly drags his legless body towards him after being run over by a train is one of the best things Gus Van Sant has ever directed.
64. The End Of Beau Travail
I know this scene is pushing it, but gimme a break. If you know anything about Claire Denis you know that one of her strengths is getting her points across through hints & implications instead of spelling everything out. Instead of showing us another tortured soldier committing suicide (Full Metal Jacket, Courage Under Fire, Predator, etc) she simply implies it then cuts to Denis Lavant dancing the night away in one of her most iconic scenes.
65. "Cleaning House": The end of Taxi Driver and Thief
I've always loved the idea of one, lone, determined man walking in to danger and taking everyone out one by one and still making it out alive with only minor injuries. I hate using generic terms like "Badass"...but its pretty badass. These two scenes from two of my favorite movies exemplify that:
There's this split second moment of silence in Taxi Driver right after Travis shoots his last victim in the face that just gives me the chills. There's so much noise and chaos going on and then suddenly everything just goes quiet. That specific moment was Iris' wakeup call that it was time to leave the grimey streets of New York City, go home and live a normal life.
The final eight minutes of Thief is another killing spree/rampage that involves one of my all time favorite death scenes. The way in which Robert Prosky dies (after being shot in the head by James Caan) is almost indescribable. The way he yells out after being shot, his blood splattered all over the wall, the look of determination on James Caan’s face…everything. It’s one of Michael Mann's best scenes.
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