Lighten up! Let's look at popular death scenes

[shereads]

The movie death that made me laugh out loud and caused me to be hissed at by Trekkies. Yes, they hissed!

Spock's funeral in one of the Star Trek movies. It wasn't so much that he was dead that was funny, as William Shatner's eulogy:

'Tis a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done before. 'Tis a far better place I go than..." etcetera. I was pinching my hand to stifle the laugh, but it came out anyway. I'm sorry, Trekkies who were there that evening. I'd have stayed home if I could.

 

[Madame Manga]

"Made it, Ma. Top of the world!"

BOOM.

White Heat, 1950.

It's been ages since I saw a Jimmy Cagney movie, but I used to set my alarm for 3 AM just to watch one on the Channel 11 All-Night Movie-Go-Round.

If only Spock had STAYED dead...and yes, I am a former Trekkie. The most hilarious Shatner eulogy in that movie, though, has to be "Klingon bastards killed my son! Dirty Klingon bastards killed my son!" I knew a guy with a perfect Shatner imitation who could crack up the whole department quoting that line.

MM

 

[dr_mabeuse]

"Made it, Ma. Top of the world!"

BOOM.

White Heat, 1950.

Okay. See you and raise you Edward G Robinson as Enrico Someoneorother in Little Caesar, gut shot and leaning on the bannister, looks into the camera and asks, "Is this the end of Rico?"

It's become a famous catchphrase where I live.

---dr.M.

Edited to add: I want to go on public record with my confession of how much I love Peter Lorre. I don't know if he had any good death scenes, but he claimed to have been the first to use the word "creep" to describe the type of characters he played. What a guy.

 

[Guest]

How about Thelma and Louise? Great exit.

And Rutger Hauer as Roy in "Blade Runner". My brother said his character was an embodiment of Milton's Satan. His last line about 'tears like drops in rain' always gets to me.

Perdita

 

[Guest]

HAL in 2001

 

[shereads]

"Made it, Ma. Top of the world!"

BOOM.

White Heat, 1950.

It's been ages since I saw a Jimmy Cagney movie, but I used to set my alarm for 3 AM just to watch one on the Channel 11 All-Night Movie-Go-Round.

If only Spock had STAYED dead...and yes, I am a former Trekkie. The most hilarious Shatner eulogy in that movie, though, has to be "Klingon bastards killed my son! Dirty Klingon bastards killed my son!" I knew a guy with a perfect Shatner imitation who could crack up the whole department quoting that line.

MM

Have you seen the documentary film, "Trekkies?" It's marvelous. All true, and entirely entertaining. There's a woman who sued to be allowed to wear her Federation officer uniform while serving on a jury in New Orleans. She won.

-----

Why did the chicken cross the road?

William Shatner: To kill my son!

 

[shereads]

HAL in 2001

Oh my god, how did I not think of that? It was so moving; he was the most human character in the film, in a way. The one with a past, the idealist, the one who had flaws.

 

[shereads]

Okay. See you and raise you Edward G Robinson as Enrico Someoneorother in Little Caesar, gut shot and leaning on the bannister, looks into the camera and asks, "Is this the end of Rico?"

It's become a famous catchphrase where I live.

---dr.M.

I need to see more gangster flicks. I get such joy from watcing Edward G. Robinson as the Pharoah in the Ten Commandments.

 

[shereads]

Best death by a non-human actor in a comedy:

The horse that has a heart attack in the Dean's office in "Animal House."

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

Memorable death scenes:
John Wayne in Sands of Iwo Jima. ... The man he has been at odds with the whole move pulls out a letter Wayne's character was writing to his son. It's a very poignant scene...

Henry Fonda reading the letter after the lynching in “The Ox-Bow Incident.”

Nooooo! ... Bambi's mother. Died in that horrible fire...

Er ... wasn’t Bambi’s mother shot by hunters? Wasn’t it Bambi and his father who where nearly burned in a forest fire.

I am WAY to young to be getting althiemers!!!

Spock's funeral ... William Shatner's eulogy ...

Groucho Marx in one of the Marx Brothers movie “performed” a hilarious (it was supposed to be) eulogy in a play within one of their movies.

Okay. See you and raise you Edward G Robinson... in Little Caesar

Edward G Robinson’s death on “Soylent Green” – very stressless until later when you find out where he went.

 

[shereads]

Most surreal death:

Roy Schneider in "All That Jazz"

 

[shereads]

“Betrayed”

A vicious white supremacist is shot during an unsuccessful bank robbery. They try to make their getaway, and succeed.

Instead of using the excuse for a car chase, the camera stays inside the getaway car, sounds of tires squealing and sirens’ wailing, as the robbers in the back of the car are jostled, and bits of city flash past the windows.

Through the long scene (3-4 minutes, basically a static shot) the movie focuses upon the death of that miserable human being. The anguish and pain on his face, the growing bloodstain over his stomach, his groans and whimpers of pain, until – finally – he dies, as the robbers elude escape.

So often we see even important characters blown away, to be left behind with hardly any thought given. A scene or two later the people who survived are cracking jokes or exchanging witticisms.

I thought this was a praiseworthy attempt to do something different – more honest.

I rented the film from a video store about five or six years ago. No one I have talked to has ever heard of it. I don’t remember much more of the plot than what I have written, but that one scene still stays with me, as a powerful, and unusual use of a death scene.

I am not certain, but I think Tom Berenger played (not the hero, he was the chief white supremacist) the lead, I can’t remember who played the female lead.

Edited: A "ban robbery?" What's that? A hygeine problem?

I saw Betrayed. It was a good flick. Didn't whosherface play Berenger's wife?

You remember her. She had a great death scene in "Terms of Endearment" with Jack Nicholson and Shirley McClaine.

 

[shereads]

I understand that this was the first scene to doi violence in slow motion, a technique used by Peckinpah and so many others that now it's a cliche.

You mean like the slow-motion shooting of the entire cast of "Sam Peckinpah's 'Garden Party'?" as reviewed in an episode of Month Python?

I didn't see that as cliched at all.

Another blood-drenched death, although it was a TV death, was Dan Ackroyd's as Julia Child on Saturday Night Live. She cuts herself with a paring knife and things get ugly. Fast.

 

[shereads]

Henry Fonda reading the letter after the lynching in “The Ox-Bow Incident.”

Henry Fonda's actual death still makes me cry, and of course anything he's in where anything at all bad happens to him makes me cry.

Er ... wasn’t Bambi’s mother shot by hunters? Wasn’t it Bambi and his father who where nearly burned in a forest fire.

You're right, it's my alzheimers, not yours. I must have a repressed memory of Bambi's mother's actual death, but since you mention it the fire was depressing too.

Edward G Robinson’s death on “Soylent Green” – very stressless until later when you find out where he went.

I can't remember anyone else in Soylent Green besides the scenery-chewing Heston: "Soylent Green is people!"

 

[shereads]

The off-camera death scene that gave me nightmares:

Diane Keaton stabbed a zillion times in "Looking for Mister Goodbar."

I hate stabbing. Can't watch it, can't listen to it. I entirely agree with the old man in Life of Brian who annoys Cleese's Roman centurion by refusing to agree that crucifiction is a horrible death.

"Could be worse...Could be stabbed."

Oh yes. Brian's death. Memorable, hummable.

"My brother usually rescues me, if he can stop chasing tail long enough. Randy little bugger."

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

... I entirely agree with the old man in Life of Brian who annoys Cleese's Roman centurion by refusing to agree that crucifiction is a horrible death.
"Could be worse...Could be stabbed." ...

That reminds me of the old joke: Would you rather die by guillotine or burning at the stake?

Naturally, anyone sensible chooses the guillotine.

But, NO ...

“A warm steak is always better than a cold cut.”

And for that, I should die like the guy who was catapulted ...

PHOOIT!

... through the roof of James Bond’s Aston Marton.

 

[raphy]

It means plenty to me Raph. B5 is my favourite all time television program.

I liked Neroon's death the best though. I hope when I kick off, it is with such little fear and to so great a purpose.

Aaah, Neroon's sacrifice was triumphant. I just thought that the image of Refa getting kicked to death by a lynch mob while a gospel choir sang songs about Jesus was perfect counterpoint

 

[raphy]

And Rutger Hauer as Roy in "Blade Runner". My brother said his character was an embodiment of Milton's Satan. His last line about 'tears like drops in rain' always gets to me.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die. "

 

[shereads]

I've never heard an audience entirely silent for as long as we were at the end of American Beauty. The first and second and third times I saw it, most of the audience sat still for the entire closing credits - not just the film geeks, but the rest of us.



We were too moved to move.

We were stunned.

Kevin Spacy's character has been shot to death, his daughter and her boyfriend will inevitably be blamed, the world is an ironic mess - yet there's still the hope of redemption thanks to spacy's incredibly moving and uplifting narration of the moments after his death. There are flashbacks to images from his past. "My grandmother's hands...her skin, like paper," his daughter as a little girl in fairy wings, his bitter wife as a laughing girl...and Spacy's voice, tranquil in the aftermath of his murder:

"I guess I could be pissed off about what happened to me, but it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world.

"Sometimes there's just too much of it, and my heart feels like a balloon that's about to burst. But then I remember to stop trying so hard to hang onto it...

"...And then it flows through me like rain. And I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you. But don't worry -

<<screen goes black>>

"You will someday."

 

[Guest]

"Soylent Green is people!"

Thanks a lot, Sher. Now I guess I don't have to see the movie.

Perdita

 

[shereads]

Thanks a lot, Sher. Now I guess I don't have to see the movie.

Perdita

Oh please, like that movie would have kept you in suspense!

It's worth seeing only if you wonder how all that scenery tastes to Charlton Heston. He's at his Planet of the Apes finest in that one.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

The animator in Monty Python and the Holy Grail for most random.
Donnie Darko's death in the movie by the same name is intriguing and a bit sad especially with the Gary Jules song playing in the background.

And while we're talking about animal deaths, how about that poor horse in The Godfather?

And another classic Kubrick morose death would be Spartacus crucified as his love stops near him in a chariot.

 

[Guest]

Can't recall which Bond film but I well remember the villain in the bathtub electrocuted when Bond throws a toaster (or radio?) in the water.


Edited to add: Dirk Bogarde's death scene on the Lido in "Death in Venice" (one of my top ten fave films ever).

Perdita

 

[oggbashan]

The death scenes at the end of the 1948 Hamlet.

Not filmed but recorded: Paul Robeson as Othello "Put out the light and then put out the light." The anguish in Robeson's voice is terrible.

The gangster's death in the Japanese noodle trucker western 'Tampopo' which also has the most erotic sex food scene between the gangster and his moll using an egg yolk. All movie buffs should see Tampopo for the allusions and subtle tributes. Food must be available while watching.

Og

 

[shereads]

The animator in Monty Python and the Holy Grail for most random.
Donnie Darko's death in the movie by the same name is intriguing and a bit sad especially with the Gary Jules song playing in the background.

And while we're talking about animal deaths, how about that poor horse in The Godfather?

And another classic Kubrick morose death would be Spartacus crucified as his love stops near him in a chariot.

I get chillbumps when Spartacus shakes his fist at the half-buried Statue of Liberty and screams, "You blew it up! You stupid bastards, you blew it up!"

No, wait. I don't get chillbumps, I laugh; and that's not Spartacus, that's Planet of the Apes or Soylent Green. Sorry.

There were several way-too-memorable electrocutions in The Green Mile. Since Florida had last used its electric chair a few years earlier, and had in fact set a man's hair on fire by failing to set things up properly, that was hard to watch. Too real.