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 Introduction:
Deaths in film scenes can be either cool, teary, metaphoric, grisly,
scary, bloody, amusing, violent, transcendental, unforgettable, spectacular,
frightening, funny, or shocking. The victim's death may be well-deserved,
accidental, expected, sudden, or intentional. Some effective death scenes
even occur off-screen.
 Other
areas of this website have death scenes also. See
Greatest Last Film Lines, some
of which were uttered by a dying character, Greatest
Melodramatic Films with many fine death scenes, or Greatest
Film Scenes with some descriptions of death scenes included,
or some of the Scariest Movie Moments
and Scenes.
Total Film
Magazine (in the UK), in their July 2004 issue, provided an article
on the 50 Greatest Movie Deaths throughout cinematic history.
Their results, based on a non-scientific poll taken from interviews
with film critics, listed the 50 most highly-rated death scenes. Although
there were some excellent and well-deserved choices in the Total
Film list, there are many other great death scenes that were among
the missing death scenes in Total Film's honored list
of "cinema's best daisy-pushers" and "drop-dead moments".
The Total Film selections are marked throughout the following
compilation with this symbol 
and their ranking number.
Note: The films that are marked with a yellow star
 are
the films that "The Greatest Films" site
has selected as the 100 Greatest Films.
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Greatest Movie Death Scenes
(chronological by film title) - Part
10
Intro | Part
1 | Part 2 | Part
3 | Part 4 | Part
5 | Part 6 | Part
7 | Part 8 | Part
9 | Part 10
Part 11 | Part
12 | Part 13 | Part
14 | Part 15 |
| Film Title |
Description |
Example |
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Creepshow (1982)
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After discovering a radioactive
meteor that turns everything into vegetation, the mournful suicidal
death of infected country moron Jordy Verrill (author Stephen King)
by blowing his head off to curtail his alien transformation into
a green seaweed-draped zombie - praying "Please God...let my
luck be good just this once..." - in one of the five stories
(The Lonesome Death of Jody Verrill); also the off-screen
death of racist eccentric millionaire Upson Pratt (EG Marshall)
in his sterile penthouse by a swarm of cockroaches, followed by
the creepy, sickening sight of cockroaches emerging from within
his body, in They're Creeping Up on You
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E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
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The overwrought death
scene of the stranded, odd-looking alien witnessed by a heart-broken
10-year old Elliott (Henry Thomas) next to him |
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The Plague Dogs (1982)
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The very-unexpected shooting death of an uncharacteristically friendly hunter; when calling Snitter to come closer, the fox-terrier accidentally set off the man's hunting gun trigger and blew a shot-gun blast into his face; in the film's conclusion, the two hunted dogs swam out to sea - choosing to die rather than be captured |
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The Secret of NIMH (1982)
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Jennar's (voice of Paul
Shenar) death, first stabbed in the stomach by the heroic Justin
(voice of Peter Strauss), then toppling off a cliff when struck
in the back by a dagger thrown by Jennar's dying ex-henchman Sullivan
(voice of Aldo Ray) whom Jennar had earlier slashed in the throat
with his sword |
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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
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The dramatic, sacrificial
and heroic death of Spock (Leonard Nimoy) to save the doomed ship |
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Christine (1983)
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The scenes in which the evil-possessed red and white
1958 Plymouth Fury malevolent car (named Christine) chased one of Arnie Cunningham's (Keith Gordon) enemies (Buddy Reperton, played by William Ostrander) down a highway and left him a flaming corpse on the road, and then similarly stalked Moochie Welch (Malcolm Danare) into a narrow alleyway and pinned him against a wall - crushing him to death |
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Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)
# 21
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As punishment for telling
sexist jokes on TV, the execution of Arthur Charles Herbert Runcie
MacAdam Jarrett (Graham Chapman) by a method of his own choosing
- a mad dash-pursuit by a group of bare-chested women off a cliff |
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Return of the Jedi (1983)
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The scene of the death
of Darth Vader (David Prowse, voice of James Earl Jones) after saving
his son Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) from the Emperor (Ian McDiarmid)
by hurling the evil leader down a long shaft in the Death Star;
mortally wounded, Vader then asked Luke to remove his mask-respirator
so that he could look at Luke with his own eyes, but Luke protested:
"But you'll die!", to which Vader responded: "Nothing
can stop that now" - Vader's face was viewed for the first
time as Anakin Skywalker (Sebastian Shaw) - he told Luke to flee
the Death Star with his last dying breaths; Luke carried the corpse
of Anakin to the forest moon of Endor, where he burned the body
in a funeral pyre; later, at the celebration of the destruction
of the new Death Star and the Emperor, Luke saw the smiling happy
ghost-spirits of Ben Kenobi (Alec Guinness), Yoda (voice of Frank
Oz) and then Anakin and waved them goodbye
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Scarface (1983)
# 37
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The bullet-ridden and
coke-convulsed body of one-man army Tony Montana (Al Pacino) in
a bloody standoff at his mansion ("Say hello to my leeetle
friend!") with an M16, and his death by a point-blank shotgun
blast in the back, sending him crashing down thirty feet to a pool
below; also earlier, the intense and controversial dismemberment
scene during a bad drug deal in which Tony's friend Angel Fernandez
(Pepe Serna) was chain-sawed to death (off-screen with bloody splattering
and spray) while hanging by his wrists in a hotel bathroom shower |
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Star 80 (1983)
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The tragic murder of Playboy
Playmate Dorothy Stratten (Mariel Hemingway) by jealous, abusive
husband/manager Paul Snider (Eric Roberts), who kills her with a
shotgun and then commits suicide |
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Terms of Endearment (1983)
# 29
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The scene of Emma's (Debra Winger) tear-jerker
death to cancer and final goodbye to her children by her hospital
bed, telling her eldest son Tommy (Troy
Bishop): "...You're gonna realize that you love me. And maybe
you're gonna feel badly, because you never told me. But don't
- I know that you love me. So don't ever do that to yourself,
all right?"; this scene was followed by her death, in which
she gave her mother Aurora (Shirley MacLaine) a silent smile while
her husband Flap (Jeff Daniels) dozed next to her in a chair,
then passed away so quietly it went unnoticed by Aurora until
a nurse announced her death to the two -- Aurora then sobbed piteously
to Flap: "I'm so stupid, so stupid. Somehow, I thought, somehow
I thought when she finally went that - that it would be a relief.
Oh, my sweet little darling. Oh dear, there's nothing harder!
THERE'S NOTHING HARDER!" |
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Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) - The Prologue
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The funny, shocking opening 8-minute vignette in which a car passenger (Dan Aykroyd) and driver (Albert Brooks) were singing-along-to Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Midnight Special" on a cassette, and then challenged each other with trivia games (about TV theme songs and Twilight Zone episodes) while they passed through mountains late at night, before the passenger finally asked to have the car pull over and said: "Hey, you wanna see something really scary?" -- then suddenly transformed into a roaring and monstrous hag and promptly throttled the driver to death
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Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) - Segment 3
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In this segment directed by Joe Dante and based on the classic Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life" by Jerome Bixby, the chilling, bizarre and envisaged death of Ethel (Nancy Cartwright) - being teleported into a deadly, surreal TV "Cartoon Hell" by spoiled, omnipotent, strange young child Anthony (Jeremy Licht) with special eerie mental powers who has entrapped an entire 'family' in his house; Ethel was tormented by demons as Anthony chuckled about cartoons: "Anything can happen in them", and then was finally devoured by a grotesque, green-furred devil, while Anthony darkly taunted in the style of Porky Pig: "Th-th-th-that's all, Ethel"
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Amadeus (1984)
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's
(Tom Hulce) quiet death in bed of liver disease in 1791, after having
fellow composer Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) help him compose
his final work - Requiem Mass in D Minor, followed by the
unceremonious, anonymous dumping of Mozart's body into a mass pauper's
grave
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Blood Simple (1984)
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Julian Marty's (Dan Hedaya)
unbelievable live burial in a dirt field |
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Body Double (1984)
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The grisly death of Gloria
Revelle (Deborah Shelton) - first half-strangled with a phone cord
and then impaled with a huge phallic-like power drill by a disguised
Indian - sending blood down through a hole in the floor to the room
below |
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Gremlins (1984)
# 11
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The spectacular death
of dog-hating, cat-lady spinster Mrs. Deagle (Polly Holliday) by jet propulsion; gremlins modified her motorized stairlift to send her up her bannister, crashing out of the second story window, and headfirst into snow; also the scene of vicious gremlin leader Stripe's
(voice of Frank Welker) gooey death after being exposed to sunlight
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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
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This death scene was so horrifying that it ultimately
caused the creation of a new rating -- PG-13 -- in the infamous,
slightly sexualized Thugee sacrifice/torture scene, crazed Hindu
priest Mola Ram (Amrish Puri) rips the still beating heart out
of a human sacrifice victim (Nizwar Karanj) -- who remains alive
and is lowered into a magma pit and incinerated, along with the
heart still in Mola Ram's hand
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A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
# 38
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The liquifying death of
Nancy's boyfriend Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp) when he drifted off to sleep with headphones while watching a blaring
TV on his lap -- Freddy Krueger's (Robert Englund) clawed hand
burst through, pulled him through the bed cover and down into the center of the bed; he was reduced to a bloody geyser of liquid flesh that then gushed toward the ceiling |
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