|
 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
14
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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Braveheart (1995)
# 47
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Scottish rebel William
Wallace's (Mel Gibson) heroic death scene as he was courageously
tortured ("I'm not dead yet") and died for his cause,
after being partially hung, racked, disemboweled, and then beheaded
(off-screen) |
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Casino (1995)
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The beating death and
barely-alive burial of Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) and his brother
by a gang of metal club-wielding thugs led by Frank Marino (Frank Vincent)
in the middle of an Indiana corn field in a ditch; also the earlier gratuitously violent scene of a man's head squeezed in a vice as torture |
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Dead Man Walking (1995)
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Matthew Poncelot's (Sean
Penn) capital punishment death via lethal injection, with counselor/Sister
Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon) telling him: "I want the last
face you see in this world to be the face of love, so you look at
me when they do this thing. I'll be the face of love for you"
|
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GoldenEye (1995)
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The death of Janus crime operative and programmer Boris Grishenko (Alan Cumming) who yelled out "I am invincible!" - but shortly afterwards was frozen by liquid nitrogen that erupted from ruptured tanks - in a celebratory pose |
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Richard III (1995)
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The fiery death of Richard III (Ian McKellan) in this modernistic adaptation of the Shakespearean play, set in a fictional, fascistic Britain some time in the late 1930s; in the film's conclusion in an abandoned industrial site, Richard III refused to be captured and told his rival - in a line never written by Shakespeare - "Let us to't pell-mell; if not to heaven, then hand-in-hand to hell" - then he lifted his right gloved hand as if to wave, and fell backwards into the inferno to his death; his demise was accompanied by the unusually-cheerful song I'm Sitting On The Top Of The World (Ray Henderson, Joe Young and Sam Lewis)
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Se7en (1995)
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The unforgettable, nail-biting,
concluding climax in which maniacal serial killer John Doe (Kevin
Spacey) led arrogant, hotshot replacement Detective David Mills
(Brad Pitt) and retiring veteran Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman)
to another sick and gruesome crime and souvenir - "her pretty
head" in a bloody box, demonstrating the last two of the Seven
Deadly Sins (gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy, and wrath);
Doe confessed to the sin of Envy, having killed Mills' wife (Gwyneth
Paltrow) and having her severed head (never shown) delivered to
their location in a box -- and then to demonstrate Wrath, anguished
and angered Lt. Mills shot Doe repeatedly in revenge for his pregnant
wife's beheading |
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Species (1995)
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Pretty nymphomaniacal
alien Sil (Natasha Henstridge), wishing to be impregnated in order
to reproduce her kind, easily tempted English doctor Dr. Stephen
Arden (Alfred Molina) to make love to her, but promptly afterwards
killed him - to his shocked horror |
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To Die For (1995)
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Icy blonde TV weathercaster
Suzanne Stone Maretto's (Nicole Kidman) off-screen death -- killed
by a "Hollywood producer" (David Cronenberg in a cameo)
who was hired by her dead husband's father Joe Maretto (Dan Hedaya)
(with Mafia connections) for killing Larry (Matt Dillon); she was
later seen dead under the ice of a frozen pond as Larry's sister
Janice (Illeana Douglas) skated and performed twirls and pirouettes
on the frozen lake (above the location of the frozen body) to the
tune of Donovan's "The Season of the Witch" |
|
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12 Monkeys (1995)
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The climactic shooting
of time-traveling convict James Cole (Bruce Willis) by airport security
as the young incarnation of himself (Joseph Melito) looked on |
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Fargo (1996)
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The brutal axe attack
on buddy/partner Carl (Steve Buscemi) by Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare),
and Carl's messy 'burial' in a wood-chipper |
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Scream (1996)
# 7
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After losing a phone quiz
to a wacko, Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) suffered her demise by
repeated stabbing in the house's front garden from a lunatic named
Ghostface wearing a Halloween costume - afterwards she was hung
from a tree; also the scene of the murder of "helpless victim" Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan) during a party when she went to the garage refrigerator for beer - while trying to escape from the ghost-faced killer through the cat flap in the garage door, she became stuck half-way; when the door was activated and raised, her head was crushed and neck broken by the door's roof; at the film's conclusion, the two teens who were Ghostface
were both vengefully killed by heroine Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell)
- she grabbed a vase from a TV cabinet and smashed it on Stuart
Macher's (Matthew Lillard) head - she then toppled a heavy TV set
onto him that both crushed him and electrocuted him; when a bloody
and unconscious Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) suddenly lunged at her,
she conclusively shot him in the head and killed him |
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Anaconda (1997)
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The scene in which Paul
Sarone (Jon Voight) was eaten by the giant anaconda (seen inside
the snake's mouth), regurgitated half-digested while still alive
and conscious, took time to wink with his left eye, and was then
re-eaten |
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The Ice Storm (1997)
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The tragic electrocution death of Mikey Carver (Elijah Wood) while sitting on a guard rail and admiring the sight of ice-covered trees after an ice-storm in Connecticut, when a broken, sparking and downed electrical power line came into contact with the rail |
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L.A. Confidential (1997)
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Jack Vincennes' (Kevin
Spacey) surprise killing, shot in the chest by Capt. Smith (James
Cromwell) |
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Life is Beautiful (1997)
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The off-screen death of
Guido (Roberto Begnini) - just a small report of machine-gunfire
in an alley - while protecting his young son Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini)
from the horrors of a Nazi death camp |
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The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
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The grisly demise of gadgets
expert Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff) by being bitten in the leg, flipped
around, pulled in half like taffy, and then eaten by two Tyrannosaurus
Rexs |
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Titanic (1997)
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The scene of Jack Dawson's
(Leonardo DiCaprio) freezing to death from hypothermia and drowning in frigid North
Atlantic waters next to lover Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) after the luxury liner Titanic sank |
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American History X (1998)
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The infamous brutal and
painful-to-watch curb-stomping scene in which former neo-Nazi skinhead
Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton) forced wounded black car thief Lawrence
(Antonio David Lyons) to bite down on the sidewalk curb and then
stomped on the man's head to snap his neck in half, to teach him
a "real lesson"; after killing him, he spit on his body |
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Deep Rising (1998)
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The gory death scene in which an unfortunate, half-dead and conscious victim was swallowed and half-eaten (or "drunk") by a giant, multi-tentacled wormy sea creature, and then spit out, excreted or regurgitated before dying |
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Meet Joe Black (1998)
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Joe Black's (Brad Pitt)
day-dreaming death at a busy intersection when first missed by a speeding car, but then blindsided by a white van and sent airborne in a somersault into the windshield of a yellow taxi-cab traveling in the opposite direction |
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Saving Private Ryan (1998)
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The poignant sacrificial scene of Captain John
Miller's (Tom Hanks) death, when critically wounded by heavy German fire; as he died, his final heroic, weakly-muttered words were an order to PFC James Ryan (Matt Damon) to 'earn' the sacrifices that saved him on the mission: "James … earn this. Earn it"; in voice-over, as a letter from General Marshall to Ryan's mother was read informing her that her sole surviving, youngest son was alive and returning home, Miller's face transitionally dissolved into the face of the nameless elderly veteran (Harrison Young) - revealed to be an older Ryan - visiting the Normandy cemetery at the film's beginning (50 years later) - at the grave site of Captain Miller; he was reassured by his wife after asking her: "Am I a good man? Tell me that I have been a good man" |
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Waking Ned Devine (1998)
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The timely demise of uncooperative, wheelchair-bound, witchy spinster Lizzy Quinn (Eileen Dromey) who was in a cliff-side phone booth (that was hit by the parish priest's van-truck avoiding the lotto representative's swerving car when he sneezed) while she was calling to inform lottery officials to expose a fraud and claim 10% of the prize (about 680,000 pounds) - the booth sailed into the air and crashed far below on the cliff's shore - at the same time all of the Tullymore townsfolk were celebrating their fraudulent winnings (130,000 pounds each) and a violin string broke during a high note |
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What Dreams May Come (1998)
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Dr. Chris Nielsen's (Robin
Williams) death by automobile when helping at the scene of an accident
- the impact violently hurtled him through the air and down the
mythical tunnel of light in an early scene |
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