|
 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
5
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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The Children's Hour (1961)
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In this forward-looking
story of female attraction between Karen Wright (Audrey Hepburn)
and Martha Dobie (Shirley MacLaine) - two headmistress-teachers
at the Wright-Dobie School for Girls, self-loathing Martha broke
down and confessed how 'guilty' and 'sick and dirty' she felt about
her feelings toward Karen - and later committed suicide (by hanging
herself in her room - her dangling feet seen in shadowy silhouette)
when she realized that the lesbian rumors about herself were true |
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West Side Story (1961)
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Ex-Jets gang member Tony's
(Richard Beymer) death in Maria's (Natalie Wood) arms, and her last
words to him: "Te adoro, Anton" |
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Cape Fear (1962)
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Max Cady's (Robert Mitchum)
death by being hit in the head with a rock from protective lawyer-husband
Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) in the original version of this film
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Carnival of Souls (1962)
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The final scene, in which
Mary Henry's (Candace Hilligoss) car (with her corpse inside) was
dredged out of the lake |
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Lolita (1962)
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The timely death (off-screen)
of Lolita's mother Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters) when hit by
a car, allowing middle-aged literature professor Humbert
Humbert and widower Humbert Humbert (James Mason) to become nymphet teenager Dolores 'Lolita'
Haze's (Sue Lyon) legal guardian and stepfather; also the final epilogue scene (a continuation of the prologue) in which Humbert was insanely motivated to commit
murder for Quilty's (Peter Sellers) duplicity and his part in seducing, running off and abandoning
Lolita - the ending shot was another view of a Victorian, Gainsborough-type watercolor painting of an
18th century genteel young woman with a bullet hole through
the face of the young girl - symbolic of the irrecoverably-marked life of Lolita; Humbert had emptied all six rounds of his gun into the portrait,
killing Quilty through the painting. |
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Lonely Are the Brave (1962)
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The death of cowboy Jack
Burns (Kirk Douglas) during his flight for freedom when run over
by truck driver Hinton's (Carroll O'Connor) 18-wheeler |
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The Manchurian Candidate
(1962)
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The brainwashing tea-party
sequence with the demonstration of Sergeant Raymond Shaw's (Laurence
Harvey) emotionless killing capacity of a platoon member - with
his blood splattering onto a wall poster of Stalin, and the assassinations
of both his step-father Senator John Iselin (James Gregory) and
his mother Mrs. Iselin (Angela Lansbury) on-stage at a political
convention - and then his own suicide as the crazed Sergeant blows
his brains out (off-screen) - in the climactic finale |
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The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
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In the climactic shootout between novice, left-handed gun-user Ransom "Rance" Stoddard (James Stewart) and violent outlaw/gunfighter Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), it was later revealed in a flashback ("Think back, Pilgrim") that rancher/gunslinger Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) was actually the shooter who killed Valance - he had hidden and shot Liberty to sacrificially protect the love of his life Hallie Stoddard (Vera Miles) from heartbreak, and also for the greater good of the territory poised for statehood
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The Birds (1963)
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Lydia Brenner's (Jessica
Tandy) discovery of the eye-pecked body of a farmer and her inaudible
scream from her open mouth |
|
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Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop
Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
# 2
|
The hat-waving, yee-hawing,
bronco-phallic descent to Doomsday of Major Kong (Slim Pickens)
while riding an atomic bomb, followed by the ironic tune "We'll
Meet Again" |
|
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Goldfinger (1964)
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The striking image of
the naked corpse of Goldfinger's escort Jill Masterson (Shirley
Eaton) painted gold and lying on a bed |
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Doctor Zhivago (1965)
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The moving death of aging
surgeon Dr. Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif) when he sighted his old flame
Lara Antipova (Julie Christie) walking down a crowded Russian street,
and he chased after her - suffering a heart attack from the stress
and effort as he fruitlessly tried to call out to her while waving,
and a crowd surrounded his lifeless body in a long overhead shot |
|
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A Man for All Seasons (1966)
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The
scene of Sir Thomas More's (Paul Scofield) execution and his poignant
words to his executioner: "Be not afraid of your office: you
send me to God", in Fred Zinnemann's Best Picture-winning film
of Richard Bolt's adaptation of his own play |
|
|
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
# 5
|
The jerky, writhing orgasmic
bodies of Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde Barrow (Warren
Beatty) from a blizzard of bullets in a revolutionary, graphic ambush-death
scene |
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Cool Hand Luke (1967)
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Escaped chain-gang prisoner Luke (Paul Newman)
looks out one of the church windows toward the Captain (Strother
Martin) and other sheriffs in an eerie red light reflected from
their cherry-tops. Ultimately unbroken and with a cocky, assured
but cool smile, he mocks the Captain with the famous film line:
"What we've got here is a failure to communicate",
and is tragically shot in the throat and silenced forever by the
crack-shooting Boss with no eyes. Flooded by a reddish glow, Luke
dies in the back seat of the Boss' car viewed through a rain-spattered
car window - his face wears the familiar grin - a sign of the
victory of his spirit over death |
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If... (1968, UK)
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The violent, vengeful and bloody finale in director Lindsay Anderson's violent and controversial coming-of-age drama about youth rebellion - an armed shoot-out and revolt by rebellious students from the rooftop of an oppressive, conformist English boarding school (a symbolic microcosm of a repressive Establishment-oriented society) during a Founder's Day ceremony; the attack was led by rebellious, anti-authoritarian anarchist Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell in his debut film role); he was joined by other boys and an unnamed coffee-house waitress/girlfriend (Christine Noonan) who coldly shot the Headmaster (Peter Jeffrey) between the eyes while he pleaded: "Boys, boys, I understand you. Listen to reason and trust me, trust me!" |
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Night of the Living Dead (1968)
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The senseless, grim death
of sole survivor Ben (Duane Jones) by a shot in the head from a
redneck in a lynch mob when he emerges into the daylight, and Barbara's
(Judith O'Dea) death by her own zombified brother Johnny (Russell
Streiner) |
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Pretty Poison (1968)
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The two bewildering and
disturbing murders committed by "pretty poison" high school
senior - a perky amoral and corruptible blonde named Sue Ann Stepanek
(Tuesday Weld): the first when she sat on the body of wounded plant
nightwatchman Sam (Parker Fennelly) and cold-bloodedly drowned him
- with her dress hiked up as she pumped him up and down (almost
orgasmically); and the second - a matricide when she shot her dissolute,
critical and disapproving mother (Beverly Garland) at point-blank
range as she ascended the stairs carrying a breakfast of pancakes |
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Romeo and Juliet (1968)
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The deaths of the two
young star-crossed lovers (Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey) from
different houses (Montague and Capulet) by poison and dagger stabbing
("Oh, happy dagger") |
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2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
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HAL 9000's (voice of Douglas
Rains) cold-blooded murder of the astronauts during hibernation
- the only sign of death being registered on computer terminals;
Frank Poole's (Gary Lockwood) death by cutting off his oxygen supply
as he momentarily flailed around in space; also the scene of a pleading
HAL's own lobotomizing death as he sang: "Daisy, Daisy'"
and Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) removed the higher-function memory
cards; and the aging death of Bowman in a bed in front of a monolith
- and his resurrection as a "Star Baby" |
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Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969)
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Bambi's stomped death
- the punchline in this very short film - made by a student at the
Art Center of Design in Los Angeles |
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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid (1969)
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Outlaws Butch Cassidy
(Paul Newman) and the Sundance Kid's (Robert Redford) heroic last-stand
charge into a hail of bullets and insurmountable odds - with a freezed-frame
and transformation to sepia |
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