|
 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.
| Greatest
Movie Death Scenes
(chronological by film title) - Part
7
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 |
The Last House on the Left
(1972)
|
This taboo-breaking and often revolting 'snuff'-type film featured the long ordeal of two teenaged girls, 17 year-old virgin Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassel) and Phyllis Stone (Lucy Grantham) who are searching for pot when kidnapped by a sadistic group of escaped convicts led by Krug (David Hess); after being stripped naked and forced to have sex with each other, they are brutally tortured, raped, dis-emboweled (after repeated stabbings), and eventually murdered in the woods |
|
| Last Tango in Paris
(1972)
|
The scene of Paul (Marlon
Brando) being shot in the stomach by Jeanne (Maria Schneider), and
dying on the balcony in a fetal position |
|
| The Poseidon Adventure
(1972)
|
The water-rescue scene
when overweight Jewish passenger Mrs. Belle Rosen (Oscar-nominated
Shelley Winters) saved Rev. Frank Scott (Gene Hackman) from drowning,
while gasping: "in the water, I'm a very skinny lady"-
and because of her strenuous effort, she died of a heart attack
after admitting: "I guess I'm not a champion of the Women's
Swimming Association anymore" -- Frank sobbed to God: "Please,
God! Not her! Not her!" as he cradled her body in his arms |
|
| Charlotte's Web
(1973)
|
The moving death of spider
Charlotte (voice of Debbie Reynolds) on a wooden beam while singing
the last lines of "Mother Earth and Father Time," after
sacrificing herself for ill-fated friend Wilbur the pig (voice of
Henry Gibson) and producing her magnum opus (an egg sac), and Wilbur's
despairing cry of "CHARLOTTE!" when he realizes she's
gone |
|
| Don't Look Now
(1973)
|
After the scary drowning
death of his red-raincoated daughter (Sharon Williams) in a fishpond
in England in an early scene, the final moment that architectural
restoration expert John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) sights a small
girl in a bright red hooded coat in a dark alleyway - who turns
out to be his nemesis - a murderous dwarf (Adelina Poerio) in the
city of Venice who slices his throat with a long sharp knife |
|
| The
Exorcist (1973)
# 41
|
Self-sacrificial Father
Damien Karras' (Jason Miller) welcoming of the devil into himself
from devil-girl Regan (Linda Blair) and then hurling himself from
the bedroom through the window to the landing below - and then tumbling
to his death down the steep concrete steps |
 |
| Live
and Let Die (1973)
# 15
|
The disgusting
scene of criminal Mr. Big's (Yaphet Kotto) 'blow-up' and 'pop' death
from a compressed gas bullet to the mouth from a shark gun |
|
Sisters (1973)
|
The brutal and vicious stabbing of
"colored" TV game-show player Philip Woode (Lisle Wilson)
(with multiple stab wounds in the mouth, leg, and back by a huge
carving knife) who had brought an inscribed birthday cake to aspiring
French-Canadian model Danielle Breton (Margot Kidder) in her Staten
Island apartment after a one-night stand - and was murdered by her
once-conjoined and insane Siamese twin sister Dominique Blanchion
(also Margot Kidder in a dual role); the bloody and gruesome slaying
was witnessed, with director Brian De Palma's split-screen technique,
from an apartment across the way by aspiring journalist Grace Collier
(Jennifer Salt) as he scrawled with his blood to write the word
HELP on a window; later in the film, Dominique also slashed her
strange ex-husband/doctor Emil Breton (William Finley) with a scalpel
across his groin and caused him to bleed to death on top of her |
|
| Sleeper
(1973)
|
The flattening of the
Great Leader's disembodied nose by a steamroller |
 |
| Soylent Green (1973)
|
The moving scene of Sol
Roth's (Edward G. Robinson in his final film role) poignant, painless
and suicidal death in a euthanasia clinic amidst musical and visual
montages of a peaceful green world, with his tearful friend Detective
Thorn (Charlton Heston) at his side |
|
The Wicker Man (1973)
|
Repressed Scottish policeman Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) discovered possible evidence of a potential virgin sacrifice of a missing young schoolgirl named Rowan (Geraldine Cowper) by pagan worshippers and inhabitants of a remote island on May Day, inside a giant hollow Wicker Man statue (created of wicker materials designed to be used for fire sacrifices) - this was followed by the scene in which he ultimately became the final perfect sacrifice himself |
|
|
Chinatown (1974)
|
The climactic murder of
Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) as she flees in a convertible through
Chinatown with her daughter from her incestuous tycoon father Noah
Cross (John Huston) |
 |
| Death Wish (1974)
|
The excruciating-to-watch, savage beating and murder
of Joanna Kersey (Hope Lange) (while hearing: "I rape rich
c--ts like you") and visiting married daughter Carol Toby's (Kathleen Tolan) gang-rape
(forced to perform oral sex) and brutalization by thugs (including
Jeff Goldblum in his film debut as Freak #1) in their Manhattan apartment, leaving the daughter institutionalized; this attack provokes a vengeful,
vigilante rampage by husband and liberal architect Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) in New
York |
|
| Female Trouble
(1974)
|
Disfigured, glory-seeking
serial killer mom Dawn Davenport's (Divine) execution on the electric
chair, after she delivers an "acceptance speech" - thanking
"everyone who made this possible" including her accomplices
and her victims - she shouts as the film concludes: "I love
every f---ing one of you!"
|
|
|
The Godfather, Part II (1974)
|
The revenge-stabbing of
a feeble, senile Don Francesco Ciccio (Giuseppe Sillato), by slipping
a dagger into his ribs; also Vito Corleone's (Robert DeNiro) run
across the rooftops to pursue and eventually kill Don Fanucci "The
Black Hand" (Gaston Moschin) during the San Gannero festival
- shooting him twice with a gun wrapped in a towel: once in the
chest (as fireworks explode outside), then point-blank in the cheek
- the towel memorably bursts into flame from the heat of the gun
barrel; and the execution of Fredo (John Cazale) for betrayal -
in a boat on the lake while he fishes and recites a "Hail Mary" |
|
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
|
Chainsaw-wielding Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), wearing a butcher's apron and a mask stitched out of human skin, hanged a screaming Pam (Teri McMinn) on a meat hook through her upper back and spine; also Leatherface jumped out of the shadows and scared Franklin (Paul A. Partain) - and then slaughtered him by a chainsaw applied to his stomach |
|
The Day of the Locust (1975)
|
In the film's fiery, apocalyptic, and hallucinatory finale, the still-to-this-day shocking death-by-stomping of repellent, unloved 12 year-old child actor Adore Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley) by outraged and deeply-troubled and sexually-repressed accountant Homer Simpson (Donald Sutherland), plus Simpson's subsequent (presumed) murder (off-screen) at the hands of a crazed mob of movie fans attending the crowded world premiere for Cecil B. DeMille's film The Buccaneer at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood; also, the shot of a bewildered Simpson being carried off by a frenzied mob to his ultimate crushing fate |
|
Death Race 2000
(1975)
|
The frequent killings
during the 'anything-goes' cross-country race (with points earned
for mowing down pedestrians and bonus points for hitting the elderly),
especially the blood-splattering death of one driver by a car's
'burnout' over his body |
|
| Deep
Red/Profondo Rosso (1975, It.) (aka The Hatchet Murders)
|
There were many gruesome
and bloody red murders in Dario Argento's gripping mystery with
a plot twist at the end, including a stabbing, a meat-cleaver
murder (and severing of a nearly decapitated neck on broken window
glass), a head-dunking in a bathtub of scorching water, the neck-knifing
murder of Professor Giordani (Glauco Mauri), and a grisly death when a man is dragged by a garbage truck and his head is run over and squashed; the most outrageous death at film's end was of
the insane mother Martha (Clara Calamai) - she was revealed as
the film's hatchet murderer; she died when her necklace was caught
in a descending elevator shaft - both strangling and decapitating
her |
 |
Jaws (1975)
# 12
|
The opening scene in which
skinnydipper Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie), with blood-curdling
shrieks ("Help me, help") is tugged by a below-surface,
invisible predator, and then dragged around on the surface before
a painful death |
|
Jaws (1975)
|
Quint's (Robert Shaw)
sliding into the mouth of the great white shark; also the tragic
killing of the Alex Kintner (Jeffrey Vorhees) - unnoticed by nearby
swimmers; and the memorable explosive death of the shark itself
- when Brody (Roy Scheider) kills the monster by firing at a compressed
oxygen tank in its jaws ("Smile, ya son-of-a-bitch") |
|
| The Man Who Would
Be King (1975)
|
Delusional Daniel Dravot's
(Sean Connery) spectacular fall to his death, after he was made
king (and thought to be a god) but then pursued by an angry Kafiristan
mob when revealed to be human, and trapped on a rope bridge high
above a canyon when the support ropes were hacked away; his decayed
head was brought back (still crowned) to be viewed by Rudyard Kipling
(Christopher Plummer) |
|
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
|
The hilarious scene of King Arthur's (Graham Chapman) encounter with the Black Knight (John Cleese) who persistently insisted on combat even after all of his limbs (first his left arm, then right arm, then right leg and left leg) had been hacked off and he had been reduced to a head and torso: ("Tis but a scratch!") - although he didn't expire in the scene |
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