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 8 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
Nashville (1975)	The concluding tragic and shocking sequence at a Nashville country music festival/political rally held at the Parthenon in which Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley) just finished performing "My Idaho Home" and then was assassinated by a gunman in the audience - and quickly replaced with unknown performer Albuquerque (Barbara Harris) who calmed the crowd with "It Don't Worry Me"
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)	Randall P. McMurphy's (Jack Nicholson) mercy killing by Chief Bromden (Will Sampson) - by suffocation with a pillow, after he was lobotomized into a human vegetable following his enraged attack on Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher)
Carrie (1976) # 45	The death of the ultra-religious mother Margaret White (Piper Laurie) from the powers of psychokinetic Carrie (Sissy Spacek) as she was crucified by flying cutlery and kitchenware
Carrie (1976)	Telekinetic Carrie White's (Sissy Spacek) raging, vengeful murder of high school prom-goers after being cruelly doused with pig's blood
The Front (1976)	Despairing and troubled blacklisted TV comedy actor and host Hecky Brown's (Zero Mostel) heartbreaking, planned suicide in a hotel room by jumping from the window
Network (1976)	In the final shocking scene, after The Howard Beale Show segment was introduced, the news anchor (Peter Finch) was gunned down by two revolutionary radicals (one was an uncredited Tim Robbins in his film debut) in the audience who had been hired by the network to do away with him; Beale pitched backwards from the impact of multiple bullet wounds - bloodied; the cameraman would only cover the shot for television and not assist - as Jack Snowden (Stanley Grover), a newsman substituting for Howard Beale, was displayed on one of four monitors on a bank of TV screens as he delivered the news story- with the famous last line of the film: "This was the story of Howard Beale, the first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings"
The Omen (1976) # 20	The demise of hapless photographer David Warner (Keith Jennings) by decapitation when a sheet of plate glass flew off the back of a braking truck and sliced cleanly through his neck -- it sent his spinning body-less head flying through the air; also Damien's nanny (Holly Palance) suicide when she entered into the mansion's attic, tied a noose around her neck, stood out on the ledge of the window, and then jumped and hanged herself after calling out her final words: "Damien, look at me! I love you! It's all for you!"
Taxi Driver (1976)	The bloody shootout at the film's conclusion, beginning with the point-blank range murder of pimp Sport (Harvey Keitel) by one-man vigilante Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro)
Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)	The shocking murder of singles bar-cruising, deaf-children schoolteacher Theresa Dunn (Diane Keaton) by an enraged lover (Tom Berenger) during sex at the film's conclusion
Saturday Night Fever (1977)	Tony Manero's (John Travolta) friend Bobby C's (Barry Miller) nighttime fall/plunge off the Verrazano Narrows Bridge (connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island) in the tragic climax
Star Wars (1977) # 9	The death scene during the brief light-saber duel between Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Sir Alec Guinness) against arch-nemesis Darth Vader (voice of James Earl Jones); Obi-Wan Kenobi suffered a sacrificial death and a mythical demise when he deliberately lowered his weapon in order to let Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and the others escape, and suffered a fatal blow to the head; during the duel, he told Vader: "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine"
Suspiria (1977)	The many brutally violent deaths-murders in Dario Argento's best film about a German ballet academy run by witches, including a double-murder in which one young ballerina was hanged and crashed through a stained-glass window (after her exposed heart was stabbed by an unseen assailant) and the other bisected by a shard of the falling glass; a blind piano player's throat was torn out by his own seeing-eye dog, and a girl in an escape attempt fell out of a window into a room full of barbed wire
The Deer Hunter (1978) # 17	The Russian roulette scene in a gambling den in Saigon when Nick (Christopher Walken) blows his brains out and is cradled in the arms of buddy Michael (Robert DeNiro)
The Fury (1978)	The slow-motion death of Childress (John Cassavetes) when angry telekinetic teen Gillian (Amy Irving) explodes his stomach
Halloween (1978)	The POV stabbing murder (behind a mask) of young Michael Myer's sister on Halloween night; and a later scene in which Lynda (P.J. Soles) was strangled by a phone cord as she talked to Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) on the phone - Laurie believed that Lynda was in the throes of passionate love rather than gasping for air and dying
Watership Down (1978)	The offscreen death when the villainous rabbit dictator General Woundwort (voice of Harry Andrews) defiantly attacked an invading dog in slow-motion, with the narrator eulogizing: "General Woundwort's body was never found. It could be that he still lives his fierce life somewhere else, but from that day on, mother rabbits would tell their kittens that if they did not do as they were told, the General would get them. Such was Woundwort's monument, and perhaps it would not have displeased him"; also, the mystical, tearjerking, old age death of the heroic bunny Hazel (voice of John Hurt), who was visited by the angel of death Black Rabbit (voice of Joss Ackland), who told him: "I've come to ask if you'd like to join my Owsla (police force). We shall be glad to have you, and I know you'd like it. You've been feeling tired, haven't you? If you're ready, we might go along now..."