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Greatest Movie Entrances of All-Time Part 4 |
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Greatest Movie Entrances of All-Time Part 4 |
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The following illustrated list in the next few web pages, in unranked chronological order, presents a solid collection of the most classic movie entrances or bows of film characters in cinematic history. These include film scenes from the silent era, the classic film period, and modern-day. Greatest Movie Entrances of All Time |
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Movie Title and Film Character |
Brief Scene Description | Example |
Cabaret (1972) The Emcee
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The film opened on a twisted, mirrored surface as a drum-roll began -- when the cymbals crashed, the Emcee (Joel Grey) popped into the frame from below -- a deathly-pale, pasty-white angular face, with ruby-red lipsticked lips, and a demonic, dangerously-mischievous grin formed on his face as he greeted the patrons of the Kit Kat Club (and the movie audience) with the song Wilkommen - in German, English and French: "Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!" He introduced himself as the host, and told them that while life was dreary and troublesome, there were no problems in the Cabaret as he revealed the all-girl band ("So life is disappointing? Forget it! In here, life is beautiful! The girls are beautiful! Even the orchestra is beautiful!"). He then introduced the audience to the Cabaret Girls (one of whom was a man in drag), cracking a dirty joke: "Each and everyone a virgin-- You don't believe me? Well, do not take my word for it -- Go ahead, ask Helga!"; he then warned that every night they have to fight to keep the Girls from taking their clothes off, before gleefully confiding: "Who knows? Tonight we may lose the battle!" | 
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Mean Streets (1973) Johnny Boy
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The film opened with the memorable, sub-titled introduction of the film's main characters, including the one filmed in telephoto of Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) blowing up a mailbox with a homemade bomb - and losing his porkpie hat as he shuffled away from the blast | 
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The Shark
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Delaying a glimpse of the dangerous shark was employed in this film - a full view of the shark was not provided until over an hour into the film (although there were a few brief glimpses earlier). Out on the open ocean, Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) was given distasteful tasks, such as "chumming" (throwing spoiled, bloody meat - shark bait - over the side of the boat) to attract the shark. As the chief scooped out bucketfuls of bloody slop, humorously griping to his mates: "Come down and chum some of this s---," a monstrous shark rose out of the water and nearly took his hand off. This was the film's first full glimpse of the shark, an hour and twenty minutes into the film - a truly spine-tingling moment. Brody could not believe the size of the creature, and with a classic, practical understatement, told Quint (Robert Shaw) his assessment: "You're gonna need a bigger boat" | 
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The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) Dr. Frank N. Furter
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An engaged young couple Brad (Barry Bostwick) and Janet (Susan Sarandon) mistakenly ended up in a large castle after getting a flat tire in the middle of a rainy night while returning from a friend's wedding. There, after a group of conventioneers from the planet Transsexual finished a rendition of the Time Warp, a black-cloaked figure descended in an elevator behind them, tapping one sequin-encrusted high-heeled boot. When the elevator opened, the figure turned, causing Janet to scream and faint. "How ya do-a", sang a mad transexual transvestite named Dr. Frank N. Furter (Tim Curry) in greeting, who then strutted boldly forward. He dropped his black cloak to reveal his sexy, skimpy, cross-dressed outfit: a pearl necklace, a leather draw-string vest, black garters, leather bikini briefs, and high-heeled boots. He then sang seductively: "I'm a sweet transvestite... from Transssssexual Transylvania-hah-hah!" He invited the young couple to his lab for the unveiling of his creation - the perfect humanoid man named Rocky Horror |
 
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Carrie (1976) Chris Hargensen
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The opening credits featured a salacious high school girls' locker room scene after physical education class, in which one of the main characters, popular 'bad' girl Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen) was introduced as she flicked her towel at friends and as she led the taunting of ridiculing of humiliated menstruating teen Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) | 
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Saturday Night Fever (1977) Tony Monero
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Under the opening credits appeared the iconic image of Brooklyn disco king Tony Monero (John Travolta) - the young stud was dressed for the evening with a leather jacket, wide collared bright red shirt and gold chain around his neck (with a close-up of his shiny brownish-red shoes); he strutted cockily and confidently down the sidewalk, seen in closeup, to the Bee Gee's Staying Alive ("Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk, I'm a woman's man, no time to talk...") - while swinging a paint can in his right hand | 
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Darth Vader
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A fierce laser-gun battle was fought in the hallway of the crippled Rebel ship with fleeing Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), quickly lost by the Rebel defenders as more and more white, ceramic-like, space-armored stormtroopers of the Emperor's advance guard charged into the smoking corridor. When control was secured, the leader of the cruel and villainous forces strode in - black-garbed with a cape swirling around him, and helmeted. He was the towering, faceless Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader (David Prowse, with a deep, breathy voice supplied by James Earl Jones) - a vision of evil, signaled by the soundtrack | 
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The Chestburster
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Nostromo crew member Kane (John Hurt) sat eating at the mess table with his crew mates, contemplating his return home, when he suddenly experienced a seizure - coughing and choking on green, spaghetti-like strands of food. As he rose and struggled, Kane was turned around and laid on the table. Held down by the crew, they forced a spoon into his mouth to prevent him from choking on his tongue. And then, in a terrifying moment, blood graphically exploded out of the front of his white T-shirt. As he moaned, jerked violently, quivered, and ultimately died, the Alien burst from the bloody spot on his chest - the hissing, razor sharp-toothed monster/lizard was literally "born" from the guts of the first infected crewman |
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Jake LaMotta
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During the opening credits sequence, boxer Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro), with his face hidden in the monk-like hood of his leopard-skin robe, warmed up alone in the ring by shadow-boxing into the smoky air. He gracefully danced or jogged up and down - in slow-motion - in the dreamy sequence to the melancholy, haunting soundtrack of the "Intermezzo" from Cavalleria Rusticana (an opera by Pietro Mascagni) |
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Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) Indiana Jones
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The Paramount logo dissolved into an actual mountain peak. It was 1936 in a South American rainforest jungle, with high jutting canyon walls shrouded by thick mists. An expedition was being led by an American, Dr. Indiana "Indy" Jones (Harrison Ford), first seen faceless and only in silhouette while guiding the group. Teasingly viewed from the back, he sported his signature short, brown leather flight jacket, a brimmed felt fedora, and a bullwhip firmly held in his hand. His face was memorably revealed after Spanish Peruvian Barranca (Vic Tablian) reached for his gun and cocked it when a treasure map was found. Jones responded reflexively with lightning speed by accurately and gracefully uncoiling his bullwhip and wrapping it around Barranca's hand. His reaction sent the gun into the river where it discharged harmlessly. Barranca fled into the forest as Jones was fully revealed |
 
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Time Bandits (1981) The Giant
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This had to be one of the strangest,
most unexpected entrances in film history. Young Kevin (Craig Warnock)
and his dwarf friends had just deposed of an ogre (Peter Vaughan) and
his wife (Katherine Helmond) by knocking them overboard into the sea.
Not long after, the ship shuddered, and suddenly, it began to lift out
of the water, revealing that it was a hat (!) worn by a giant (Ian Muir)!
The giant came ashore, raising the ship/hat and its occupants hundreds
of feet into the air, and in a typically Monty Python-esque gruesome joke,
the giant stepped on an unaware, bickering couple (resembling anthropomorphic
elephants) in a shack along the beach. Kevin and his friends finally were
able to have the giant put them down after injecting a sleeping potion
into his head |
 
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Rachael
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Blade runner cop Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) first met the breathtakingly beautiful, cool assistant/secretary of Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel) named Rachael (Sean Young) in his spacious office, bathed in a yellowish-hue, a soft, golden, sunset-time glow and dominated by a gigantic bay window overlooking the city. She appeared like a heroine from a 40s film noir - a Mildred Pierce (1945), Joan Crawford-like heroine with dark eyebrows, soulful eyes, red lips, smooth clear skin, and hair tied rigidly back. After first asking him what he thought of the corporation's artificial owl, she probingly asked Deckard: "Have you ever retired a human by mistake?" Deckard emphatically replied: "No", to which she responded: "But in your position, that is a risk?" Tyrell later told Deckard when she left, after Deckard has tested her (positively) for being a replicant, that she had been implanted with memories: "She's beginning to suspect, I think... Rachael is an experiment, nothing more. We began to recognize in them a strange obsession. After all, they are emotionally inexperienced with only a few years in which to store up the experiences which you and I take for granted. If we give them the past, we create a cushion or pillow for their emotions and consequently we can control them better" |
 
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Tootsie (1982) Dorothy Michaels
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Struggling, desperate, argumentative, unemployed, and difficult-to-work-with actor Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) decided to challenge his weary and harried agent/friend George Field's (Sydney Pollack) repeated insistence and painful reminders to Michael that "I can't put you up for anything...because no one will hire you!"; after Michael muttered: "Oh, yeah," the scene in George's office cut to a crowded New York City street, as Michael's cross-dressed female persona "Dorothy Michaels" slowly emerged from the pedestrian crowd in a telephoto shot, wearing an auburn wig, oversized glasses and a frumpy high-necklined dress - who would (successfully) audition for a role as a feisty hospital administrator on the daytime soap-opera Southwest General |
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Scarface (1983) Elvira
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Most memorable was the entrance scene of Cuban refugee turned coke addict Tony "Scarface" Montana's (Al Pacino) sexy but callous cokehead future wife Elvira Hancock (Michelle Pfeiffer) - she wore a tight backless dress as she descended in an elevator, and slinked over to the group of gangsters |
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Amadeus (1984) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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The first adult appearance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce) came in flashback as a shock to a younger Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), after he had snuck into the dining room to sample the delectable food. Salieri was interrupted by a boisterous couple, causing him to hide and watch them voyeuristically. The amorous, giggling childish man, after dragging Constanze (Elizabeth Berridge) under the table, playfully told her to eat his shit after proposing marriage to her. Suddenly, Mozart's Serenade for Thirteen Wind Instruments was heard, and to Salieri's amazement, the young man rose and frantically said: "My music! They've started! They've started without me!" before dashing back to orchestrate the chamber music; the older Salieri reacted with narration: "So that was he! That giggling, dirty-minded creature I'd just seen crawling on the floor. Mozart. The phenomenon whose legend had haunted my youth. Impossible!" |
 
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Escape From New York (1981) Snake Plissken
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The opening of the film, set in 1997, describing the crime rate rising 400% in the US in 1988, and telling how Manhattan Island had become a maximum-security prison -- and the rules: "Once you go in, you don't come out"; and the entrance of bearded, one eye-patched, dangerous ex-commando convicted of numerous murders named "Snake" Plissken (Kurt Russell) as he was led down a narrow corridor by armed guards, to be granted a deadly 24-hour mission to rescue the President inside New York | 
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Paris, Texas (1984, US/W.Germ.) Travis Clay Henderson
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The music of Ry Cooder accompanying the quest by dazed wanderer Travis Clay Henderson (Harry Dean Stanton) for his estranged wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski) - beginning with his stumbling through and out of the arid Texas desert in the film's opening credits |  
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The Terminator model T-101
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An indestructible cyborg Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) was sent back from the future (post-apocalyptic 2029 Los Angeles) to 1984 to eliminate the future unborn son of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). The Terminator materialized, naked (crouched and head down) but powerfully muscular, in the bluish night-light of the city |
 
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Weird Science (1985) Lisa
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Unpopular teenaged nerds Gary Wallace (Anthony Michael Hall) and Wyatt Donnelly (Ilan Mitchell-Smith), out of pure hormonal/sexual frustration, decide to use Wyatt's computer to create a "perfect" woman after watching a colorized print of The Bride of Frankenstein (1935); at one point, Wyatt initially gives their creation mammoth breasts, to which Gary remarks: "Anything bigger than a handful, you're risking a sprained tongue"; connected by a phone modem, they start feeding the computer cut-out magazine images of supermodels, Albert Einstein, and art/music skills while wearing brassieres on their heads ("It's ceremonial," explains Gary) while they connect electrodes to a plastic Barbie-doll figure; the computer starts to act on its own while connecting into a government mainframe as it assembles the data - and an electrical storm activates the doll; suddenly after lots of explosions and wind, everything stops and the door to Wyatt's room begins to bulge inward, before finally exploding; out of the red-lit, foggy hallway enters a sexy, leggy red-headed woman (supermodel Kelly LeBrock), wearing nothing but micro-panties and a small white muscle-shirt top; she stands in the doorway, as Dr. Frankenstein shouts from their television: "She's alive! Alive!" Their creation coos with a mischievious twinkle in her eyes: "So... what would you little maniacs like to do first?"; in the subsequent scene, the two wide-eyed boys ogle her as they share a shower with her, as the camera pans up and down her naked body and she comments: "By the way, you did an excellent job, thank you" |     
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Created in 1996-2008 © by Tim Dirks. All rights reserved.
One of the
most striking elements in any film is the sudden or memorable appearance
of one of the main characters or stars. Often, film entrances are not
very extraordinary, but now and again, there are some that are very
spectacular and skillfully executed. Although it would be impossible
to compile a list of every single memorable movie entrance ever screened,
this collection moves toward that goal. 