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Greatest Movie Twists, Part 10 |
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Greatest Movie Twists, Part 10 |
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Note: The films that are marked
with a yellow star |
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Greatest Movie Twists, Spoilers and
Surprise Endings |
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| Film Title | Brief Scene Description | Example |
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The visceral, and false climax of this classic horror film included the startling, scary moment when a seemingly-dead Michael Myers (Nick Castle) sat up in the background behind a sobbing teenaged Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis); afterwards, the apparently super-human body of Michael Myers vanished into the dark night even after being stabbed three times by Laurie (with domestic tools: knitting needle, coat-hanger, and kitchen knife), lethally shot six times, and after suffering from a second-story fall; psychiatrist Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) seemed unsurprised as if he expected or was resigned to the fact that the 'evil' Myers would vanish - thus opening the door to future sequels [Note: Many imitative horror and slasher films would turn this type of ending into a cliche, deemed famously by film critic Roger Ebert as "the undead dead" movie plot device] |
 
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Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
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In the film's conclusion set in a dim hallway, reformed drug addict/punk-rocker Holly (Dianne Weist) made a surprise announcement to her infertile (low sperm count) husband/comedy writer Mickey Sachs (Woody Allen): "Mickey, I'm pregnant" |
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Hard Candy (1980)
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In this thought-provoking, exploitative female revenge thriller, seemingly-innocent 14 year old femme fatale Hayley Stark (Ellen Page) - who had met 32 year old photographer Jeff Kohlver (Patrick Wilson) in an Internet chat room, went to the potential jail-bait predator's Hollywood Hills home with premeditated determination to seek revenge; she drugged his drink, tied him up, and then threatened to castrate him (as "preventative maintenance") with a scalpel and anesthetic ice; as he both berated her and pleaded with his raging and sadistic captor; she forced her repentant victim to confess to a murder that he may/may not have committed of a young model named Donna Mauer that he once photographed; the film's key plot twist was that she faked the castration although it was gruesomely performed (off-screen) -- Jeff committed suicide by jumping off a roof with a noose around his neck, resulting in his hanging, and it was revealed that Hayley had already kidnapped and tortured another pedophile named Aaron, Jeff's partner-in-crime during the murder of Donna (Hayley admitted: "Aaron told me you killed her, before he killed himself") |
 
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Heaven's Gate (1980)
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After a murderous two-day bloody showdown between the armed immigrant farmers and the mercenaries hired by an association of cattlemen to protect their stock, it appeared the violence was over; however, there were still two more deaths -- the surprising shock ambush murders of both John L. Bridges (Jeff Bridges) and bordello madam Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert) in a striking white dress - Sheriff Jim Averill's (Kris Kristofferson) lost love died in his arms; both were shot by killers led by black-garbed and evil Frank Canton (Sam Waterston); in the film's added, almost wordless, despairing coda or epilogue scene, Averill - now appearing miserable and unemotional about ten years later, was quietly lost and adrift in his recollections - he was a rich yacht captain off Newport, Rhode Island in 1903 with his wife (his waltz partner in the film's opening scene, and the woman in the framed picture he kept with him) |  
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The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)
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In this classic film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's novel of the same name with the world famous detective Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone), set in 1902, the culprit was local naturalist John Stapleton (Morton Lowry), who was a distant relative (long lost cousin) of the Baskervilles - he would have gained control of Baskerville Hall and its fortune at Dartmoor if the last apparent inheritor Sir Henry Baskerville (Richard Greene) - the successor to the family title - was to die; he attempted to kill Sir Henry by unleashing a starved, fearsome mastiff dog on him in the desolate moors (the Great Grimpen Mire) - using the legend of the giant phantasmagoric and demonic hound as a cover for the murder; but he was unmasked as the criminal by Holmes in a dramatic gathering of all the principals in the film, and presumably drowned in the moors in his flight to escape |
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House of Games (1987)
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David Mamet's twisting, elaborate plotline was about successful best-selling author and psychiatrist Dr. Margaret Ford (Lindsay Crouse) who became embroiled in the confidence game racket with the assistance of self-admitted con-man 'guide' Mike (Joe Mantegna) in a bar/pool hall called House of Games -- but it was soon revealed that she was the ultimate target in a complex, multi-layered con game involving $80,000; in the unnerving, unexpected twist ending of this hoax film, the used and betrayed Margaret resorted to viciously murdering Mike in cold-blood with multiple gunshots in an airport baggage terminal (after being shot, he requested: "Thank you sir, may I have another?"); in the final scene, she was in a restaurant with a friend -- she autographed a book and stole a gold cigarette lighter; her grimly smug smile of self-satisfaction afterwards as she lit her cigarette with it revealed that she had fallen into the addictive lure of being a con artist herself |
   
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House of Wax (1953)
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In this classic horror film that was originally shown in 3-D (it was the first 3D film from a major studio (Warner Brothers)), Vincent Price starred in the lead role as deranged wax figure sculptor-curator Professor Henry Jarrod, who was presumed dead after his early 20th century NY wax museum was burned down; however, he survived and opened a new museum that showcased famous crimes and murders through wax figures; the plot twist was that the vengeful Jarrod (wearing a mask to hide his melted face) - with scarred and useless hands - had been murdering people and then coating them with molten wax to produce very life-like statues from their corpses for his waxworks exhibits; in the surprise ending, and in one of the film's most startling scenes, Jarrod was unmasked by heroine Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk), and he wound up in the burning cauldron of tallow - his apt and richly-deserved fate |
  
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Identity (2003)
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Ten strangers were trapped in a secluded motel in Nevada during a torrential rainstorm; in the plot's well-constructed twist, each of the strangers that was being murdered, one-by-one (each victim had a room key placed on or near their body), was not a real person, but specific personalities of the 'host' Malcolm Rivers (Pruitt Taylor Vince) -- a convicted death-row inmate and serial killer with Multiple Personality Disorder who was 'cleansing' himself of the other personalities; each of his personality creations had the same birthdate, and all of the surnames were names of towns; as he was being taken by car with a doctor to see a judge for a final clemency hearing, Malcolm had another startling vision of the last remaining personalities: cynical ex-Las Vegas prostitute Paris (Amanda Peet) was about to be killed by seemingly innocent, mute young Timmy York (Bret Loehr) -- it was revealed that Timmy was the one murderous personality (he had a door key with the number 'one' on it), who proceeded to kill Paris with a garden plowing fork (off-screen); he then took control of Malcolm, strangled psychiatrist Dr. Malick (Alfred Molina) in the car and also killed the driver |
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In the Heat of the Night (1967)
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In this tense whodunit detective story, and Best Picture-winning thriller that was set in the little town of Sparta, Mississippi during a hot summer, a wealthy industrialist named Leslie Colbert was found beaten to death in an alley; a black police officer from Philadelphia Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), a homicide expert, helped to solve the case amidst southern racist tensions; suspects included wealthy citizen Eric Endicott (Larry Gates) and the redneck Sheriff Bill Gillespie's (Rod Steiger) bigoted deputy Sam Wood (Warren Oates), who was also accused of impregnating slutty 16 year-old Delores Purdy (Quentin Dean) in town; by the film's conclusion, it was revealed that the real murderer and 'true father' of the girl was a diner counter worker named Ralph Henshaw (Anthony James) who confessed in the Sheriff's office that he had murdered Colbert to pay for Delores' abortion |
 
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In the Mouth of Madness (1995)
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Director John Carpenter paid convoluted, warped homage to Stephen King and H. P. Lovecraft in this film that blurred the boundaries of fantasy and reality, fact and fiction, sanity and insanity, and reality and cine-reality; the film's plot, told in flashback, was about insurance fraud investigator John Trent (Sam Neill) - now a violent and delusional asylum inmate in a padded cell ("I am not insane") - who told how he went searching for horror novelist/writer Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow) after his sudden disappearance; he found him in the small town of Hobbs End in New Hampshire that resembled a place in Cane's latest novel In the Mouth of Madness for Arcane Publishing; it appeared to be a surrealistic gateway to another world of evil and madness, and Trent began to believe he was just a character in the book (called "the new Bible"); he learned that god-like Cane's latest book was so powerful that it could change people ("I think, therefore you are!") - even turning anyone who read it into a mutant like creature - and those who didn't like to read (or didn't read the book) could be converted by watching a movie adaptation of the book; when the film ended with a slaughter at the asylum by monstrous creatures, he wandered out into the world that was alarmingly empty after a bloody slaughter; the film ended by being folded back upon itself - he entered an abandoned movie theatre that was showing the latest movie adaptation of Sutter Cane's book - and slowly changed into a crazed, mutant creature that laughed maniacally as he sat down and watched himself on the silver screen; the film's open-ended conclusion let the viewer decide whether Trent was insane or whether what he experienced was actually reality |
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(alphabetical by film title)
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 | Part 16 | Part
17 | Part 18 | Part
19 | Part 20 | Part
21 | Part 22 | Part
23 | Part 24 | Part
25
Created in 1996-2008 © by Tim Dirks. All rights reserved.
Greatest
Movie Twists, Spoilers, and Surprise Endings: Avid filmgoers often
speak about seeking rare movie surprises in the movie-going experience,
such as discovering films that have cunning plot twists, a shocking
surprise ending, a surprise revelation about a particular character,
or some other unknown or unsuspected narrative element. Compiled here
in this comprehensive collection is a detailed set of films with the
greatest movie twists, spoilers, and surprise endings.
are the films that "The Greatest Films" site has selected as the 
