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Greatest Movie Twists, Part 12 |
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Greatest Movie Twists, Part 12 |
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Note: The films that are marked
with a yellow star |
| Greatest
Movie Twists, Spoilers and Surprise Endings |
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| Film Title | Brief Scene Description | Example |
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The major plot twist was that the titular Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) was never the murdered woman in her Upper East Side apartment - she had been out in the country (the murder victim was a young model named Diane Redfern in her negligee); although there were many suspects, snippy gossip columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb) was the actual murderer who in a jealous rage mistakenly shot the wrong woman (in the face) with a blast from a shotgun, thinking Diane was Laura; investigating, mildly obsessed New York City detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), who had fallen in love with Laura's portrait in her apartment, expressed stunned shock when stirred from sleep as the "dead" Laura appeared in her own apartment - at first, he thought she was a ghost or figment of his imagination; in the film's conclusion, Lydecker attempted to kill Laura a second time with a shotgun (hidden in the base of a grandfather clock) in a murder/suicide, rather than leave her to the "vulgar pawing of a second-rate detective" -- but she was saved in the nick of time by McPherson as Lydecker was mortally wounded in an exchange of gunfire with the police |   |
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In the shocking opening of William Wyler's classic melodramatic film noir of murder and deceit, plantation owner's wife Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis) shot neighbor Geoffrey Hammond (David Newell) six times as he staggered out of a tropical bungalow on the grounds of a Malayan rubber plantation; when she described the killing, she implied that the murder was justifiable self-defense against a man intent on violating her; when an incriminating letter surfaced and revealed her real motives (she was desperately in love with Hammond), Leslie was blackmailed for $10,000 by Hammond's Eurasian widow (Gale Sondergaard) and a demand was made for a personal apology; the ultimate revenge came in the film's conclusion, when she admitted to her long-suffering husband Robert (Herbert Marshall): "With all my heart, I still love the man I killed!" - and she was stabbed to death soon afterwards by the flash of a dagger in the hand of vengeful, retribution-seeking Mrs. Hammond - on a moonlit night in her dark tropical garden |   |
| The Life of David Gale (2003)
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In this provocative and intense suspense-drama about death row, the brutal rape/murder of anti-capital punishment Death Watch activist Constance Harraway (Laura Linney) was videotaped and ultimately revealed to be a set-up (the leukemia-suffering victim engaged in consensual sex with her friend David Gale, sobbing convulsively during the actual act, and then made her suicide look like murder - her hands were tied and she was suffocated with a plastic bag over her head) in order to have the convicted and imprisoned 'framed' title character, fellow activist and University of Austin philosophy professor David Gale (Kevin Spacey), executed on Death Row as a martyr - in order to prove his argument and meet the challenge presented by the governor of Texas; in fact, Gale was in on the murder scheme (and he deliberately chose an incompetent defense attorney) - told in his flashbacked story in the few days before his execution to journalist Bitsy Bloom (Kate Winslet) |  
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| Logan's Run (1976)
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Michael Anderson's sci-fi action-adventure presented a dystopic view of society in the year 2274, in which inhabitants lived a life of hedonism and pleasure in a domed city (run by a female-voiced super computer) until the crystal embedded in their left hand's palm blinked - a signal to attend a renewal Carousel ceremony (which was actually a death ceremony); when Logan 5 (Michael York), a cop-like Sandman entrusted with capturing Runners who attempted to escape, learned that the society practiced after-30 euthanasia policies, he and Jessica 6 (Jenny Agutter) fled the city as fugitives to 'Sanctuary' (the overgrown ruins of the National Mall in Washington D.C. inhabited by an elderly white-bearded man (Peter Ustinov) surrounded by cats) after learning the truth of their society and that there wasn't a real 'Sanctuary'; by film's end, they returned to their domed city where they freed the entire population into the outer world and destroyed the city |     |
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Stanley Kubrick's once-controversial film version of Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel began and ended with a connected prologue/epilogue in which literature professor and Humbert Humbert (James Mason), young Lolita's (Sue Lyon) stepfather, shot and murdered TV writer/pedophile Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers) after playing a mad game of ping-pong with him; Humbert was insanely motivated to commit murder for Quilty's duplicity and his part in seducing, running off and abandoning Lolita - the ending shot was a second 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 (off-screen) through the painting |
 
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| Lone Star (1996)
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The film ended with the twist revelation that the loving couple of Texas' Rio County Sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) and widowed, dedicated high school history teacher Pilar Cruz (Elizabeth Pena) were actually half-brother and sister; when earlier they were teenaged high-school sweethearts (Tay Strathairn as young Sam and Vanessa Martinez as young Pilar) - their relationship was forbidden not because of racial emnity, but because Sam's father Buddy Deeds (Matthew McConaughey) - the previous Sheriff - and Pilar's mother Mercedes (Miriam Colon) had a secret love affair; the film ended with Pilar and Sam sitting on the hood of a car at a deserted drive-in where they used to go as teenagers, when she delivered a shocking last line about digging up the past; her words indicated that they would continue their semi-incestuous loving relationship: "All that other stuff, all that history? To hell with it, right? Forget the Alamo." [Note: the film that played at the drive-in when they were teenagers hinted at Pilar's mixed parentage of Hispanic/Mexican and Anglo: Black Mama, White Mama (1972)] |    |
Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)
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Richard Brooks' sexually frank and cautionary adaptation of Judith Rossner's 1975 fictional best-seller descended into the carnal depths of New York's singles bars during the waning years of the sexual revolution; it ended with an inevitable (although still shocking and chilling) fate for promiscuous, self-destructive Catholic-raised school teacher of deaf-mute children Theresa Dunn (Diane Keaton); as a predatory, bar-hopping female cruiser who was searching for the perfect one-night-stand, she ended up dead - a victim of casual sex and 'free love' in the late 70s; the film ended with her graphic and brutal murder by impotent, enraged one night-stand lover (Tom Berenger) as a strobe light blinked on/off while he smothered and stabbed her | 
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| Lost Highway (1997)
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A mysterious voice at the opening of this intriguing, non-linear David Lynch film told LA tenor sax jazz musician Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) cryptically over his home's intercom the meaningless statement: "Dick Laurent is dead"; during part of the film, Fred's life was intertwined with (or reborn as) another character, auto-mechanic Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty) - a convicted murder in a death-row cell; by the film's conclusion, Fred had killed porn mogul Dick Laurent (Robert Loggia), then told himself at his callbox that Dick Laurent was, in fact, dead; enigmatically, it can be interpreted that the entire film was a subconscious, psychotic dream or imagined memory (or even a kind of purgatory or hell) for Fred as he sat on death-row - for actually killing his possibly unfaithful wife Renee Madison (Patricia Arquette) who he jealously thought was cheating on him; the dark side of his personality that killed his wife was represented by the creepy, pasty-faced Mystery Man (Robert Blake) |   |
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There were a few twists in this moody, early film noir: (1) the revelation that femme fatale Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) (with lots of alias names) had shot and killed private investigator Sam Spade's (Humphrey Bogart) partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) on a dark street, (2) Brigid was involved with a trio of ruthless, shady treasure hunters led by Fat Man Casper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) who had spent many years pursuing the trail of the legendary "black bird" statue (or "dingus"), the fabled and bejewelled Maltese Falcon, and (3) in the finale, the Maltese Falcon turned out to be a fake; the climax was highlighted by Brigid's arrest for the murder, and Spade's famous last-line response after being asked by Sergeant Tom Polhaus (Ward Bond) about the statue: "It's heavy. What is it?" "The, uh, stuff dreams are made of" |     |
(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 
