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Greatest Movie Twists, Part 19 |
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Greatest Movie Twists, Part 19 |
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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 Road Warrior/Mad Max 2 (1981, Aus.)
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In the lawless wasteland of the postapocalyptic terrain in this action-thriller, former cop road warrior Mad Max (Mel Gibson) assisted a small band of decent-living survivors to defend a remote oil refinery under siege from a nomadic terrorizing, marauding horde led by warlord Humungus (Kjell Nilsson) and his maniacal mohawk-wearing chief enforcer Wez (Vernon Wells); in the film's exhilarating chase finale, it was revealed that the tanker truck allegedly filled with refined petroleum fuel ("precious juice") that was driven by Max in a breakout drive toward the coast had been a decoy as a diversionary tactic; unbeknownst to him, his fuel tanker was filled with sand -- the gasoline was in large drums stored in a school bus back at the fuel compound; in the epilogue, the helicopter pilot Gyro Captain (Bruce Spence) went North with the settlers as their new leader, and the Feral Kid (Emil Minty) (the Narrator) eventually became the chief of the Great Northern Tribe; and regarding the Road Warrior: "He lives now, only in my memories" |
   
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Robot Monster (1953)
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The twist ending of this famous schlocky 3D science fiction film was that the entire pre-emptive conquest of the Earth and destruction of humanity (except for one scientist's family who were given an antidote) by Ro-Man (George Barrows) - looking like a gorilla wearing a diving helmet - was all bratty young Johnny's (Gregory Moffett) dream after he fell down and hit his head on a rock ("Boy was that a dream or was it?") -- but after Johnny was revived and brought home, the "dream" started again (reminiscent of the plotline of the similar Invaders From Mars (1953)); an electrical flash revealed the ghostly apparition of Ro-Man, who lumbered menacingly towards the camera three times! |
 
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In the exciting 15-round world heavyweight boxing fight finale, champ Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) won by a split decision, although his underdog opponent "Italian Stallion" or Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), with a bloody face and swollen eyes, had gone the distance; the importance of the actual outcome of the fight was deliberately muted and in the background, emphasizing the profundity of the moral victory Rocky achieved by "going the distance" against overwhelming odds; he was lovingly embraced by Adrian (Talia Shire) in the ring following the decision as they proclaimed their love for each other; the self-respecting Rocky proved that he was more than a born loser and "another bum" | 
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In this film's shocking twist ending, Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) snuck into the neighboring Castevet's apartment through the closet passageway - with a kitchen knife upraised in her hand; there she found a coven of Satanists including her husband Guy (John Cassavetes), surrounding a black-draped baby cradle to pay their respects; she approached the black bassinet expecting to see her own human child; but when she discovered her Anti-Christ child with inhuman eyes, she screamed: "What have you done to him? You maniacs!" (followed by lead Satanist Roman Castevet's (Sidney Blackmer) response: "He has his father's eyes!"); she realized that she had been impregnated by the Devil and the baby was the offspring of Satan and Rose-Mary (a variant on the name Mary in the Biblical story); although Rosemary rejected the devil-worshipping coven, she accepted the reality of the situation and showed an instinctive mothering role and maternally affectionate instinct towards her Satan-spawned baby Adrian in the final scene - she gently rocked the child to sleep |
 
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Run Lola, Run (1998, Ger.)
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This exhilarating film followed three breathtaking and frenetic attempts (all "what-if" scenarios of reliving the past), largely shot in real time, of tattooed, short red-haired Lola (Franke Potente) acquiring 100,000 DeutschMarks needed to save the life of her dependent, drug-dealing boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreau); he was panicking at a phone booth in Berlin, where he was to meet his boss Ronnie (Heino Ferch) at noon (in about 20 minutes) with the cash, but he had inadvertently left the bag of cash on the subway car, where it was picked up by a bum; her task was to acquire the replacement cash and get it to him before he robbed a grocery store - and suffered fatal consequences; the film's twist was that she was off by a matter of seconds each time, drastically altering the consequences (in the first attempt, Lola was shot in the chest by police and died! in the second attempt, Manni was run over by a red ambulance); in the third attempt, Lola won 100,000 marks at a casino playing roulette and Manni recovered the lost money from a homeless man -- in the happy ending, Manni tried to reassure Lola: "Did you run here? Don't worry. Everything's okay. Come on"; the question the viewer must ultimately ask: "Which scenario is the real one?" |
   
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Scream (1996)
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In Wes Craven's satirical horror/slasher film, the villain "Ghostface" (due to wearing an elongated Halloween death mask-costume) who was systematically murdering individuals in a small California town was actually two individuals -- heroine Sidney Prescott's (Neve Campbell) psychotic boyfriend Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) and his flunky best friend Stuart Macher (Matthew Lillard); after Sidney learned that they had raped/killed her mother a year earlier, she grabbed a vase from a TV cabinet and smashed it on Stu's head - she then toppled a heavy TV set onto him - it both crushed him and electrocuted him; and when a bloody and unconscious Billy suddenly lunged at her, she conclusively shot him in the head and killed him |
  
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The Screaming Skull (1958)
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In this B-movie horror hybrid of Gaslight (1944) and Rebecca (1940), newlywed husband Eric Whitlock (John Hudson) and his rich, unstable new wife Jenni (Peggy Webber) moved into the isolated Southern country mansion that Eric had inherited from his first wife Marion (she reportedly was mysteriously killed when she accidentally fell down a flight of stairs and cracked her skull open on a stone wall, and then drowned in a small pond behind the house); he tried to scare Jenni and drive her insane and suicidal (she had already been declared temporarily insane earlier after watching her parents die in a gruesome boating accident) in order to inherit her money by planting human skulls around the house and causing screaming noises - and then blaming the strange supernatural events as tricks played by the estate's mentally retarded gardener Mickey (director Alex Nicol); in the shock ending, a real screaming skull/apparition attacked and murdered Eric by chewing on his throat when he tried to strangle the victimized Jenni; questions inevitably had to be asked: Did Eric kill his former wife as well? Was the screaming skull his former wife's ghostly revenge beyond the grave, and was it just Jenni's own deranged delusions? [Note: in the William Castle-like prologue and on poster advertisements, the producers promised to pay for the burial of anyone who literally died from fright from watching the film!] |
  
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Racially-prejudiced Ethan Edwards' (John Wayne) five-year long vengeful and hateful search for his Indianized-niece Debbie (Natalie Wood) finally ended when he grabbed her and lifted her into the air, as she defenselessly expected him to kill her; but instead, he lowered her and swept her into his cradling, outstretched arms with the words: "Let's go home, Debbie"; after returning to the Jorgensen's pioneer home, the tragic outsider stood for a few moments at the outside of the door as the camera pulled back into the darkened inside of the home, the doorway framing the scene; standing with his feet astride in a wide stance, he grasped his right elbow with his left hand, and then decided to remain behind; he turned away, and walked off into the swirling dust, as the door to the family home swung shut on him, making the screen black |
 
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Secret Window (2004)
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In this psycho-thriller adapted from the Stephen King novella "Secret Garden, Secret Window" by director and screenwriter David Koepp, murder and horror story mystery writer Mort Rainey (Johnny Depp) received a visit at his remote, upstate NY lakeside cabin from a mysterious, psychotic stranger (wearing a black, round parson's hat), a Mississippi farmer named John Shooter (John Turturro), who accused Mort of 'stealing' his "Secret Window" story (about an angry man killing his estranged wife!); at the same time, Rainey was facing a pending divorce from estranged, unfaithful and distraught wife Amy (Maria Bello) who was bedding lover Ted (Timothy Hutton); Mort was threatened with violence ("I'll burn your life and everyone in it like a cornfield in a high wind"} if he didn't provide proof of authorship (with a 1995 Ellery Queen's Mystery magazine with his name on the story) within three days; the deranged and schizophrenic Rainey actually made up the character or persona of John Shooter - an appropriate name - to commit several murders: of his dog Chico, NY detective Ken Karsch (Charles S. Dutton), Tom Greenleaf (John Dunn Hill) and his wife Amy and lover Ted (with a shovel); he changed the 'ruined' ending of his story ("This one's very good, this one's perfect") to mirror real-life: he buried Amy and Ted's bodies in the garden of corn outside his cabin |
   
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Session 9 (2001)
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An asbestos cleaning crew worked at the condemned and abandoned mental institution (the real Danvers Lunatic Asylum, with a dark past, tortured patients, and a psychologically-unsettling feeling of dread within every corridor and room) in this paranoic thriller from writer/director Brad Anderson - similar to The Shining (1980) and Don't Look Now (1973); in the film's scariest and most disquieting moments, ex-law student and worker Mike (Stephen Gevedon) listened to psychotherapy session audio-tapes (a case history labeled Session 1 to Session 9, and more chilling as they progressed) that recorded interviews with a multiple-personality female patient named Mary Hobbes; her repressed and hidden memories from her troubled past revealed that the cause of her insanity was domestic abuse from her father; one of her personalities was an innocent "Princess" while another was a protector named "Billy"; the most evil of all her personalities was revealed to be "Simon"; it was learned that something evil happened with a knife ("he cut her up real bad") and a China doll one Christmas night in Lowell, Massachusetts - a horrific set of murders; by film's end with a plot twist, the hallucinating, possessed and stressed-out foreman/owner Gordon Fleming (Peter Mullan) was shown to have also murdered all of his crew workers and family ("there was a lot of blood, Doc, so much blood") -- in the film's voice-over ending, a recording of Session 9, "Simon" (a possessed, grief-stricken, deeply-conflicted Gordon) admitted to the psychotherapist that Mary had in parallel fashion murdered her family and then described where he lived: "I live in the weak and the wounded, Doc" |     
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Se7en (1995)
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In the unforgettable, nail-biting, concluding climax, maniacal but methodical serial killer John Doe (Kevin Spacey) offered to confess; he led arrogant, hotshot replacement rookie Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt) and retiring veteran Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) to another sick and gruesome crime scene; all of the killer's seven murders in the film were inspired by the legendary Seven Deadly Sins (gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy, and wrath); this sixth/seventh crime included a souvenir - "her pretty head" (a severed head, never shown) delivered in a bloody box, demonstrating the last two of the Seven Deadly Sins; Doe confessed to the sin of Envy after killing Mills' wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) and having her head delivered to their location in the middle of the desert - with the menacing line about his jealous envy: "I've always admired you, Detective Mills"; to demonstrate Wrath, anguished and angered Lt. Mills shot Doe repeatedly in revenge for his pregnant wife's beheading |
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Shallow Grave (1994)
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After three Edinburgh apartment mates discovered the naked body of new roommate Hugo (Keith Allen) - and a suitcase full of money, they disposed of the hack-sawed corpse in a shallow grave in the woods; due to greed and jealousy of each other, the film ended with a vicious fight between the roommates, during which Alex Law (Ewan McGregor) was left with a knife through his shoulder stuck into the floorboards beneath him and Juliet Miller (Kerry Fox) had fatally stabbed David Stephens (Christopher Eccleston) in the neck; after Juliet pounded the knife further into the floor to keep Alex pinned there, she took off with the suitcase of money to the airport, where she opened it in her car to find only one bill left above a stack of bound papers reading: "TRIPLE CORPSE HORROR"; in a clever camera shot, the money was revealed below the knifepoint sticking through the floor, where Alex had hidden it - the debatable question remained: Was Alex dead or not? |  
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The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
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During the life sentence of Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) for a murder he didn't commit, he became buddies with prison fixer Red (Morgan Freeman), who feared that a despairing Andy would commit suicide one night; however, in the morning Andy had disappeared from his cell after having spent a painstaking nineteen years carving a hole in the wall with a rock hammer and hiding the evidence behind a Rita Hayworth/Raquel Welch poster - accidentally discovered by corrupt Warden Norton (Bob Gunton) |
 
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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 
