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Greatest Movie Twists, Part 24 |
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Greatest Movie Twists, Part 24 |
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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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In one of the best 'identity-switch' plot twists ever invented (although revealed to the audience before the main protagonist), blonde Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak) was revealed to actually be a red-headed woman named Judy Barton; Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) had hired her to act as his suicidal and 'haunted' wife in front of his old friend, private eye John "Scotty" Ferguson (James Stewart), as a ruse to murder his real wife by dumping his murdered wife's body off the top of a church bell tower - thus he made Scotty the perfect witness to a "suicide"; the film cycled back on itself when Scotty met Judy - who bore an uncanny resemblance to the now-dead "Madeleine"; after forcing her to look like his lost love, he realized that Judy was not Elster's wife but his mistress and they had meticulously planned his wife's murder; when he forced Judy to the top of the bell tower, she was spooked by the approach of a shadowy figure and plunged off the tower -- this time, her death was real! |   |
| The Village (2004)
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This M. Night Shymalan film (with another of the director's trademark twist endings) was criticized at the time of its release for its unbelievable, contrived and illogical premise -- the small village of Covington actually did not exist in 1897, but in modern times (2004); it was an insulated town located in the center of a densely-wooded wildlife preserve that was designated as a 'no-fly' zone; the village's head Elder, Edward Walker (William Hurt), a former US History Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was using the village as an escape/refuge from life-damaging, traumatic tragedies (evidence of which was kept in secretive 'black boxes'); his own life-changing event was the violent murder of his father - although he was enabled by his dead father's inheritance to purchase the land for "the village"; one of the village's fabrications was that it was surrounded by creatures (known as "Those We Do Not Speak Of") - to prevent younger members from venturing out; one of the inhabitants, mentally-disabled Noah Percy (Adrien Brody) was often one of the monstrous creatures in the woods, wearing a hulking 'creature costume'; late in the film in a narrated montage, the Elders opened their black boxes that contained mementos from their lives in the outside world |   |
Wait Until Dark (1967)
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In a final battle of wits staged in complete darkness, after splashing gasoline all around the tiny basement apartment of blind Susy Hendrix (Audrey Hepburn) in a search for drugs, villainous and crazed Harry Roat's (Alan Arkin) lunged with a knife from the dark hallway toward Susy; she retaliated by threatening to ignite his gas-soaked body with a match; she survived Roat's brutal assault by hiding behind the refrigerator door, and slowly emerged at the film's end |   
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| Waking Life (2001)
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The young Dreamer (voice of Wiley Wiggins) became panicked over his inability to wake up from a persistent "dream" - he experienced many "false awakenings" from his dreamworld state, and obsessed over the prospect that he was actually dead or in the process of dying, or forever stuck in a dream state; he was advised by The Pinball Guy to "Just wake up" - to which he experienced another false awakening, and floated off into the sky (until he became an infinitesimal speck of nothing) as the film concluded with an ambiguous ending (Was he waking up to "waking life"? Was he still dreaming? Was he possibly dead?) |   |
| Walkabout (1971, Aus.)
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After a 14 year-old English girl (Jenny Agutter) and her six-year-old brother (Lucien John) were stranded in the Australian bush when their father (John Meillon) committed suicide, they were saved by meeting up with a teenaged aborigine boy (David Gulpilil) during his 'walkabout' (to prove his manhood); in the stunning ending, the native aborigine with a painted skeleton on his body performed a ritualistic mating dance for the civilized girl at a deserted farmhouse, but she ignored him -- with disastrous results; after dancing all night and becoming weary, he was found the next morning hanging dead in a tree, and she barely reacted; the film ended years later with the young girl now married and returned to civilization - wishfully daydreaming back to her days in the outback happily swimming naked with the aborigine and her young brother |
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| What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
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This gothic psychological thriller and black comedy closed with a beach scene, where a decades-old secret was revealed: former Hollywood star and invalid Blanche Hudson (Joan Crawford) told her insane, alcoholic sister and former child star "Baby" Jane (Bette Davis) the truth about the car crash accident (at their mansion's big iron gates) that had paralyzed her; originally, it was thought that Jane was drunk and at the wheel, and that she had crippled her older sister with attempted murder out of jealousy for her successful acting career; it was now revealed that Blanche had been the one behind the wheel of the car, crippling herself when she tried to run over Jane because of the embarrassment and bad press Jane was giving Blanche; after being released from the guilt she'd felt over the years, Jane reacted: "You mean, all this time we could have been friends?" |
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| What Lies Beneath (2000)
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In this Robert Zemeckis horror film, renowned college scientist Dr. Norman Spencer (Harrison Ford) was seemingly happily-married to Claire Spencer (Michelle Pfeiffer), living together in a remodeled lakefront Vermont home; as the film progressed, Claire became haunted by what she thought was the 'ghost' of her possibly-murdered neighbor Mary Feur (Miranda Otto), but that proved to be unfounded; however, after other premonitions, investigative sleuthing and contact with the supernatural, she deduced that her husband's past affair with student Madison Elizabeth Frank (Amber Valletta) (with the initials MEF) ended in the young woman's death - not by her own suicide, but by murder; the unfaithful husband had killed her by drowning, put her body in her car, and submerged it in the lake; he also planned to murder Claire by drugging her with a paralyzing agent and drowning her in their bathtub; in the film's exciting conclusion, the couple struggled as their truck drove into the water where the sunken car with the dead student's body was visible; the 'ghost' of the dead student held him back during the struggle, allowing Claire to safely swim to the surface, while Norman drowned with his foot entangled; in the final scene, Claire put a red rose on the dead student's wintry grave |     |
Where the Truth Lies (2005)
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This controversial, tangled and convoluted film-noirish feature film from Canadian director Atom Egoyan was a lurid and sexy backstage crime/murder mystery based upon Rupert Holmes' 2003 novel, about an amoral and pill-popping comedy duo team in 1957 resembling Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (Kevin Bacon as American Lanny Morris and Colin Firth as Brit Vince Collins) who broke up their act after naked, redheaded coed Maureen O'Flaherty (Rachel Blanchard) - who was the room service waitress from the hotel they just vacated in Florida - was found dead in their New Jersey hotel bathtub from supposed drowning or drug overdose (although her corpse had been flown from Florida to NJ and planted there); later, it was revealed that she was killed because she witnessed Vince's closet bisexuality-homosexuality - a psychosexually-related crime committed by the duo's bodyguard Reuben (David Hayman) by smothering her with a pillow in order to silence her; then 15 years later, worldly, award-winning aspiring journalist Karen O'Connor (Alison Lohman) - once a polio-cured guest on their final telethon show before the murder, pursued the two to write a book to find "where the truth lies" in the circumstances surrounding her death; in the film's conclusion, Vince committed suicide in the Miami hotel where Maureen had died by a drug/alcohol overdose in an ice-filled bathtub |
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| Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
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In the conclusion of this inventive, animated and live-action film, revelations were made about Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) of the Toon Town District Superior Court: (1) he was behind the murders of studio boss R. K. Maroon (Alan Tilvern) and Marvin Acme (Stubby Kaye) (the owner of the Acme Novelty Company and of Toon Town) in his bid to destroy public transportation and demolish Toon Town in the name of building a freeway; (2) he was a Toon (an animated character) masquerading as a human, revealed when he was flattened by a steamroller and used an air tank to reinflate himself, and then when he dissolved in Dip spray projected at him from a Dipmobile; and (3) he also confessed that he was the one who had killed washed up private investigator Eddie Valiant's (Bob Hoskins) brother Teddy ("Remember me, Eddie? When I killed your brother, I talked just like this") |  |
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In the conclusion of this shocking black comedy/drama, based on Edward Albee's scandalous play, came the revelation that ineffectual professor George (Richard Burton) and his complaining, shrew-like wife Martha's (Elizabeth Taylor) son was fictional - the idea was a decades-old illusion and fabrication they'd conjured up to keep their marriage together but which ultimately devitalized it; George purged, exorcised and demystified the illusion of a son to cleanse Martha's internal demon spirits, unconscious fears and attachments which blocked her from accepting the death of their son; callow young biology professor Nick (George Segal) reacted with the repeated insightful realization: "Oh, my God. I think I understand this..." |   |
| The Wicker Man (1973)
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In this suspenseful and erotic horror cult film, sexually-repressed and devoutly religious Scottish policeman Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) searched for a missing young schoolgirl named Rowan Morrison (Geraldine Cowper), believing that she was to be a potential virgin sacrifice on May Day by openly-sexual pagan worshippers and inhabitants of the remote Scottish island of Summerisle; in the chilling finale, Howie learned that he was the one to be sacrificed; he was lured there to the island to be a good Christian sacrifice, to appease the gods; he was burned alive ("Oh, my God!") as the perfect sacrifice in the massive hollow 'wicker man' statue (created of wicker materials designed to be used for fire sacrifices) as the sun set |  |
(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 
