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Greatest Movie Twists, Part 3 |
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Greatest Movie Twists, Part 3 |
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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 Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970, It.) (aka L'Uccello dalle piume di cristallo)
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This Dario Argento murder mystery (his directorial debut) with many red herrings and a twist ending revealed that the opening scene (with POV shots from the victim's perspective) was misleading - although it appeared like an attempted murder on Monica Ranieri (Eva Renzi), the beautiful wife of art gallery owner Alberto Ranieri (Umberto Raho), by an unidentified assailant; it was actually the other way around -- "victim" Monica was actually a deranged, cackling serial killer (a mysterious black-gloved assailant dressed in a black trenchcoat) - revealed in the shock ending - who was trying to kill Alberto; he subsequently tried to cover for his wife's killing, and appear as the murderer himself (he confessed to the killing before dying) |
   
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In Hitchcock's unsettling film about unexplained attacks by birds on the inhabitants of a California coastal town, dawn had arrived and Mitch (Rod Taylor) went outside his house where he found thousands of birds gathered and seated - surrounding, watching and tyrannically claiming the house; after everyone was able to get to the car, the beleaguered survivors drove away from the house toward an uncertain future, surrounded on the left by the barn, in the foreground by threatening birds amassing for their next attack, and on the right by a tree; the triumphant, menacing birds appeared to chatter and applaud their conquest; the unsettling, apocalyptic ending - an open-ended one of continuing terror - was not accompanied by a customary "THE END" title |
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Bitter Moon (1992)
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This ultra-kinky, voyeuristic drama/thriller from Roman Polanski told about the sado-masochistic, increasingly-torturous relationship between sultry, mysterious French femme fatale wife Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner, the director's own 27 year-old wife) with crippled, sexually-deviant, wheelchair-bound, self-loathing writer Oscar (Peter Coyote); by the film's conclusion, it was revealed that Mimi sought revenge against the embittered, self-loathing, paralyzed and dependent Oscar (after a Parisian amour fou affair that had disintegrated into kinky sex, torture, heartlessness, infidelity and abuse), who begged of his cruel caretaker: "Why don't you just finish me off? Why don't you OD me, or push me down the stairs, or something?"; she presented Oscar with a birthday present of a gun, which he used to commit suicide, as he told her: "You were just too greedy, baby, that was all" |
 
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The noted 1992 Director's Cut re-release of the classic science-fiction film strongly implied that replicant-hunting "bladerunner" cop Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) was also a replicant (artificial human), with implanted memories of his own, demonstrated by the celebrated "unicorn reverie" daydream; at the conclusion, fellow cop Gaff (Edward James Olmos) apparently knew of the implanted memories and pre-programmed short lifespan when he left a silver, tin-foil origami of a unicorn outside Deckard's apartment and spared replicant Rachael's (Sean Young) life when he had the chance to kill her; he had often reminded Deckard that he must kill Rachael; Gaff's words about her short time to live were recalled to Deckard: "It's too bad she won't live, but then again, who does?"; Deckard joined love interest Rachael in the elevator as they left to escape the law into an uninhabited wilderness; however, in a tacked-0n ending found in the 1982 theatrical version, a final voice-over narration explained that Rachael was a special replicant without a pre-set or fixed termination date |
  
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The Blair Witch Project (1999)
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The closing scene involved a chase in the darkened woods by Heather (Heather Donahue) and Michael (Michael Williams) for their missing friend Josh (Josh Leonard) - and then through the seemingly-abandoned house and into the cellar - where Michael, in a final ambiguous shot, was seen standing motionless and facing a wall in a corner of the basement as Heather was screaming and running to him - accompanied by the sounds of "thwack", "thump", and "crash" as the camera hit the ground |
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Body Double (1984)
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In this Brian De Palma film (a virtual remake of Vertigo with its theme of double identity) that featured a triple-flip ending, one revelation (Rear Window-style) to claustrophobia-suffering, struggling actor Jake Scully (Craig Wasson) was that the auto-erotic, exhibitionist dancer-neighbor that he was ogling through a telescope night after night was not rich, tormented wife Gloria Revelle (Deborah Shelton), but porn queen Holly Body (Melanie Griffith); with a clue already provided in the film's title, she was paid by Revelle's disgruntled, abusive husband Sam Bouchard (Gregg Henry) to dance in the house for a few nights and impersonate his wife; then Gloria was murdered by a pony-tailed Indian with an erect power drill; Jake realized that he was set-up by Gloria's husband (a fellow actor) to be a convenient witness/alibi to her murder; it was also revealed at the reservoir/burial site that Sam was the killer-Indian (with latex face-makeup, who admitted angrily: "You ruined my surprise ending") - he ended up getting pushed backward to his death in the churning reservoir water below; Jake became a full-time porn star - during the end credits, Jake was engaged in the filming of a Psycho-like shower scene with a 'body double' |
   
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In the end of this Double Indemnity-like thriller, "Matty Walker" (Kathleen Turner) was killed in a booby-trapped boathouse explosion (her body was identified by dental records) and her lover/dupe Ned Racine (William Hurt) was charged with the murder and imprisoned in a Florida state penitentiary; believing that "Matty" was somehow still alive, Ned looked in Matty's high school yearbook; in the climactic plot twist, he found evidence there that she had swapped identities with Mary Ann Simpson (Kim Zimmer) (a look-alike seen earlier in the film); under her yearbook picture, her ambition was described as: "To be rich and live in an exotic land" - a wish that was fulfilled in the last image of "Matty" lying on a beach somewhere in an exotic land |
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Although their fates were inevitable after a series of small-time stickups and murders, the shocking and tense "ballet of blood" finale of the ultra-violent deaths of the doomed lovers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow (Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty) during a country backroads ambush by police was still a shock! Their frenzied corpses writhed in slow-motion as they were gunned down and riddled with bullets; they were re-animated by gunfire - into involuntary dances of death |
 
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Boogie Nights (1997)
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In the unexpected, surprise conclusion of this fact-based film about the LA adult film industry in the late 70s and early 80s, well-endowed ex-busboy and fading porn star Eddie/'Dirk Diggler' (Mark Wahlberg) revealed - in an impressive full-frontal screen view - his main (and pathetic) claim to fame: his 13" penis (a prosthetic), as he repeated to himself: "I am a star. I'm a star, I'm a star, I'm a star. I am a big, bright, shining star. That's right" |
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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 
