|
Greatest Movie Twists Part 4 |
 are the films that "The Greatest Films" site has selected as the "100 Greatest Films". |
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.
|
|
Greatest Movie Twists Part 4 |
are the films that "The Greatest Films" site has selected as the "100 Greatest Films". |
| (alphabetical by film title) - Part 4 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 |
||
| Film Title | Brief Scene Description | Example |
Boxing Helena (1993) |
In director Jennifer Chambers Lynch's (David Lynch's daughter) directorial debut film, an erotic and disturbing psychosexual work, obsessive brilliant surgeon Dr. Nick Cavanaugh (Julian Sands) became entranced by his vivacious and bitchy libertine neighbor Helena (Sherilyn Fenn); after a terrible hit-run vehicular accident outside his house, Nick performed surgery on Helena and made her a 'Venus de Milo' amputee (metaphorically and physically) by first removing her damaged legs (and then her arms to imprison her); however, the entire sequence of his imprisonment of his captive, dismembered quadruple amputee female companion was a dream that was imagined during the six hours of Helena's surgery -- Nick suddenly awoke in the hospital's waiting room; in flashback, Nick was shown rushing Helena to the hospital with a medical response team and waiting for her recovery by her bedside; his final voice-over was: "I am still haunted by my love, by my dreams" |   
|
| A Boy and His Dog (1975) |
In this vulgar black comedy set in a post-apocalyptic, nuclear wasteland of post WWIV 2024 (near Phoenix Arizona), people must live underground in an agrarian place and community called Topeka; a ruthless, dictatorial and impersonal Committee below ground was forced to search for semen from suitable studs to restock the depleted gene pool and impregnate dozens of virgins; above ground, horny scavenging loner Vic (Don Johnson) used his wise-cracking telepathic dog partner-companion Blood (voice of Tim McIntire) to find solo females for lustful Vic to rape; when Vic was seduced by beautiful new lover Quilla June Holmes (Susanne Benton), she tried to lure him underground, so that he could be used for breeding purposes - and then be killed; however, after Quilla June turned against the Committee and told Vic about her love for him, Vic had to make a difficult choice above ground between his starving dog Blood and Quilla June -- he killed her (offscreen) and then cooked and fed her to his starving dog, to revive him; the dark comedy's final controversial pun/one-liner was 'spoken' by Blood: "Well, I'd say she certainly had marvelous judgment, Albert, if not particularly good taste" |
 |
| In Terry Gilliam's disturbing and shocking ending, worker Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) was strapped into a torturer's chair in the middle of a circular platform that was situated under a vast, dark dome; a white-coated technician wearing a pock-marked, smiling baby mask approached to administer torture - Sam recognized him as Jack Lint (Michael Palin); suddenly, Sam was triumphantly rescued by a band of commandos led by Harry Tuttle (Robert DeNiro), and appeared to be reunited with his dream girl Jill Layton (Kim Greist) in a happy ending; however, his ideal perfect world was revealed to be a self-deluding illusion or fantasy; the green vista of a pastoral backdrop where he had escaped was covered over, and he was back in the domed torture chamber; the two torture agents commiserated about Sam's death: (Helpmann (Peter Vaughan): "He's got away from us, Jack" Jack: "Afraid you're right, Mr. Helpmann, he's gone"), as the spritely tune Brazil played |   |
|
Brick (2005)
|
Writer/director Rian Johnson's modern-day film noir (with hard-boiled 40s lingo), set in a Southern California (San Clemente) high school, told how brooding, jilted loner Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) investigated the murder of his ex-girlfriend Emily Kostach (Emilie de Ravin) with the help of his nerdy schoolfriend, the Brain (Matt O'Leary). The film opened with Brendan finding her body near a sewer tunnel entrance, and then flashbacked to two days earlier to provide backstory. The suspects were many in this twisting tale of drug dealing and violence, including: stoned, greasy hood Dode (Noah Seagan), Emily's new boyfriend; menacing 26 year-old drug dealer The Pin (Lukas Haas) who had a club-foot, walked with a limp, and lived with his mother; the Pin's muscular, hot-headed enforcer Tugger (or Tug) (Noah Fleiss) with a white-knit cap; and sultry femme fatale Laura Dannon (Nora Zehetner). Brendan learned that Emily had become a drug-user, and involved in some way with The Pin and ten bricks of powdery heroin. At the sewer tunnel, Tug shot and killed Dode at point-blank range when Dode attempted blackmail while revealing the identity of Emily's killer: "She had a kid in her and he couldn't stand it" - but it was his mistaken belief that a jealous Brendan had killed his own ex. And Laura later described the "slaughterhouse" at a "party" at The Pin's house that she had set up, eliminating all the major players and revealing Tug as Emily's killer: "The papers say six dead, three around the house, girl in the back of Tug's car [Emily's body], and The Pin and Tug. Tug tried to shoot his way out when the police got there. They tied him to Dode, too. Same gun. And the girl." Then Brendan disclosed Laura's double-dealing when he told her: "It's not finished." Although Tug took the fall for Emily's death, Brendan knew who "put her in front of the gun" - "That was you, angel." He explained how she had stolen one of the ten bricks of drug powder from The Pin, doctored up part of it (with a poisonous substitute) and then set up Emily to take the blame. Laura had also urged Emily to tell Tug that she was pregnant with Tug's child, supposedly to "soften him up" but it had the opposite effect when she was confronted. Brendan accused Laura: "She took the hit for you and you let her take it," and then told her he had tipped off the Assistant VP Gary Trueman (Richard Roundtree) about her drug involvement with The Pin. A cut-away showed Laura's locker being searched by the authorities, proving that she had in fact stolen the last brick. To retaliate, Laura then told Brendan that Emily was three months pregnant, already showing, and didn't love the father (and was seeking an abortion), implying: "Do you know whose kid that makes it?" The film's last line was: "All right, you don't have to tell me" - the Brain's assertion to Brendan that he didn't want to know the 'dirty word' Laura had just whispered in Brendan's ear ["Mother----"] |       
|
The Brown Bunny (2003) |
This independent arthouse film about a cross-country road trip from narcissistic and vain producer/director/actor/writer Vincent Gallo was critically derided and scorned when originally shown at the Cannes Film Festival. It told about the journey of motorcyclist racer Bud Clay (Vincent Gallo) - a tortured, empty-hearted loner, who often idealized and thought about his former girlfriend Daisy (Chloe Sevigny, Gallo's real-life ex-girlfriend). The film's plot twist at the very end came after the notorious film's most explicit and controversial scene of unsimulated fellatio - it was revealed that the scene in the hotel room was only a fantasy masturbatory sequence that Bud experienced as he thought about Daisy, his lost love and the only woman he ever loved. The film's shocking, melodramatic ending about the last encounter of their tragic relationship, gave greater meaning to everything that came before and explained Bud's complex personality and downer mood throughout the film, including the sex scene. It was revealed that provocatively-acting Daisy was raped at a party when she passed out after getting high (which Bud witnessed passively) - and she in fact died as a result of the incident (choking to death on her own vomit). Bud's intense guilt about abandoning her and his continuing crisis of masculine insecurity were informed by the appearance of the deceased Daisy - as Bud masturbated alone to his memory of her |
|
Burn After Reading (2008)
|
The Coen Brothers' dark comedic spy-thriller (with the tagline: "Intelligence is Relative") followed the tangled repercussions of the loss of a CIA analyst job by Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), purportedly for a "drinking problem", after which he decided to write his memoirs; his cuckolding, cool bitch, pediatrician-wife Katie Cox (Tilda Swinton) determined the time was right to divorce him -- and with her lawyer's advice, copied all Osbourne's financial records from his computer onto a CD and began to empty his accounts; when the lawyer's secretary accidentally left the disk on the floor of the locker room at a health club called Hardbodies, two idiotic employees: preening narcissist and personal trainer Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) and man-hungry assistant gym manager Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) decided they could blackmail Osbourne and receive $50,000 extortion money for the return of the disk, so that Linda could pay for four elective cosmetic surgeries (to improve her dating life) not covered by her club's HMO; in the end, betrayal, greed, and violent murders were the results of their misguided scheme; Katie was having an affair with jogging buff and sex-addicted Treasury agent Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), while he was also sleeping with online dater Linda; Harry was being followed throughout the entire film by a lawyer's agent hired by his wife Sandy (Elizabeth Marvel), a children's book author - she was secretly planning to divorce Harry and was also having an affair; while searching through Cox's house, Chad was shot in the forehead by a startled Harry who found him in a closet - his unidentified body was dumped in the Chesapeake Bay (and later fished out and burned by the CIA); the only trustworthy individual in the entire film, Hardbodies' manager and ex-Greek Orthodox priest Ted Treffon (Richard Jenkins), agreed to help Linda find missing employee Chad, and was caught at Osbourne's computer by an enraged Cox - Ted was first shot in the shoulder, and then was axed to death on the street as he fled outdoors (where a CIA agent shot Cox, leaving him in a coma); when a paranoid Harry realized that he had killed Chad, believing him to be a spy, he boarded a plane to Venezuela (a country that doesn't allow extradition) but was arrested and held; in the epilogue set in a CIA office, two confused bureaucrats (J.K. Simmons and David Rasche) baffled by the contorted backstabbings attempted to "make sense" of the loose ends - they decided to allow Harry to leave the country, and to pay for Linda's surgeries to keep her quiet, and then the CIA Superior asked: "What do we learn, Palmer?...I don't f--kin' know, either. I guess we learn not to do it again...I'm f--ked if I know what we did...Jesus f--king Christ!" |     
|
| The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919, Ger.) |
In the film's twist ending, it was revealed that the entire film (a framed story with a flashback) was a flashback made up from the delusions of the mentally-ill narrator/story-teller of the film Francis (Friedrich Feher) while he was seated on a garden bench in the asylum courtyard; he told a tale about a series of horrible events that he had experienced, and about a mad Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) who used a tall, slender somnambulist named Cesare (Conrad Veidt) to murder people; at the end of the tale, he told how he had heroically trapped the evil mastermind Caligari; he was actually a patient interred in the mental institution (with one of the patients named Cesare) that was directed by "Caligari"; the last scene was of Francis becoming crazed when he saw the asylum director Dr. Caligari whom he insisted was the "Caligari" of his story; a benevolent Dr. Caligari stated that he had a sure-fire cure for Francis' delusions - leaving the viewer with the overriding question: "who was sane and who was insane?" |  
|
Candyman (1992) |
At the end of this bloody horror film, both married graduate student Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) and the haunting, incarnated hook-wielding 'Candyman' maniac (Tony Todd) were burned to death; still mourning the death of his wife, Trevor Lyle (Xander Berkeley) was in his bathroom when he called out Helen's name five times in front of a mirror, not knowing that he was invoking her return as a spirit that had replaced Candyman - she appeared in a bluish pulsating light and asked him: "What's the matter, Trevor? Scared of something?"; because he had been sleeping with another woman named Stacey (Carolyn Lowery) (who was in the kitchen with a butcher knife preparing dinner), she vengefully killed Trevor, by stabbing him in the stomach with the Candyman's large hook, ripping him open from his groin up to his neck - and leaving him a bloody corpse in the bathtub |
  
|
| Carnival of Souls (1962) |
In this classic horror film's final scene, it was revealed that talented young organist Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss), whose car plunged off a bridge and into a river with her (and two girlfriends) inside, never mysteriously survived the crash and emerged unscathed - as one was first led to believe in the film's opening; her dreams, imagined visions and trances involving the ghouls in a dance of death were due to her hallucinations during her death experience and entry into the spirit world | 
 |
| Carrie (1976) |
In the shock second ending to this De Palma horror film - a dream sequence, surviving classmate Sue Snell (Amy Irving), who was holding a bouquet of flowers, visited the defiled gravesite (with a graffiti-marked For Sale sign reading: "Carrie White burns in hell" and an arrow pointing downward) of dead psychic student Carrie White (Sissy Spacek); as she went to put the flowers on the grave, Carrie's bloody hand burst out of the ground at her and grabbed her arm to pull her down into hell with her - the white-clad young girl screamed and suddenly woke up while recuperating in her bed at home, still screaming hysterically and being grabbed and held by her reassuring mother (Priscilla Pointer) ("It's all right, I'm here") as she experienced more nightmares |    |
|
|
This classic war-era film ended on a foggy airstrip in Casablanca, when cafe owner Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) sacrificially chose patriotism over his personal love; he told teary-eyed former lover Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) to get on the plane departing for freedom with her husband Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid): "Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor. You're part of his work, the thing that keeps him going"; Rick walks off with Capitaine Louis Renault (Claude Rains) across the wet runway into the misty fog, as Rick tells Renault that they have forged a new alliance: " Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" - their new partnership is underscored with the triumphant sounds of La Marseillaise |  
|
| Charade (1963) |
In this clever and sophisticated suspense comedy/mystery, the recently-widowed and elegant Regina "Reggie" Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) found herself pursued by many harrassing men, even though she was penniless after her husband was brutally murdered by being thrown from a train (she was planning on divorcing him anyway); she became extremely vulnerable and apprehensive after learning that her husband stole government money during WWII, and feared that his double-crossed victims (all Army war buddies) wanted to locate the lost or hidden gold treasure worth $250,000; one of the men in pursuit was the enigmatic yet suave Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) - raising the question: Were the beguiling Joshua's motives honest and above reproach, or was he hiding secrets from her, and not disclosing his true identity?; by the film's conclusion, it was revealed that Peter Joshua was Mr. Brian Cruikshank of the Treasury Department when his secretary buzzed him in his office; he made a surprise proposal of marriage to Reggie in his office to end the film: (Reggie: "...Marriage license! Did you say marriage license?" Cruikshank: "Now don't change the subject. Just give me the stamps" Reggie: "Oh, I love you, Adam... Alex... Peter... Brian... Whatever your name is. Oh, I love you. I hope we have a lot of boys and we can name them all after you!"); it was also revealed that the treasure - the subject of the frenzied search within the film - had been converted into valuable and rare stamps |
   |
(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
