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.

Note: The films that are marked with a yellow star are the films that
"The Greatest Films" site has selected as the "100 Greatest Films".

Chinatown (1974)

In this superb detective noir film set in early 20th century Los Angeles during a water rights scandal investigated by LA private eye J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Jack Nicholson), the most-discussed scene involved the revelation of the identity of the alleged "mistress" of the suspected philandering water commissioner Hollis Mulwray (Darryl Zwerling), the husband of wealthy Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway); while he repeatedly slapped her, Gittes learned from the secretive Evelyn, now his troubled and newly-widowed client, that she had been incestuously raped by her ruthless tycoon father Noah Cross (John Huston) and had conceived a teenaged daughter Katherine (Belinda Palmer) from that union: "She's my sister...she's my daughter...She's my sister and my daughter! ...My father and I...understand? Or is it too tough for you?"; in the film's conclusion set in Chinatown, when Evelyn tried to escape in a convertible with Katherine, she was tragically shot and killed by a policeman, as Katherine screamed in horror and was comforted by a leering Cross

The Cincinnati Kid (1965)

Citizen Kane (1941)

The City of Lost Children (1995, Fr.) (aka La Cité des Enfants Perdus)

This surreal French film, by co-directors Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, was a dream fantasy science fiction tale about a dystopian world in which a morose, bald-headed and mad scientist named Krank (Daniel Emilfork) lived in a laboratory located on a coastal oil rig surrounded by a minefield; suffering from a lack of dreaming, he had grown prematurely old (and wanted to slow his aging), so he went about kidnapping innocent young children from their homes to extract and steal their dreams, often while wearing a Santa Claus outfit; Krank's efforts to tap into the children's brains were hopelessly unsuccessful, because the traumatized children only experienced nightmares; the kidnappings were performed by Krank's hired blind cultish group of 'Cyclops' (possessing a mechanical, video-camera third eye, worn over their left eye, to provide vision, who also had hyper-sensitive hearing devices) who were led by Gabriel Marie (Serge Merlin); other unusual and bizarre elements in the film included a chronic migraine-suffering, talking brain named Irvin (voiced by Jean-Louis Trintignant) sitting in a tank of greenish liquid, six narcoleptic cloned assistants (Dominique Pinon) (with one always claiming to be the original, and another a reclusive deep-sea diver who never surfaced), a deadly dwarf woman named Miss Bismuth (Mireille Mosse), a pair of evil conjoined female twins named 'Octopus' (Genevieve Brunet and Odile Mallet) running an orphanage who extorted money from thefts they forced the orphans to commit, and an opium-addicted circus owner/organ-grinder who unleashed a flea to inject victims with a toxin that caused them to become violent; the main story was about the kidnapping of a fearless blonde 5 year-old orphan or 'little brother' named Denree (Joseph Lucien) - known for loud burps - and the efforts of a silent, kind-hearted sideshow Strongman named One (Ron Perlman) and precocious 9 year-old Miette (Judith Vittet), the leader of an orphan band, to rescue the boy, by finding their way into Krank’s laboratory via a map tattooed on the skull of an elderly Asian man; by film's end, Krank expired, and they succeeded in helping to blow-up Krank's oil rig while rescuing all the children; one of the film's revelations was that Krank was born genetically engineered - the reason for his inability to dream; and one of the film's most remarkable sequences was the Rube Goldberg-like chain of events of a teardrop, ultimately causing a fog-bound freighter to crash into a pier during a blackout

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
AND
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Totally in contrast to the evil alien-invasion films of the 50s and afterwards, Steven Spielberg's two films depicted other-worldly aliens as benevolent beings in their contact with humans - a major plot twist and reversed cliche within the science-fiction/adventure film genre; the aliens in these two pictures were playful, curious about human life, interested in observing human nature, and decidedly friendly, and their encounters were seen as magical and awe-inspiring; audiences were kept on edge, however, because the knowledge that the aliens were peaceful, non-hostile, non-malicious and harmless wasn't revealed fully or known by everyone at the start

Clue (1985)

The Conversation (1974)

In this brilliant crime story, the young couple (Ann (Cindy Williams) and Mark (Frederic Forrest)) that professional wire-tapper Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) spied (and listened) upon during clandestine meetings and thought were potential victims because of her marital infidelity; there was a murder committed in Room 773 of San Francisco's Jack Tar Hotel at the agreed-upon time heard in the conversation; however, the couple weren't the victims! They were actually cold-blooded murderers of "the Director" (Robert Duvall) of a secretive company; she was "the Director's" wife - a femme fatale who orchestrated the homicide (with her hard-to-decipher sentence: "He'd kill us if he got the chance") by luring her husband to the hotel room, where Mark murdered him; she later made his bloody murder look like an accidental automobile crash to inherit his fortune; the film ended with the revelation that a frightened, neurotic and paranoid Harry was also under surveillance the entire time: ("We know that you know, Mr. Caul. For your own sake, don't get involved any further. We'll be listening to you"); he frantically tore up his entire apartment to vainly attempt to find a bugging device - the final scene found Harry playing his saxophone alone in his destroyed home

Crimes of Passion (1984)

British director Ken Russell's neon-lit, dark, "guilty pleasure" cult tale and erotic thriller opened with a marital therapy session, in which new attendee -- part-time private investigator, home electronics store owner and security expert Bobby Grady (John Laughlin) asserted that he had no marriage-related problems ("What the hell am I doing here?") in his 12-year marriage, although this would be refuted shortly; the film told about a moonlighting, kinky LA street-walking, pill-popping prostitute named China Blue (Kathleen Turner) who wore a platinum wig but by day worked as a prim but workaholic fashion designer named Joanna Crane; in a grungy downtown area filled with XXX adult stores, bars, live nude and peep shows, she wore a platinum wig and light blue silky dress and frequented the Paradise Isle Hotel for tricks; she was repeatedly accosted and stalked by a deranged, perversely psychotic, amyl nitrate-sniffing, self-proclaimed preacher named Reverend Peter Shayne (Anthony Perkins) calling himself a "messenger of God" - who carried a razor-tipped chrome-steel vibrating dildo - one of his sex toys - in his doctor's bag (China Blue asked prophetically: "What are you gonna do? F--k someone to death? You'd like to, wouldn't you?"); while investigating whether China Blue was selling patented design secrets, Grady escaped from his own dull marriage to frigid Amy (Annie Potts) (with faked orgasms) into an obsessive, sexual relationship with China Blue; in the startling conclusion, the preacher assaulted Joanna in her own apartment: "The reverend's gonna save you tonight once and for all...I'm a messenger of God and I only want to heal you...One more game, the final one, the one that will free you forever. Do I have your trust? Because we can only play if I have your trust"; he proposed a game of "exorcising the demons" -- "my calling is the ultimate salvation, and its ends are sacrosanct. With my ecclesiastic gift, plus the grace of God, and a little help from Superman here, I shall bestow upon you the supreme humanitarian blessing and give you your freedom. You, uh, you do want that, don't you? I knew you would...My issue has always been your salvation "; the violent altercation was predicated on the reverend's desire to save her, as he played demented songs on a piano to her as she was tied down to her drafting table: "I looked at you and I saw myself. I saw the same escape, the same malignancy. But I know the cure and I know how desperately you need it. And only I can give it to you...Kill me Joanna, give my life value. Give me something to die for. Save me. You are me! One of us has to die so the other can live. Kill me, you worthless c--t. I'm all the men who ever hurt you, who made you feel like s--t, who stole your self-respect and turned you into China Blue. Kill me! Release the rage. Get it out. Get even!"; although it appeared that China Blue would be the victim, the scene ended with the reverend's death (his parting words were: "Goodbye, China Blue") after he was stabbed in the back by his own dildo/vibrator in a role-reversal twist - he wore China Blue's dress, while she was wearing his preacher's outfit; she stabbed him as he threatened to assault Grady (who had arrived to save Joanna) with a pair of scissors; the film ended with Grady attending a therapy group where he admitted, smiling, that he was in a new relationship with Joanna: "She saved my life. We're together now. I'm not sure if it's gonna work out. We don't have a whole hell of a lot in common other than the fact that we both need help and each other. The thing, you see, that scared me the most during my marriage was just admitting that I was scared and letting Amy down. Well, I can't pretend anymore. I was scared s--tless to come back here. I told Joanna, and she took me in her arms and she said, it's OK to be scared. I felt stronger and freer and more like a man than I've ever felt before in my life. Then we f--ked our brains out"

The Crying Game (1992, UK)

Neil Jordan's thriller film has become legendary and famous for its shocking twist; guilt-ridden, reformed Irish Republican Army volunteer terrorist Fergus (Stephen Rea) journeyed to London to befriend the lover of British hostage/soldier Jody (Forest Whitaker) who had been accidentally killed in Northern Ireland; the dead man's lover turned out to be a beautiful cabaret lip-synch singer/hairdresser named Dil (Best Supporting Actor!-nominated Jaye Davidson); as the camera slowly panned down Dil's naked body after he dropped his red kimono robe, there was a sexually-disorienting view of Dil's penis -- his maleness was shown in this surprising full-frontal unveiling, causing Fergus to wonder about his attraction to Dil

Cutter's Way (1981)

In the stunning concluding scene of this crime thriller, embittered, self-righteous, drunken, one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged, crazed Vietnam vet Alexander Cutter (John Heard) - believing obsessively that elite and menacing oil businessmen J. J. Cord (Stephen Elliott) was the murderer of a 17 year-old sex-crimes victim named Vickie and also responsible for the house-burning death of his wife Maureen "Mo" Cutter (Lisa Eichhorn) - rode heroically (and tragically) on a white stallion within Cord's guarded residential mansion during a large garden party - and lethally crashed into Cord's study window where his laconic, laid-back friend Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) had just learned that Cord was the female's killer - inspiring the usually-uncommitted and reluctant Bone to take up the fight and shoot Cord dead with the weapon in Cutter's dead hand; the gun blast abruptly ended the film

Dangerous (1935)

This soapish melodrama was notable because Bette Davis won her first Best Actress Academy Award for her role, as a consolation because she wasn't nominated for Of Human Bondage a year earlier; she portrayed alcoholic former Broadway stage actress Joyce Heath who was first seen drinking straight gin in New York's Jerry's Joint; she had vanished from public view and was notorious for her quick downfall and 'jinxed' superstition following after her: ("She was a comet which appeared suddenly, fell spectacularly, and disappeared completely...A jinx, one she put on other people...It started when her leading man was killed on her opening night. From then on, everybody associated with her was haunted by failures, divorces, suicides, scandals...At first, she laughed at the superstition, then she believed it"); she was found in a drunken stupor by idealistic, aspiring, handsome architect Don Bellows (Franchot Tone), who took her to his Connecticut country house to let her sober up, in "gratitude" for her past performances (he claimed he was inspired to leave Wall Street and become an architect); he was resolved to rehabilitate her ("You could go on. Talent like yours doesn't die. You were a star once. You can be again"), although she was doubtful: "Two men who loved me are dead, some financially ruined" and even his housekeeper Mrs. Williams (Alison Skipworth) warned of her curse: "A woman knows an awful lot about another woman, and she's dangerous"; after kissing the seductive Joyce during a long nighttime cloudburst as lightning struck (the screen faded to black after their clinch), Don later hugged her and admitted her destructive effect upon him: "I wish I'd never seen you, never kissed you, never held you in my arms, cause every time I do I hate myself, I hate you. I could kill every emotion except for desire to hold you just once more"; he revealed his romantic indiscretion to his wealthy fiancee Gail Armitage (Margaret Lindsay) ("if there were someone else, someone I didn't love that I never even see again but who had a strange exotic fascination for me and appeal I couldn't kill") - which effectively broke off their engagement when she gave back her ring (but she had hope that he would come back eventually); Don then decided to invest in Joyce's comeback performance in But To Die with $80,000 of his own funding given to producer George Sheffield (Pierre Watkin), because she was regarded as "the jinx woman of the theatre"; expecting it to be a great success, he forced Joyce to promise to marry him after the opening night; she agreed, but then rushed off to beg for a divorce from her weakling, clinging estranged husband Gordon (John Eldredge) who refused; to kill either one or both of them, Joyce deliberately crashed her car into a tree, slightly hurting herself and seriously injuring Gordon; because of the scandal (the headlines read: "Joyce Heath and Don Bellows Estranged by Rendezvous with Husband"), Don's architectural project failed and he was ruined, and he broke off any involvement with Joyce ("If you're ever gonna be anything but a jinx, you'd better start paying off, because you're in debt for the rest of your life!") after which she coldly admitted that he was "just a means to an end"; eleven weeks later, however, in the unlikely conclusion, the play had been revitalized, Don married Gail, and Joyce took flowers to her hospitalized husband.

Dark City (1998)