Favorite on-screen deaths
 

(This thread-idea was suggested by my wife last night)

Which deaths are the best?

For me, it's a tie between "Thelma & Louise" and "Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid." Sometimes, I feel like those are the same scenes, anyway.

Hands down: Shelly Winters in Posideon Adventure.

For the uninitiated, Shelly's character saves Gene Hackman's character, who was pinned by a door underwater. As they're both crawling out of the water, Shelly suffers a massive heart attack and dies.

Hackman chews up the scenery on this one. Clutching Shelly to him tightly and screaming "Not this woman!" At one point you can see a thin line of drool fall from Hackman's mouth onto Shelly's head. Classic.

Back in college I'd been up for several days without alot of sleep. I got home and was too tired to lay down, so I turned on the tv and found the Posideon Adventure playing. When it got to Winter's death scene I just started weeping. Not just crying, but full-out, tears-mixing-with-snot weeping. I'm blaming the sleep depravation.

Movie: <b>Wanted: Dead or Alive</b>, 1986-ish

Actor: Gene Simmons, as a terrorist with a $50,000 reward on his head plus a $25,000 bonus if captured alive.

Scene: Rutger Hauer plays a bounty hunter who has handcuffed Simmons, duct taped a hand grenade into his mouth, and is leading him by the grenade pin toward the waiting authorities. However, before he hands him over, Hauer stops and utters, "Fuck the bonus!", pulls the pin, and walks away. Simmons' eyes widen with terror and he looks around frantically as the cops scatter. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Simmons' head turns into a red mist and his body keels over backwards.

Movie was fairly lame, but that scene made it worth watching.

Paul Reuben's demise in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer.'
Such a subtle and understated performance....

i think you migh have just nailed it with this one... classic 70's draaama at it's best... :)
thanks for the memory... going to have to see were i can scope out and old copy of that movie... :D

Its the final scene in the Wild Bunch for me. All the slow motion, and quick cuts, with William Holden and Ernest Borgnine getting shot repeatedly. Classic. Peckinpah made violence seem beautiful.

Dang, you stole mine! I like the way it goes on until after the credits.

I thought Boromir had a great death in Lord of the Rings.

and Powers Boothe as Col. Andy Tanner in <a target=new href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0087985"><b>Red Dawn</b></a>
"Shoot straight, you army pukes..."

I kinda dig the way Taylor Negron falls through the chopper blades in "The Last Boy Scout".

That brings to mind the big German dude that walks into the propeller in "Raiders of the Lost Ark"

Arrgh, when I saw this post I thought about both Paul Reubens in Buffy and that guy in The Last Boy Scout.

Otherwise, any death by internal explosion is good: Tricky's character in The Fifth Element, all of the scanning victims in Scanners, half the cast at the end of Time Bandits.

<a target=new href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0093870">RoboCop</a>
When on of the bad guys stumbles out of the toxic waste. He's half his face is gone and hes melting and then he gets plowed by the car – he just explodes all over the car. it looked like he was made of water.

Actually, any celebrity death in one of those Irwin Allen disaster flicks is great. It's just that Posideon Adventure and Shelly Winters are the pinnacle IMHO.

Get me drunk enough and I do my Ernest Borgnine imitation, sweaty t-shirt and all.

*broad smile*... if you can make it to Vegas for the get together in October... i can get you drunk...
hell... i'll even throw in the t-shirt if necessary...

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Slim Pickens riding 'the bomb' down onto the russian missile site. Classic classic classic.

The whole Full Metal Jacket Scene with the drill sargent and Private Pile. So well done.

Willem Dafoe as Sgt. Elias in Platoon as he's gunned down by the Viet Cong as his platoon flies away in helicopters.

Cowboy Bebop. I'm not going to say who it is.

Gonna have to agree with this one. Turning the rifle on himself was the best part. :cool:

Character: Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker
Actor: David Prowse/Sebastian Shaw
Film: Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Vader's death and ultimate redemption is brilliantly moving, his final words to his son "you were right" (about me) bring a tear to one's eye... knowing that this Evil man still had some good in him... I can't continue, my eyes are full of tears.. mommy!

LOL that was going to be my pick too!!!!

Oooh! Aaaah! Ooooh!

The death of Hal 9000 in 2001! Saddest on screen death ever! Oooh the bitter irony!:)

My favorite death has to be Bonnie and Clyde got gunned down byt he cops in slow motion in the film "Bonnie and Clyde". There were more bullet holes than humanly possible...

Wafer-thin Mints :)

Seriously, S.P. in Dr. Strangelove

Gotta be the characters in Ghosts of Mars, only because all the deaths are sooooooo cliche. You've got the young, attractive woman who's the "new recruit" who dies, you've got the "rugged experienced soldier" who gets shot up, you've got the random soldier who gets her head cut off... you probably get the idea.

But you'd better just take my word for it, cause the movie's not worth the hour and a half of the time it takes out of your life ;).

Or how about the Chest-Burster scene from Alien? That was pretty horrific...even today, which says alot!

Come on you guys, who can forget Scarface?

He kept insulting them after taking at least 12 rounds.

my favorite is from a barely decent called The Patriot with Mel Gibson.

about half ways through the movie, Mel cracks up for a minute and goes shit crazy with his hatchet......... the movie is worth seeing for the hatchet sceene.
-hackhack-

totally forgot about that scene... and you are right... VERY intense...

you're missing the best one!

Vizzini from The Princess Bride

Never go in against a Sicilian, when death is on the line!!! Hahahahaha, hahaha.

/kerplunk

The truck stop waitress from Maximum Overdrive. Now THAT'S acting.

Oh yeah! I was thinking of the same one. I watched that scene over and over.

I always get welled up when E.T. dies.....between the defibrilator hits and Drew Barrymore's reaction...aww, man.....hard not to get weepy.

Runner-Up: When the Iron Giant think he kills Hogarth....that was another tough one.

One of the Friday the 13th movies has Jason grabbing some co-ed in their sleeping bag, cinching it up, and then swinging the bag like a baseball bat into the side of an oak tree. That's frigging hilarious.

On a more serious note, my favorite death scene is Mr. Orange's slow, miserable bleeding to death in Reservoir Dogs. Unfuckingbelievable. I've never watched someone bleed to death, but I'm sure this is the best acted death ever. Add to that the fact that Tim Roth has a full blown British accent and he did that entire scene with a full American dialect....I didn't even know Roth was british until I saw Pulp Fiction, and even then I thought he was American doing a british accent. Amazing

For me the most moving deaths are in Twin Warrior starring Jet Li.

Basically Jet Li's closest friend Jin Bo (they were Buddhist Monks together) has joined the oppressive army in his quest for power, and of course, Jet Li has to fight for good with his band of 'merry men'. Jin Bo, at the early stage, however, still has the element of trust (he had just joined, he would sneak out to be with Jet Li, etc) and was considered a good guy. Then he tells Jet Li about a military attempt to invade a province and that if they acted now and attacked the sparsely attended war camp it would be prevented. So, Jet Li, trusting his oldest and closest friend, goes with his merry men and attacks, only to find that it's a trap. He has been betrayed. All of a sudden you see an absolute OCEAN of soldiers surround Jet Li's people, and on the word, Jin Bo fronts the attack on them. They are absolutely surrounded. If you saw the film you'd think "shit, this is fucking hopeless". So they fought on bravely, nine or ten vesus a couple hundred thousand (tha ones at the back fill the spaces of fallen soldiers, thus maintaining the formation), and they are one by one by one slain. One guy takes a barrage of spears in his torso and keeps on fighting, then he collapses, and anotha guy jumps in to keep him upright, and he gets slain, until all but Jet Li and the cowardly doctor (who smears himself with blood and feigns death!) and another guy are left, and are saved by a lasso and a horse. The scene zooms out with the sight of one girl fighting on bravely while the formation of soldiers gets tighter and closer.

She, of course, is slain, but in person by Jin Bo (who used to love her).

Fucking sad shit man. I don't care.

I thought of another on-screen death that is outstanding; Jonathan E's best buddy (Moonpie?) in the original "Rollerball."

It's a terrific Peckinpah-type slow-motion shot of his friend being forced to his knees by the Japanese players, and they fatally punch him in the back of the head with those spiked gloves while Jonathan can only watch from a distance and do nothing to stop it.

The near-dead and beseeching look on Moonpie's face, the sneer on the Japs' faces, and the totally silent and emotionless stare on Jonathan's face are unbelievable. After looking at Jonathan's face, you just know that some Japanese blood is about to be splattered everywhere.

Giovanni Ribisi's death scene in Saving Private Ryan was good.....made me pretty uncomfortable.

My favorite over-the-top death sequence was from the movie Commando with Arnold Schwarzenegger. During a brawl with the villain, Arnie grabs a huge pipe and hurls it at him javelin style. The guy gets impaled onto a furnace, and you can see steam from the furnace pouring from the pipe in the guys chest. At this point, Arnie chimes in with "Let off some steam!" Gets me every time.

Nappa...
Did Ribisi play the jewish soldier that was really bold...he would say "juden" to German POWs...he was the one that was slowly stabbed by the german...if so, yes, it made me very uncomfortable, one of the only movies that makes me truly realize death...

On a brighter note, Al Pacino in Scarface has to have the best death in terms of coolness and badassedness...he consumed a mountain of cocaine and recieved a hail of bullets...ahh, thats the way I want to go...

Fudd,

Ribisi was the medic shot in the cow field. But now that you mention it, that jewish character's death was pretty darn gruesome too.

Alan Rickman in Die Hard was a good one.
Alan Rickman in Robin Hood was another good one.

Pretty much anytime Alan Rickman dies onscreen ;)