The movies' most visceral DEATH SCENES... (1 Viewer)

[Mary M S]

William Wallaces wife at the stake, got me too.
recently The slow knife in MNS "Village"
The roulette scene in "Deerhunter"

the worst of all, never shown, but the precurser to a life or death sentence.
"Sophies Choice"

 

[Paul McElligott]

How could I forget?

Kane in Alien.

 

[Tyler Gagnon]

I'm sorry but the death scene in SPR just looked to fake for me....You can see that he was stuck inside the floor..And if somene plunges a knife through your heart that slow, im sure blood would come squirting out all over the guys face...As the one being killed would be in a very stressful moment...Or maybe it was the lack of blood. As to why the scene did not bother me. The scene that bothered me as a child was Sonny being shot to death in the Godfather

 

[David Norman]

Just saw it recently and may have something to do with being burned, but Milla Jovovich in The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc just hurt me to watch.

 

[Paul Padilla]

The infamous Alien scene certainly had it's shock value, (and for the day it was high end SFX) but for me it was so much in the fantasy realm that it didn't hit home in quite that way. The ones that get under my skin have a high sense of realism...no melodrama. I can't say that I've ever witnessed an actual death in that way other than glimpses of "Faces of Death" but I know that most movie deaths don't touch real life.

I've never watched Schindler's List in it's entirety, but some of the killing scenes I've watched are chilling in that the way Spielberg directed the actors. They had more of an involuntary nervous system spasm before they fell. I understand that the crew set off a loud noise before each took place to give the actors a real surprise to deal with similar to what Christopher Walken did before his "fits" in The Dead Zone.

 

[rich_d]

Nice Thread. I also agree with Evelyn's Mulwray's death in Chinatown. Shocking ending.

But I'm surprised that others weren't mentioned as of yet:

The Godfather - lot of choices here but I find Luca Brasi's murder still shocking.

Lion King - Death of the father

Apocalypse Now (Kurtz' Death) It wasn't so much what you saw it what you didn't see, that and the slaugher of a (if I remember correctly a water buffalo) plus Kurtz' final words.

Certainly the shower scene in Psycho might be considered slasher material (or at least the origin of the genre) but to my mind the scarier moment is Arbogast's demise at the top of the stairs.

A few others that come to mind:

The death/battle scene between the two heavyweights in The Deep was particularly scary.

To Kill a Mockingbird The death in the forest scene through the terrified eyes of Scout always gets me.

Blood Simple That death scene by M. Emmet Walsh (so much of terror is what is unseen but imagined) is a classic.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

I 2nd Murphy's death in Robocop.
The dog from that Fly remake.
"Lust" from Se7en ("Sloth" is even wrose, but he technically lives).
Mary from 8mm.

And nobody's mention POTC yet?

 

[WillG]

Alot of mention of Mellish from "Saving Private Ryan" I'm surprised that I have not seen Wade's (Giovanni Ribisi) death as well. That was pretty horrific. They way they wiped blood off him just to have more ooze out through his open skin while he screams "My Liver! My Liver!" and cries out for his mother.

This might be considered slasher, but Fred Gwyne's chracter's death in "Pet Sematary" creeped me out pretty good as well.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I'm apparently in the minority here, but i'm not that disturbed by the stabbing scene in Saving Private Ryan, the context is brutal to be sure, but the actual execution of the scene looks phoney, you can see that the german is just stabbing a piece of cloth pulled taught.

Takes me out of the moment everytime.

It's actually the medic 'Wade' who's death I find hard to watch in that film, it's long and excruciating. When he's whimpering for his mom as he dies, I lose it.

I whole heartedly agree about Casualties of War, to this day it's the one film that I can't bring myself to watch again because it pisses me off and hurts my heart all at once. It's ironic, I suppose, that the film is in my dvd collection but I have never watched it yet.

Any film that features a decapitation disturbs me, I find the whole concept of removing a persons head disturbing.

The one that takes the ultimate prize, though, and one that you probably aren't even aware of, is the death scene in a notorious Japanese horror film called Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood. The whole movie is one long death scene as a maniac in a samurai helmet ties a young woman to a bed and then slowly dismembers her piece by piece.

Check that one out if you dare, I heard a story that Charlie Sheen saw it on tape and notified the police because he actually thought he was watching a real snuff film.

 

[Rhett_Y]

From the movie "Foxes"... When the blond girl dies in the end after the traffic accident.... Seeing her spit the blood into the oxygen mask... Man that scene is a tear jerker...........

Of course the champ.......good lord....

Big fish..........

In Highlander when wife grows old and dies...the conversation she has with McCloud....oh man...

R~

 

[Brett_M]

Besides Mellish (and Wade) in SPR:

The little girl with the ice cream cone who gets shot in the original Assault On Precinct 13.

Pretty much all of Citizen X

Doc J and 8 Ball in Full Metal Jacket

Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry

 

[Malcolm R]

Tea Leoni's character and her father embracing on the beach just before the tidal wave hits in "Deep Impact."

Tea: Daddy!
*wave crashes*

 

[Justin_S]

A few, strictly off the top of my head:

The scene in The Rapture where Sharon shoots her daughter. Despite not actually seeing it, the intense build-up and Mimi Rogers' astounding performance make for a very upsetting sequence.

Jo's demise in The Wages of Fear after being ran over in the oil pit. His final words about the fence get to me.

Basically every death in the heart-wrenching Testament.

The rape/murder in Man Bites Dog.

John's suicide (though he was likely to die anyway) at the end of A Fistful of Dynamite. Everything comes together beautifully to make this a very powerful scene and a perfect ending.

The murders in Badlands due to the emotionless way in which Kit dispatches his victims. Also, the killing of the dog as punishment for Holly dating Kit. The way that scene is shot without sounds makes it especially effective.

The three soldiers' execution in Paths of Glory.

In a Glass Cage... enough said.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I don't think so - I think the death of the William Petersen character in "To Live and Die In LA" was less expected and more shocking due to its casual nature. The movie offs its main character with one more act to go and no fanfare - that shocked me when I first saw it.

Maybe it's an LA thing to have shocking deaths!

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Excellent call - that's maybe the most painful-to-watch scene in any movie.

I also echo the comments about "Robocop" - that's a really upsetting killing scene...

 

[Matt Czyz]

In Babe: Pig in the City, when the crippled dog with the wheeled cart crashed and it seemed like he had died. The wheels keep spinning and then it kicks to a fantasy sequence of the dog running in a sunlit field. He does survive, but that whole sequence is tough to watch.

 

[Chris Atkins]

Without reading the thread, I am going to offer a couple of death scenes that, for me, meet the criteria of the original post.

1) BRAVEHEART--this is the biggie; Wallace's death scene made me physically squirm in my seat, and was only made worse because I cared for the character so. I simply could not believe that he died, and dies so gruesomely.

2) MUNICH--when the guy is stabbed in the head with the knife...just came out of no where, and it was a hauntignly real image.

 

[Colton]

One scene that haunts me to this day is the rape/murder of the women (Cathy Moore and nuns) in Salvador and the discovery of their bodies later.

- Colton

 

[Gregg Shiu]

Can't believe this wasn't mentioned:

In the recent King Kong, Andy Circus' character Lumpy getting eaten by those horrifying slug things. Oh, I will not watch that movie again because of this scene...

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

It's actually Kong's death that get's to me in that film, it breaks my heart. The part that makes me cringe is when, while on top of the Empire State building, he's quietly reaching out to Anne and then suddenly he gets shot multiple times in the back and you see him lurch up and clench his face up in pain.

:frowning: