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

[Neil Joseph]

The moment for me would be the torture and impending death of Christ in The Passion Of Christ. I have seen the film once and cannot watch it again.

 

[Claire Panke]

Visceral death scenes, huh?

The abrupt and shocking death of Roy Dillon in Stephen Frear's The Grifters always does it for me.

One death scene I found fascinating is actually in a mediocre movie. It's the scene in Torn Curtain where Paul Newman and a farm wife kill the baddie (an EG security officer) in the kitchen - a graphic example of how *hard* it can be to actually kill someone. (The guy doesn't go gently into that good night.)

Boromir in FOTR. Definitely.

 

[Tim_Stack]

This thread reminds me of the lyrics to TOOL's "Vicarious" - "I need to watch things die....from a good, safe distance."

 

[WilliamG]

This goes back a ways, but don't laugh because of the movie.

It wasn't that it was 'gory', because it wasn't.

In Rocky III when Mickey dies, it just choked me up. Oh, wow ... on repeated viewings every time the french horns started playing in the background, I'd loose it.

I told you not to laugh.
I still love that movie.

 

[Ray_R]

I'll just make a list:

The Rules of Attraction
When Theresa Wayman's character, The Food Service Girl, commits suicide. That scene still gets to me even several days after watching the film. Makes me wish to actually see Ms. Wayman in person to see if she's okay, that's how convincing to me she was with her acting. I really didn't want her to die.:frowning:

Saving Private Ryan

There are others but the one in The Rules of Attraction still gets to me...

 

[Dick]

And that reminds me of a similar death, in THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY, when Bob Hoskins kills a partner with a broken bottle, cutting open his jugular vein.

And Donald Sutherland's absolutely devastating death - alone and out of reach of his wife and friends - at the climax of DON'T LOOK NOW.

 

[Jefferson Morris]

I'll third this one. For me it's worse than Mellish, because of the character's medical training and his acute awareness that there's nothing anyone can do for him. Bad stuff.

I know it's a corny movie, but several deaths in Krull used to get to me as a wee one--the guy who dies in the quicksand (or really, any quicksand death--shudder. Lawrence of Arabia could be mentioned here), Liam Neeson being slowly impaled by the spike (shades of Mellish), and Rell the Cyclops being crushed by the wall.

And maybe it's not that "visceral," and it turned out to be reversible, but Spock, people. For God's sake. Spock.

--Jefferson Morris

 

[Jon Bell]

Elias' death scene in Platoon always got me-- they're flying over him and Charlie Sheen realizes that they've left him behind...Elias falls to his knees and raises his arms...very moving stuff.

It's been a while since I've seen it, and I wonder if it holds up.

Whoever said Big Fish-- good call-- that really choked me up.

 

[Brandon_T]

When I was a kid, Atreu's horse in Never Ending Story really got to me. As an adult, count me as another one who find Wades death in SPR very difficult. When he asks for Momma, that is very tough to take, especially as a parent now.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

The ironic thing about that scene is that Willem Dafoe was wired with dozens of squibs to simulate machine gun bullets hitting him as he fell, but the squibs failed to go off. The scene was so good, they used it without the FX (and no one really notices that he doesn't get shot once).

 

[Joel C]

For me, the worst is the murder of the mother that ends Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures. The fact that the first blow doesn't kill, and the mom looks up, like "Wha?" Horrible.

 

[Jon Bell]

Jeff, I never noticed that Elias doesn't actually get "shot"-- I could have sworn that you could see him get shot. Great performance.

 

[AlexCremers]

- The wrong guy whose head gets mash-patatoed in Irreversible.

- I second the murder of the Dutch assassin scene in Munich.

- I second Mellish's knife fight in SPR.

- Not really a death scene, but early in Munich, the man whose cheeks gets pierced by a gun shot disturbed me somehow.

- How come Spielberg can make such shocking scenes?

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Was reminded recently of another movie death that kinda makes me uncomfortable everytime I see it.

It takes place in Judgment Night when the villain, Fallon (Denis Leary) fools Ray (Jeremy Pivon) into thinking that he's going to let him live and then suddenly pushes him off the roof anyway.

Ray's scream as he falls to his death is brutal stuff.

 

[BryceRobson]

Some really great scenes mentioned here. Gets my heart aching just reading some of these.

Some that have gone unmentioned and affected me:

Adaptation -- The car crash at the end
Dances with Wolves -- Robert Pastorelli getting scalped towards the beginning
Nurse Betty -- The scalping at the beginning
Dancer in the Dark -- The execution at the end

The first three were painful because, to me, they were so unexpected. One scene I want to mention wasn't even a death scene, but it was so "visceral" that I have to mention it: the beating at the end of The 25th Hour. I just about bawled watching that by myself.

 

[Chris Atkins]

part of that is the cinematography. Spielberg just gets amazingly real images on camera, which enhances any death scene that he shoots.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Spielberg captures the best of anything he shoots, whether it be a death scene an alien or dinosaurs. He's a master at capturing anything under the sun with the same amount of determination to make us believe what were watching.

I love that about him, he made us beleve that we were seeing Omaha beach in SPR and on the other end of the spectrum he made us believe that Jeff Goldblume was being chased by a T-Rex.

 

[MarkHastings]

My #1 most recent 'visceral' death:
"8 Below":Both dogs - Old Jack being burried under the snow and especially the dog that fell down the steep slope.


While I doubt anyone will agree, here are a few others:

-Armageddon: Bruce Willis's character

-Meet Joe Black: Anthony Hopkins character

-Road to Perdition: Tom Hanks character


The above aren't so much the actual death, but the imagery/naration/music (built around the deaths) that gets to me.

 

[Tim Maynard]

A number of the deaths from The Pianist stick in my mind.
More specifically the scene where an elderly man in a wheelchair, unable to stand and salute when Nazi troops enter the house, is picked up and thrown over a 3rd or 4th floor balcony onto the street below.

Kong's death saddens me too.

 

[Don Giro]

I realized after seeing "Saving Private Ryan" that the whole concept of screaming for one's mother can reduce me to tears. I find it incredible in our human nature that in moments of absolute pain and fear, the presence/idea of one's mother could somehow alleviate the situation.

Everyone who thinks the end of "Braveheart" is especially visceral needs to check out HBO's recent miniseries "Elizabeth I." There's a "hung, drawn, and quartered" scene that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination, and is quite possibly the most harrowing, disturbing 30-second sequence I have ever witnessed. The death of Mary Queen of Scots (no, I don't mean the Monty Python version) only minutes later pales in comparison.