The 50 Best Movie Deaths of All Time
For as long as we’ve depicted narratives on film, we’ve been killing human beings in movies. Not literally, of course–fear not, because you haven’t stumbled upon a list of prominent snuff films here. No, we’re talking about the fine art of killing characters on screen, whether that’s a nameless mook being gunned down by Steven Seagal, an unlucky swimmer being pulled to their doom by ravenous sharks, or a title character levying a deathbed confessional surrounded by friends and family. Death, in all its forms, is an integral part of cinematic storytelling.
And yet, wording here really does matter, in terms of setting the boundaries of this conversation and this list. A list of the “best movie deaths” has rather different implied meaning than a list of the “best death scenes,” does it not? The former would seem to imply a collection of the best deaths ever died–cinematic deaths that are defined by how cool they are, how unexpected or creative, or simply how satisfying they may be for the audience. We’re talking about heroes going out in a blaze of glory, villains undone by karmic punishment; moments that make your jaw drop with sheer audacity, disgusting commitment or yes, emotional catharsis. “Best death scenes,” on the other hand, would seemingly have a more somber implication: More expectation of tearful reconciliations, hospital bedsides and sober attitudes. And that’s fine, but I tend to lean toward whichever option involves the chance to share some obscure clips of guys getting blowed up real good. I trust you’re with me on this.
This was not an easy list to assemble, but when push comes to shove I tried to favor instances where the death itself was the most memorable aspect, rather than specific character reactions to a more relatively mundane passing. For instance, Tom Cruise gives an absolutely electric performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, melting down over the hospital bed of Earl, but it’s this reaction that is so noteworthy rather than the death itself. Ditto Ricky Schroeder’s famously heart-wrenching performance as a child in 1979’s The Champ as he processes the post-match death of his boxer father, coming to terms with something no small kid should have to face. These moments are emotional tour de forces, but it’s not the death that people remember, so you won’t find them here.
Things also get murky when it’s unclear when exactly a death could be said to have happened. When, for example, do most characters die in John Carpenter’s The Thing? The answer would be off camera: They’re killed and assimilated by The Thing off screen, which serves the mystery of the film but technically means that when they’re later dispatched, it’s not a human death.
With that in mind, here are a couple more ground rules we used in assembling this list:
— Mass deaths in general do not count; we’re focusing on individual deaths. That means you won’t find the entire dance floor being cut in half in the opening scene of Ghost Ship here, or a concession to say, crowds of fleeing people being stepped on by Godzilla or killed in massive kaiju battles. An exception is that we can highlight a single death within the midst of a mass series of deaths, if it individually stands out so much that we feel it needs to be mentioned.
— We’re not allowing any instances where someone appears to have died, but then is revealed to have survived, nor any instances where someone who has died resurrects or comes back to life within the same film. So that means we have no E.T. dying (or did he?) before coming back to life when his people return for him, nor The Iron Giant heroically sacrificing itself, given the ending’s implication of his impending resurrection.
— The list is restricted to humans, former humans, and humanoid robots, or else I’d have to devote a substantial chunk of it to extremely distressing dog deaths, Disney animal demises, and monster deaths like Godzilla’s meltdown in Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, so I’ll spare you that depression. That covers Bambi’s mother, Mufasa’s plunge, et al.
So with that said, let’s dive into this collection of cinema’s greatest demises.
50. Propeller Guy – Titanic (1997)
Director: James Cameron
There’s something beautiful about a small, incidental death that just adds insult to injury. This nameless guy, leaping from the aft of the Titanic as it begins its descent into the icy Atlantic waters, was going to die no matter what he did. The life boats? They had long since been lowered and rowed away by the lucky first-class folks and their pampered children. This guy’s only options were to wait until the ship sucks him down into the depths, or make a crazed leap, so we can’t exactly fault him for the choice. One wonders if it was Cameron himself who suggested “Hey, what if he hits the propeller on his way down and begins to crazily pinwheel as he plummets another 200 feet to the water?”
Either way, it’s a hilariously spiteful little detail on the part of the filmmakers, but the combination of the satisfying *plink* his body makes when hitting the propeller and his subsequent tumbling motion must have caused many an unexpected guffaw in the midst of Cameron’s jaw-dropping disaster sequences. Consider this entry a shout-out to every bystander death in the entire disaster genre; completely unimportant to the narrative but oddly memorable all the same. Propeller Guy died as he lived: Cartwheeling toward doom. —Jim Vorel
49. Last-second mini-rocket – Blood Debts (1985)
Director: Teddy Page
If the last entry was dedicated to every notable bystander death in cinematic history, then please bear with me and allow this entry to do the same for garishly absurd B-movie villain deaths. In that category, you’d be hard-pressed to do better than the closing moments–and I mean moments–of 1985 Filipino vigilante revenge movie Blood Debts, which sees Richard Harrison’s protagonist Mark shot in the back by the Big Bad. Scrambling on the ground, he flips over and rolls up his sleeve to reveal what appears to be a tiny, spring-loaded flare gun, which proceeds to fire a miniature rocket that explodes the villain into tiny bits. This would be a spectacular death in absolutely any context, but what really makes this one instantly iconic is the fact that the villain’s body exploding is quite literally the final frame of the film: It then pauses and displays the following, all lower case text: “mark collins, age 45, gave himself up to the authorities after the incident. he is now serving a life sentence.” Cue credits and bizarrely upbeat music.
The incredible abruptness of this death has made it an enduring meme and frequent target of parody since its rediscovery–it is truly one of the most unintentionally hilarious villain denouements in film history. Once seen, it can’t be forgotten. You can also consider its inclusion here as a tribute to the countless classic Shaw Brothers martial arts/kung fu classics that likewise end within literal seconds of their Big Bads being dispatched by the heroes, or even before the villain has had a chance to finish dying. —Jim Vorel
48. Mr. Creosote – Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983)
Director: Terry Jones
Although most audiences tend to think of the humor of Monty Python in terms of the relatively safe silliness and wordplay of Holy Grail or the social commentary of Life of Brian, the group wasn’t above utterly garish gross-out gags as well. Mr. Creosote’s entire appearance in The Meaning of Life has to be considered the zenith in that capacity–from the moment he rolls himself through the door, it’s difficult to even look at the grotesqueness of the caricature of extravagant wealth, boorish behavior and hedonism, and that’s before he even starts projectile vomiting on everything and everyone within a few feet of his table.
Fittingly, he is of course undone by being goaded one step too far, with that final, “wafer thin” after-dinner mint. Judging from the behavior of John Cleese’s unflappable maître d’, it seems like the subsequent explosion of Mr. Creosote is by no means an accident. Notably, he actually doesn’t appear to be quite dead (pardon the Python references) at the end of the sketch even after his entire body has erupted, but I think we can safely surmise that he won’t be leaving the restaurant in anything other than a jumbo body bag. —Jim Vorel
47. Drill through the floor – Body Double (1984)
Director: Brian De Palma
There were plenty of discomfiting opportunities to watch beautiful women gorily dispatched in 1980s slasher movies, so there’s a perverse brilliance in the fact that one of the most memorable “kills” of that era came via a Brian De Palma thriller rather than a Freddy or a Jason. Not that De Palma is above slashers, of course (he has multiple scenes of literal slashing across his filmography), but he outdoes so many actual horror movies with the neo-Hitchcockian wielding of a power drill (tethered to the wall by its power cord, naturally), cutting away from the scene only to have it intrude into the room below, where protagonist Jake (Craig Wasson) watches in horror as the bloodied drill cuts through the ceiling. Suggestion and shock, all in one; that’s the magic of the movies. —Jesse Hassenger
46. Workout cockroach transformation – A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
Director: Renny Harlin
Rest assured, I could very easily assemble just a list of the best vintage slasher movie deaths, so I’m fighting hard to keep this list from being entirely overwhelmed by them. Of the “big three” classic slasher franchises (Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street), it’s obviously Nightmare that always had carte blanche to explore the most creative and ridiculous kill sequences, owing to the fantastical nature of Freddy Krueger’s dream realm and his always nebulous powers. This kill is a perfect instance of the “Wait, how exactly can Freddy do that?” moments that litter the series, but mostly it’s just one of the gnarliest pieces of practical FX to ever grace an ‘80s horror movie.
The unlucky recipient of this death is Debbie, who in the style of these movies is reduced to a single character trait: She’s a jock girl who likes to lift weights, and she hates insects. Thus, her “totally ironic” death obviously involves both of these things–Freddy appears while she’s pumping iron in her garage and proceeds to force the weights down on her, which leads to a hideously graphic moment where her arms rip open at the elbows. But wait, we’re not done! We then see that the arms have ripped because she’s transforming into a Cronenberg-esque cockroach creature, whose face sloughs off in a supremely gooey bit of FX as she blunders into a roach motel. Freddy then puts her out of her misery by crushing the trap, with more oozing payoff. Totally disgusting, completely awesome–and a high mark for FX-driven deaths in ‘80s slasher movies. —Jim Vorel
45. Alec Trevelyan – GoldenEye (1995)
Director: Martin Campbell
Trevelyan is one of the most fondly remembered Bond villains, not just for Sean Bean’s magnetic portrayal, but for the fact that he represented something we’ve still rarely seen in the secret agent series 30 years later: A rival 00 MI-6 agent who truly feels like he’s on the level of James Bond, and one who begins the film as a friend who appears to die a tragic death. He’s still referenced to this day as a sort of dark twin to the character of Bond; an illustration of how Bond might have looked had he ever been consumed by the darkness within him.
Also, he dies a hell of a death, plunging from the top of Puerto Rico’s iconic Arecibo radio telescope and then slamming into its surface in an incredibly satisfying, bone-shaking thud. This surely would have killed the guy in short order, but the maximalist series has to cram one final explosion in there, proceeding to drop the entire erupting structure of the telescope on him in a fiery coup de grâce of the highest order. Pretty much two deaths for the price of one. Spoiler alert: Befitting a performer so famously associated with dying on screen, this will not be Sean Bean’s last entry on this list. —Jim Vorel
44. Penguin’s watery funeral – Batman Returns (1992)
Director: Tim Burton
One of the many ways in which Tim Burton’s superhero sequel tops the original: The first film’s Joker receives a generic Disney villain’s falling death, while Danny DeVito’s Penguin is afforded a more grotesquely poetic ending in Batman Returns. At first, Penguin does fall from a great height, into the icy, polluted waters of the abandoned Gotham City Zoo where he makes his hideout, but this doesn’t quite kill him; a little while later, he rises from his watery would-be grave, dripping black bile (as he’s wont to do) and breathing laboriously. After taking one last ill-fated shot at the Bat, he collapses on the ground, and then something beautiful and eerie happens: a group of emperor penguins march forth and accompany his body, sliding him back into the drink. Burton is so brilliant at constructing bizarre fantasy worlds for his characters that this flight of fancy feels like a grace note, stressing his villain’s misfit status even in his death. —Jesse Hassenger
43. Crushed by ice cubes – Saw IV (2007)
Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Every Saw movie has at least one gnarly death scene, if not five or six. But many of them are more notable for the trap-torture the individual endures before inevitably succumbing to the limits of the human body, rather than the death itself. Oddly, one of the most purely memorable deaths occurs at the end of Saw IV, which is arguably the worst installment of the series and, at minimum, in competition for the title. Through a complicated series of flashbacks, retcons, and sidequeling, it eventually comes to pass that if someone bursts through a set of doors before a timer is up, a pair of massive ice cubes will descend on either side of Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) from Saw II. In a frenzy of crazed Saw melodrama, this is exactly what happens, and two gigantic blocks of ice pulverize Wahlberg’s head (and each other). For all the build-up, it’s one of the most succinct and visually memorable moments in the entire death-saturated, grindhouse-y series. —Jesse Hassenger
42. Little Bill’s protest – Unforgiven (1992)
Director: Clint Eastwood
Unforgiven ends with a shoot-out that’s visually and tonally dark, as reformed killer William Munny (Clint Eastwood) fully returns to his old ways in revenge for the killing and desecration of his friend Ned (Morgan Freeman). When he works his way up to the cruel town sheriff “Little Bill” Daggett (Gene Hackman) and has the man dead to rites, Bill spits out an angry protest: “I don’t deserve this… to die like this. I was building a house.” Munny responds succinctly, chillingly, and inarguably: “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.” In this moment, Eastwood refutes the myth of righteous Old West violence; Munny may be killing in vengeance, but he can’t pretend it’s only justice, either. —Jesse Hassenger
41. Log truck guy – Final Destination 2 (2003)
Director: David R. Ellis
For an entire series literally and narratively built around death scenes, you couldn’t make a list like this without giving some acknowledgement to the Final Destination franchise. They’ve been serving up rich, creamy bowls of … uh, death … for a quarter of a century, punctuated by the recent series-spanning reboot of Final Destination Bloodlines. Along the way, there have been more impalements, electrocutions and explosions than one can count, along with the occasional tanning bed disaster, but no death sequence or premonition in series history has had such a lasting, elemental impact as the opening road fatality sequence of Final Destination 2, which is of course kicked off by a log truck whose payload is released in the middle of a busy interstate. Suffice to say, these few moments have quite literally changed how a substantial percentage of the U.S. population reacts to the presence of a log truck for the next two decades and change.
The representative for this list, then, goes to the single, isolated man who takes the full brunt of the first log released from the truck: Thomas Burke (Michael Landes), a guy who also has the odd distinction of being one of the few souls to canonically survive a Final Destination film and its aftermath. In the opening premonition, though, he dies one of the most abrupt but indisputably thorough deaths anyone has ever died, as the released log perfectly pierces the front windshield of his police cruiser and proceeds to splatter him out the back windshield, now a shower of meat. It’s the ultimate representation of the “here one moment, gone the next” ethos of the death-obsessed series; a guy who has just enough time to widen his eyes before he’s effectively deleted from existence. —Jim Vorel
40. Nathan stabbed by his creations – Ex Machina (2014)
Director: Alex Garland
If you’re the creator of a sophisticated A.I. or android in a science fiction movie, then you must know on some level that the likelihood of that creation causing your death is best represented by a probability approaching 100%. It’s the Frankenstein paradox: He who creates artificial life is doomed to be destroyed by it. So it is for Oscar Isaac’s brilliant but arrogant and narcissistic Nathan Bateman, creator of a variety of androids (all in female shapes, hmmm) of increasingly sophisticated emotional intelligence. Ex Machina drops us into a battle of wits and wills between Nathan, his creation Ava (Alicia Vikander) and an employee tasked with assisting him in determining if Ava possesses true human consciousness; she ultimately proves a match and then some for the film’s men in the manipulation department. Nathan’s “artificial” servants eventually team up to dispatch their creator from this plane, but what stands out in the death of the genius is the relative softness of it–the way the androids slowly, almost gently, effortlessly slide the knife into his back and chest like a hot knife through butter. He doesn’t scream, or thrash. The expression is of total shock and disbelief, building to consternation and disappointment. Ava doesn’t gloat; she doesn’t seem to feel satisfaction. All that matters is her freedom. It’s a death that is passionately dispassionate on both ends. —Jim Vorel
39. “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” – White Heat (1949)
Director: Raoul Walsh
The Hays Code dictated that characters should not get away with crimes in order to achieve a happy ending, and while that doesn’t seem like an aim of the classic 1949 gangster noir White Heat, you still have to admire the zeal with which the movie punishes hardened criminal Cody Jarrett (James Cagney), redemption being self-evidently off the table. A psychotic momma’s boy, Cody is pursued by the cops and participates in a shoot-out that leaves him as the last member of his gang standing – standing on top of a gas tank, as it turns out, meaning that just after Jarrett calls out “made it, ma! Top of the world!” the tank explodes and he’s engulfed in flames. His body isn’t shown, of course, but the repeated fiery explosions drive it home: This is a gruesome, spectacular demise befitting Cagney’s go-for-broke performance. —Jesse Hassenger
38. Hitler perforated – Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Through the vast majority of Tarantino’s WWII revenge epic Inglourious Basterds, there’s really not a lot to indicate that the story we’re seeing intends to diverge particularly drastically from the actual history of the second world war. Sure, I’m fairly certain that the Basterds themselves are largely fictional, functioning as they do on screen as an invincible commando strike force behind enemy lines, sowing terror and confusion. But when it comes to actual, major historical figures like Adolf Hitler and the German high command, we know how those people died or were captured in real life at the end of the war. It seeds Tarantino’s film with an unspoken expectation that the Basterds’ mission will end in some noble failure or symbolic victory … and then they burst right into Hitler’s opera box and spray him with machine gun rounds. It’s so shockingly direct that the initial response is incredulous, and then delighted: “Oh wow, they actually got him!”
Then there’s the charnel chaos of the scene itself, intersecting as it does with Shoshanna’s own plot to burn down the theater, which the Basterds know nothing about. You have to wonder if they wonder for some half instant why the screen is going up in flames as Shoshanna’s narration intones Germany’s doom, but they’re simultaneously so lost in the moment and in the bloodlust that there’s no time to think about it, not when there’s wholesale Nazi killing to be done. Eli Roth’s Bear Jew descends into the red mist of rage-fueled madness as he pumps round after round into the German dictator’s very clearly dead body, ticking down the seconds until the entire theater explodes in a fireball that kills everyone not already gunned down. Hardcore. —Jim Vorel
37. Casey Becker – Scream (1996)
Director: Wes Craven
This is one of those deaths that feels at least fairly conventional in hindsight, but that’s only because so many filmmakers have brazenly built upon (or outright copied) Craven’s brilliant, satirical Scream stylings in the years to follow. Consider how it might have felt to be an audience member in 1996 who knew nothing of the Scream franchise to follow, only knowing that you’ve cold opened on a character played by wild child ‘90s icon Drew Barrymore. She’s easily the most famous performer in the cast: Surely this must be our protagonist, right? It would have been an entirely reasonable assumption to make, which seeds us with the expectation that her initial phone encounter with the snarling psycho known as Ghostface is just intended to set the stakes for the film, not leave her butchered in front of her parents.
Suffice to say, like Hitchcock before him, Craven flipped the script by killing a character (quickly, rather than Psycho’s second act stunner) that the audience simply doesn’t expect to die, or at least not to die in the film’s opening sequence. Casey’s death sets the tone for the entire Scream franchise to follow: Expect inversions of genre precedent, and don’t expect any mercy from Ghostface, even if he promises to spare you for answering a few trivia questions. I’ve always felt particularly bad for Casey’s poor parents, who have to hear her faint signs of life over the phone before Ghostface dispatches her and strings her up. It’s harsh, but that’s what classic slasher villains do. —Jim Vorel
36. Marvin and a Wayward Bullet – Pulp Fiction (1994)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino previsions the sudden-death gag of Final Destination and so many others in a death scene so casually cruel that you can’t help but laugh. Turning to demand debate participation from Marvin (Phil LaMarr, who went on to voice Hermes on Futurama), the young guy who Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta) have just extracted from a messy shoot-out, Vincent’s gun goes off unexpectedly and splatters Marvin’s head all over the car they’re riding in. Nonchalant reactions to violence played for laughs can be noxious, but Tarantino and his actors play this out perfectly: Travolta sounds dejected (“aw, man, I shot Marvin in the face”), which makes his reaction both comically underplayed and oddly sincere, while Jackson is apoplectic about the inconvenience about to ensue. It’s a master class in dark comedy that somehow doesn’t feel completely heartless. —Jesse Hassenger
35. Old man Logan says goodbye – Logan (2017)
Director: James Mangold
It’s quite a thing, to be tasked with killing one of the more generally unkillable characters in superhero fiction. Wolverine has come back from most every form of physical violence there is–at one point in the comics, he was ripped in half by the Hulk and merely grumbled as he crawled to piece his bits back together. James Mangold’s Logan, on the other hand, has no such cheeky, lighthearted attitude toward death–it instead offers a far more sober examination of the moment that encroaching mortality actually becomes real for a man who has always lived beyond its touch. As Wolverine ages, beaten down by both physical and emotional wounds in a reality where superheroes effectively lost their fight to make the world a better place, he comes to realize that his innate mutant power to rapidly heal and regenerate from any damage is failing. Coupled with the unnatural experiments that have been performed on him to graft adamantium to his bones, this version of Logan is effectively a walking brick and scar tissue and arthritis, nearly crippled by pain and regret.
That is, until he meets Laura, a young girl who shares similar powers, who turns out to be a clone created with Logan’s own DNA, effectively making her the child he could never have. The stage is obviously set here for some heroic sacrifice, which Hugh Jackman obliges us with in a final battle against another one of his own, mindless clones. As he finally approaches the threshold of death, Logan is at peace, hopeful that Laura will be able to find a life to live that is free from the kind of rage and violence that plagued his own. Comic book movies don’t typically deliver the most poignant deaths, which is of course what made Logan such a welcome diversion. —Jim Vorel
34. The final plunge – Thelma & Louise (1991)
Director: Ridley Scott
It’s the way that they go, specifically, sort of offscreen yet completely visible. It’s easy to picture a Bonnie-and-Clyde style ending for Thelma (Geena Davis) and Louise (Susan Sarandon), despite the fact that their crime spree consists of a single murder and one robbery. It’s easy for them to picture it, too, and so they choose to “keep going,” leadfooting their car into the Grand Canyon as the movie fades to white. As with so many older crime pictures, we don’t actually see them die – not to keep the matter ambiguous, but to preserve the two friends on their own terms. —Jesse Hassenger
33. Jason Voorhees vs. Corey Feldman – Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter (1984)
Director: Joseph Zito
Jason Voorhees has died a solid handful of cinematic deaths since the character was first introduced in 1980’s Friday the 13th. He may or may not have drowned in Crystal Lake as a child. He eventually ends up an undead golem, dissolved by toxic sewer waste in Jason Takes Manhattan. He’s blown to tiny bits in the entirely unexpected opening of Jason Goes to Hell. But The Final Chapter can still feel, more than 40 years later, like his only true, legitimate adult death, probably because it was planned to be: After four installments (although he’s only the primary antagonist of three), producers figured that Friday the 13th had probably just about run its course, so they planned to give Jason a proper exit via Part IV. That’s awfully quaint to think now, given that there are to date 12 entries in the franchise, but this death remains symbolic and important to the series lore: It both gives Jason one of his most prominent archenemies in Tommy Jarvis, and it separates the Friday the 13th series into “pre-resurrection” Jason, who is still theoretically something of a flesh and blood human, and the unstoppable undead abomination he would be from the time of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives onward.
It also gives us some of the grossest practical FX of the original Friday series, courtesy of the legendary Tom Savini. After being unmasked and distracted by some clever pop psychology, Jason is laid low by his own machete to the face, wielded by the 12-year-old Tommy. Simply embedding the blade square into his face would have been gross enough, but what really makes this kill legendary is the fact that Jason then pitches forward onto the blade, which holds him up like a tent spike, only for his weight to then cause his face to slide down the machete, partially bisected. If you only ever caught Friday the 13th entries during AMC Halloween marathons on cable (certainly true for me as a kid), this is the kind of gory goodness you never saw until tracking down the uncensored, original versions years later. It’s truly quite gross; don’t say we didn’t warn you. Props to Tommy for finally putting Jason in the ground before he rises like Frankenstein’s monster to menace Tommy again in series highlight Jason Lives. —Jim Vorel
32. A monster’s tragic mistake – Frankenstein (1931)
Director: James Whale
James Whale’s adaptation of Frankenstein goes further than many modern horror movies dare when it has the Creature (Boris Karloff) encounter a little girl by a lake. She invites him to play a game, tossing flowers in the water to watch them float, and enjoying but not fully understanding, the Creature then tosses her in the water, too. She drowns, off screen but unmistakably, which eventually incites villagers to form a mob and pursue the Creature. It’s a turn of events all the scarier because it stems from such pain and misunderstanding, as the child’s death scene avoids exploitation and underlines the tragedy beneath the monster-movie horror. The monster had no malice in his heart, but that won’t save him when the pitchforks and torches come out. —Jesse Hassenger
31. Alice steps into the void – The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
Director: Michael Mann
Through most of the narrative of Michael Mann’s Last of the Mohicans, the character of Alice is treated as something of an afterthought. It’s her sister Cora who is important, given that she’s the love interest (stay alive!) of Daniel Day Lewis’ Nathaniel “Hawkeye” Poe, even though both sisters are equally endangered as they’re repeatedly captured by the heartless Magua (Wes Studi in an all-time villain role) and his band of vengeful Hurons. But when Alice, not gifted with many lines in the screenplay, steps toward the ledge of a gorge in despair after witnessing the death of her Mohican love interest Uncas, time suddenly stands still. Few performers on screen have ever looked more radiant and ethereal than English actress Jodhi May in this moment as she grapples with overwhelming despair and finally finds a well of defiance within her.
The exchange of looks here, between Alice and Magua, is entirely wordless, but their body language says it all. Magua, the cold-blooded killer, looks subtly chilled as he realizes that Alice’s threat is not a bluff. We see the respect he suddenly has for her. He lowers his knife, attempting to imply a less threatening posture, but reaches for her with the hand coated in her own lover’s blood. Alice, on the other hand, cannot be cowed. Even though she’s potentially moments away from rescue, she chooses to spite and spurn Magua after the death of Uncas by stepping off the ledge into thin air, claiming more or less the only moment of agency she’s been given. The Huron warriors look on for a moment, stunned by her action. Trevor Jones’ iconic, orchestral score hauntingly amplifies the feeling of exquisite tragedy. It’s one of the best film deaths ever for a relatively minor character. —Jim Vorel
30. Psychic head eruption – Scanners (1981)
Director: David Cronenberg
It’s telling that even after an entire career spent doing unspeakable things to various parts of the human anatomy, it’s still this entry from 1981’s Scanners that immediately comes to mind as the gnarliest way that David Cronenberg ever killed a guy on screen. The poor psychic depicted here–a titular “scanner”–has no idea what he’s in for when he sits down at a public demonstration to read the mind of a man he thinks is merely an audience volunteer. Suffice to say, he’s about to be sacrificed in a demonstrative show of power by the villainous Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside), who is secretly an even more powerful scanner.
An aspect I love about this death is that we view it entirely from a bystander’s perspective and are not privy to the inner contents of the telepathic battle that seems to be unfolding between the two. Who knows what Revok may be taunting the bald scanner with as he breaks down his psychic defenses? We see only the pain and eventual total panic and desperation of the poor guy in the moments before his entire head detonates. A shotgun shell was reportedly used to burst the latex head (filled with dog food!) in a ridiculously graphic shower of gore–it’s the kind of effect that now sadly tends to be rendered with CGI instead, but it feels so much more viscerally gross and squelchy here. You wouldn’t end up remembering the CGI head explosion; this one you can never forget. —Jim Vorel
29. The five point palm exploding heart technique – Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
There are an awful lot of quality death contenders you could nominate from the two halves of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill revenge epic: O. Ren Ishi’s demise at the House of Blue Leaves; an unfortunate Budd thrashing about after taking a Black Mamba bite; Vernita Green dying in front of her daughter, and more. But none of those deaths, cool as they undoubtedly are, end up having the poignancy of The Bride finally dispatching the titular Bill, using the ultimate technique taught to her by Gordon Liu’s cruel, white-haired kung fu master Pai Mei. It’s a classic Tarantino callback: The existence of the “five point palm exploding heart technique” is mentioned earlier, and we’re meant to think that Pai Mei would never teach such a secret technique to anyone … but clearly, Beatrix Kiddo isn’t just anyone. That Pai Mei thought she was worthy of learning the technique marks her for the audience as the old master’s greatest student; just one more badass credential on her mantle.
This death is so satisfying on screen, mostly thanks to David Carradine’s gravitas and dignified realization of what has just happened to him, and his acceptance in embracing a death that has been a long time coming. Content that his daughter will no doubt be in good hands with her now avenged mother, Bill stands up, straightens and buttons his jacket, and bravely strides forward to finally see what is on the other side of the veil. He’s sent so many others to death; it’s time for him to finally experience it himself. —Jim Vorel
28. Ending decapitation – Deep Red (1975)
Director: Dario Argento
This list was bound to include a Dario Argento shout-out in it somewhere, although as with the slasher genre I’m sort of having to fight myself to keep it from being filled with classic giallo kills as well, from the likes of Mario Bava (several in A Bay of Blood) to Lucio Fulci (an impaled eyeball in Zombi 2 comes to mind). There are multiple deaths in Deep Red alone that could qualify, especially that of Professor Giordani, who encounters an iconically creepy doll before the mysterious, glove-wearing killer inflicts all sorts of hard-to-watch oral violence upon him.
We’ll go, however, with the death that closes the film, as protagonist Marcus is accosted by a meat cleaver-wielding assailant in an apartment hallway. Ducking out of the way, the killer stumbles forward, and their metal necklace becomes entangled with the lattice of the elevator door. The quick-thinking (by now rather homicidal himself) Marcus then pushes the button to send the elevator down, which has the effect of drawing the (quite sturdy, apparently) necklace taut against the attacker’s neck. And, well … the neck can only take so much force, can it? The metal chain slices straight through, for a grisly decapitation. The actual act of violence is only a couple of seconds, but Argento then lingers on the chain as it hangs and drips blood/tempera paint, letting the audience imagine the aftermath of the scene rather than needing to directly depict it. It’s a tiny bit of tactfulness in a death that is already plenty lurid. —Jim Vorel
27. Toxic waste guy goes splat – RoboCop (1987)
Director: Paul Verhoeven
The films of Paul Verhoeven have plenty of memorably gory deaths (Starship Troopers alone is practically an anthology of them), but for sheer gruesome majesty, it’s hard to top Emil Antonowsky (Paul McCrane), who crashes his van into a vat of toxic waste, which soaks and horrifically mutates him. Though he’s clearly not long for his world, his exit is hastened by boss Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith), who accidentally slams into Emil with his car, causing his waste-weakened body to flat-out burst, soaking the car in viscera (and prompting a reaction from Clarence akin to a driver scraping up his fender). Verhoeven is always conscious of how violence gets repackaged as entertainment (and isn’t shy about doing so himself), but there’s also a disquieting fatefulness about how one of the movie’s main bad guys ends up as gunk on another one’s windshield. —Jesse Hassenger
26. William Wallace is martyred – Braveheart (1995)
Director: Mel Gibson
Say what you will of Mel Gibson’s particular strain of self-aggrandizement and disdain for historical accuracy: We can at least still agree that Braveheart contains some truly gnarly battle scenes, and an equally powerful bit of emotional propaganda in the death of William Wallace to match. Americans have always loved stories of rebellious iconoclasts and idealists who refuse to yield, who cannot be broken even in defeat, and Gibson’s film version of William Wallace is certainly both of those things. Betrayed yet again by Scottish nobles who lack Wallace’s conviction that Scotland can throw off English rule, and captured by the hated forces of King Edward I (“Longshanks”), Wallace is brought to London, where he faces the prospect of a slow death by torture, wherein the King’s soldiers will first try to make him renounce his cause. Ever proud, Wallace refuses the painkiller smuggled to him by his princess admirer, saying that it would dull his wits and make him more likely to crack under the pressure. Wallace ultimately endures the torture to the point of death, his final, iconic cry of “freedom!” standing as a defiant signal that some people simply refuse to budge in their belief of what is righteous and what is right. It’s a rather corny, simplistic sentiment looking back on the film these days–and not even the best Scottish Highland movie to come out in 1995–but you’ve got to admit that when immersed in the flow of Braveheart, this death has serious emotional power. —Jim Vorel
25. Kurtz butchered – Apocalypse Now (1979)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
In director Francis Ford Coppola’s sumptuous Apocalypse Now, American soldier and assassin Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen) has been sent up river from Vietnam into Cambodia, hunting a man who has built himself up into a philosopher god, drenched in blood. His target is the now “insane” Col. Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a highly decorated former U.S. Special Forces operative who had been tasked with assembling a guerilla army to harass the Viet Cong, only for Kurtz to become steadily more disillusioned with the very idea of any form of conventional morality, obsessed with U.S. hypocrisies. Eventually, all that remains is Kurtz’s acknowledgement of strength and survival … that, and his not so secret desire to die, after all he’s witnessed and perpetrated. And Willard will have to be the one to put the mad dog down, though getting to Kurtz (and past the fanatics he’s collected around himself) will not be easy.
What follows is a famously moody, psychedelically tinged sequence, set to The Doors’ “The End,” which sees Willard rise from the steaming water in the midst of a storm and festival celebrations, infiltrating Kurtz’s private quarters so he can assassinate the rogue soldier with a machete. Much of the actual death of Kurtz is obscured in the darkness, but Coppola suggests it by intercutting graphic, genuinely disturbing footage of the ritual killing of a water buffalo by a local tribe in the Philippines, where the movie was filmed. Like the buffalo, Kurtz is hewn down where he stands, wanting to die on his feet. It’s a death that isn’t particularly satisfying to watch in a vacuum–you really need the physical and metaphorical journey that is Apocalypse Now in order to build to the moment of animalistic savagery that is Kurtz’s ultimate demise. —Jim Vorel
24. Psychic multi-explosion – The Fury (1978)
Director: Brian De Palma
It’s sort of funny how director Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976) is still a universally recognized story of psychic and telekinetic vengeance all these decades later, but the other story about psychic powers he made two years later has been largely forgotten even by most ardent horror geeks. The Fury is significantly stranger and more ambitious, but lacks the everyman Stephen King quality that likely made Carrie’s schoolyard bullying and cruelty resonate, instead immersing itself in the clandestine (and stuffier) world of secret government agencies attempting to weaponize the emerging psychic abilities of American children and teenagers. Our high school-aged protagonist Gillian (Amy Irving, also in Carrie) is one of these psychics who is just beginning to touch her powers when she’s drawn into a conflict between the father of an abducted psychic child and the government agent Childress (John Cassavetes), who wants to exploit him.
This death occurs in what are literally the film’s closing moments as Gillian carries out her revenge on Childress for his manipulations, and plays out as if David Cronenberg had treated the exploding head in Scanners as a test run before saying “But what if we blew up the entire body in an absurdly bloody fireball?” In particular, I find the replays and multiple angles on the explosion hilarious–they wanted to make sure you didn’t miss the slightest bit of detail on their expensive explosion, which results in us seeing elements of the blast no fewer than 13 consecutive times in rapid succession. The head of Cassavetes pops straight up like a champagne cork, as the rest of his body blows up to triumphant music like the detonating Death Star. Smash cut to the credits. I can only imagine the mixture of laughter, screaming and incredulous chatter that must have followed as movie patrons stood up to exit the theater. Talk about closing your feature with a bang. —Jim Vorel
23. Maximus goes home – Gladiator (2000)
Director: Ridley Scott
There’s something lovely about how director Ridley Scott illustrates the thin boundary between our life and the life beyond via the death of Russell Crowe’s Maximus in 2000’s Gladiator. Heavily wounded in his deadly arena battle with Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), Maximus is undeniably the victor, but even though the soldier of Rome is still on his feet, his eyes are seeing two realities at once. He is effectively straddling the line metaphysically between worlds: In the flesh and blood world, he gives his final instructions for Roman reforms to Quintus, and shares a poignant glance or two with former lover Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). But on the other side of the veil, Maximus simultaneously sees himself approaching his own country estate, hands caressing the flowing fields of grain as he crests the hills, knowing that his home, wife and son are waiting for him. Lucilla effectively gives him permission to go, his lifetime of service to Rome finally complete, telling him simply “go to them.” It’s one of the more hopeful cinematic depictions of death you’ll come across, where the valorous are seemingly rewarded for their toil on Earth with an idealized version of that life in death. Ridley Scott presents us with several very different views of death in the context of this particular list, but the passing of Maximus in Gladiator is by far the most ethereal and serene. Would that we could all be so comforted in our final moments. —Jim Vorel
22. Spock says goodbye – Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Director: Nicholas Meyer
A death scene so iconic that Star Trek Into Darkness couldn’t resist the opportunity to remix it, Spock’s demise in Star Trek II is rightly considered a Trek movie highlight. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) enters a radioactive engine room in order to restore warp power to the Enterprise and save all of his friends. He explains that this is the “logical” decision, the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few – but in his dying moments adds a less utilitarian message to Captain Kirk: “I have been, and always shall be, your friend.” It’s a perfect affirmation, mirroring the reassurance so many fans received from revisiting their Trek faves over the years. —Jesse Hassenger
21. Tina on the ceiling – A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Director: Wes Craven
Before Freddy Krueger devolved into primarily being a punny quip machine, the slasher icon retained a significantly more grim, savage disposition. That attitude is on display through most of his first outing in 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, but particularly in the early death of Tina (Amanda Wyss), which also stood out at the time (and today, 40+ years later) as a watershed moment in the history of practical FX in the slasher horror subgenre. Where before this point, slasher films had been largely content to merely butcher teenagers via conventional, hack ‘n slash methods, Craven’s film pushed the boundaries not only of what was possible, but what kind of creativity filmmakers cared enough to employ in the pursuit of tawdry genre entertainment. This insistence on innovation is how we ended up with the ingenious revolving room set developed for Nightmare, which allowed Craven to seemingly drag poor, dreaming Tina up onto the ceiling in defiance of gravity as an invisible Krueger slices her to ribbons.
The freakiest thing about this death sequence is the primary perspective we see it from: That of Tina’s boyfriend Rod, who wakes to her thrashing in bed, only to watch as she’s heaved into the air and sliced open. It really is an arduous 60 seconds or so–the attack feels deeply transgressive and perverted, occurring as it does in the intimacy of bed, and it’s hard to watch Rod’s total powerlessness as he simply calls Tina’s name over and over again. Seeing what Freddy Krueger can do here, the thought of trying to resist him seems entirely hopeless. The villain implies that he is god; we see little evidence to the contrary, which is chilling, making you wonder what kind of actual god would allow such a thing. This death may well represent the peak moment of the golden age of the American slasher film, before it increasingly grew into feverish decadence. —Jim Vorel
20. Happy trails, Hans – Die Hard (1988)
Director: John McTiernan
It has been said that genuine surprise or shock is one of the rarest expressions for photographers to catch on camera, because it’s one of those things that is inherently ephemeral and fleeting–surprise transitions very quickly in most cases into other emotions, or action, and a lot of the time in film it has to be recreated or simulated by actors. Not so, in the iconic death of Alan Rickman’s “exceptional thief” Hans Gruber at the conclusion of Die Hard. After being shot by clever hero cop John McClane (Bruce Willis), he falls back out of the 40th story window of Nakatomi Plaza, suspended high in the air after having grabbed hold of the wristwatch of McClane’s estranged wife Holly. Symbolically unclasping the watch that she earned through her independent career, the married couple reconciles even as Hans begins to plummet to his death with suddenly widening eyes and a disbelieving look on his face.
Movie geeks have perhaps heard at some point a widely shared factoid about the filming of said death: That the look of genuine shock and dawning terror in Rickman’s face was aided by a bit of deception, the rope holding him in place during filming having been cut a second or two earlier during a countdown than Rickman expected it to be released, for the sake of getting a genuine reaction. My natural inclination is to assume this is simply one of those persistent filmmaking urban legends, but none other than Die Hard stunt coordinator Charlie Picerni has in fact confirmed that story’s accuracy on camera. In all likelihood, we really do see a few frames here of genuine terror in Rickman’s face, which is no doubt a contributor to this death’s everlasting appeal. —Jim Vorel
19. John Coffey rides the lightning – The Green Mile (1999)
Director: Frank Darabont
The fiction of Stephen King offers potential for cinematic deaths that range from the explicitly horrific–a demonic clown biting off a kid’s arm, for instance–to the heartbreakingly tragic, as in, say, the deaths of Brooks Hatlen or Tommy Williams in The Shawshank Redemption. And then there’s John Coffey, another King creation brought to life in The Green Mile with the empathetic touch of actor Michael Clarke Duncan and director Frank Darabont, one of the few filmmakers who has readily been able to channel the sincere emotional core of so many King stories without bogging down into overtly sappy melodrama. Here, he delivered a tearjerking death for the ages in King’s story about the workaday guards of a Louisiana penitentiary death row, who are confronted with not only the belief that one of their charges is innocent, but that he may in fact be a miracle worker from God.
It’s Coffey who spares the guards, led by Tom Hanks’ Paul, from having to risk their lives or livelihoods in engineering his escape to assuage their consciences: Burdened by powers he has never truly understood since he was young, the hulking but gentle Coffey actually wishes to die, rather than continue trying to make it in a world where he is surrounded by so much hate and vindictiveness that he’s unable to shut out. Coffey is soul-sick from the evil of the world that permeates him like a sponge, and he can only remove so much sickness or sadness from others before that negativity drags him down with it. Hoping for a better shake in whatever comes next, he offers himself up as a martyr. Just try not getting a little misty eyed as Hanks tries to summon the conviction to call for the electric chair switch to be thrown. —Jim Vorel
18. T-Rex toilet snack – Jurassic Park (1993)
Director: Steven Spielberg
There are certainly strong arguments you could make for any number of deaths in the Jurassic series on this list, although most of the best would no doubt be from the original 1993 entry. Dennis Nedry’s karmic Dilophosaurus comeuppance for tampering with park security? Classic. “Clever girl?” Absolutely iconic, and fitting of a spot on the list. But in terms of just a purely satisfying death, nothing is going to top the oily lawyer Gennaro getting devoured by the franchise’s first Tyrannosaurus Rex. The only person in the entire series who gets a more gnarly death than Gennaro is arguably The Lost World’s poor Eddie, who is physically torn in twain by two adult T-Rex’s, but that demise still can’t top this one for sheer wow factor.
You can thank Spielberg’s gift for visual comedy and willingness to merge the macabre and the darkly humorous for that. Gennaro abandons the kids in the Jeep when the Rex breaks free from its paddock (karma again), fleeing and hiding in the nearest structure, a tiny bathroom hut. It’s not actually the dinosaur’s intention to specifically track him there–it’s in fact chasing after Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm, but when it smashes through the structure in hot pursuit, it finds … a nebbish little bald man, perched on a toilet, whimpering to himself. The T-Rex looks at him almost quizzically, wondering how he got there. But hey, when life presents you with a toilet snack, you chomp down on that guy and proceed to shake the ever-loving shit out of him. It’s a hilariously brutal demise, brought to life by CGI that has somehow stood the test of time in a way that almost nothing else from the era has managed to do. Jurassic Park remains utterly timeless. —Jim Vorel
17. Private Pyle – Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
The entire first half of Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam war film Full Metal Jacket builds toward the disastrous mental breakdown of poor Private Leonard “Gomer Pyle” Lawrence, a simple recruit singled out to be used as an example by cruel drill sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey, in a role that only he could possibly have played) as he molds yet another batch of expendable, fresh meat bodies to throw into the grinder. There’s nothing so wrong or distasteful about Vincent D’Onofrio’s Pyle–it’s just that his dimwitted nature and shallow desire for basic creature comforts makes him anathema to the rigidly disciplined, eternally enraged Hartman, a man who seems to have given up on any form of enjoyment on life besides imposing his will. Pyle is the perfect recruit for abuse, and Hartman not only supplies it himself but effectively makes Pyle the whipping boy for the entire squad, encouraging their own abuses of Pyle as a sort of communal, team-building exercise. Perhaps Hartman even expects Pyle to wash out at some point, seeing him as sacrificial kindling to light a fire under the others. But he certainly seems surprised when the seemingly docile Pyle finally combusts.
Suffice to say, Pyle ultimately descends into madness, with a performance from Vincent D’Onofrio that makes your skin crawl–it’s like he’s been inhabited by some otherworldly force as he relishes the moment of killing Hartman and then himself. One can see why director Tarsem Singh ultimately went on to cast D’Onofrio as a megalomaniacal serial killer with a god complex in his own cult classic, 2000’s The Cell, because the bestial energy on his face throughout this Full Metal Jacket sequence is legitimately terrifying. America’s war machine simply chews up this soul and spits him out, until the “world of shit” is all he can perceive. He’s eager to leave it behind, and take his tormenter with him while he’s at it. —Jim Vorel
16. Mid-speech chomp – Deep Blue Sea (1999)
Director: Renny Harlin
In the pantheon of all-time surprise movie deaths, Samuel L. Jackson being dragged to a watery grave by genetically engineered mako sharks in Deep Blue Sea occupies a pedestal all its own. It’s a gloriously cheesy setup: The underwater research facility that created the ultra-intelligent sharks (for Alzheimer’s research, naturally) has been compromised, and the crew needs to make it to the surface before they all either drown or turn on each other. Leave it to Sam L. to rally the troops with an impassioned speech on the need for camaraderie and teamwork, peppered with absurd dialogue like the following observation on the properties of ice: “It moves like it has a mind. Like it knows it killed the world once, and got a taste for murder.”
And then: Shark. Make no mistake, the CGI here has aged horrendously, but that takes nothing away from the pure surprise of the moment, which instantly entered genre legend. I’m lucky enough to have been there in 1999, a teenager in a mall multiplex watching Deep Blue Sea as a hundred other people all simultaneously reacted with a din of screaming, shouting and laughter to the sight of Jackson, at the zenith of his inspirational battle speech, being suddenly interrupted by a giant pair of jaws clamping shut on him. That theater was buzzing for minutes afterward. So many films attempt to deploy shock moments of this nature, but few ever land a zinger with such lasting, iconic status. It’s the first thing that anyone thinks of when Deep Blue Sea comes up, 25 years later, and it will probably be the first thing anyone thinks of in another 25 years as well. —Jim Vorel
15. Mellish stabbed – Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Director: Steven Spielberg
There are deaths on this list that are notable for how quickly and carelessly they occur, how brusquely impersonal they are–a bystander who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or someone who walks into the path of death without even knowing it. But the stabbing death of soldier Stanley Mellish (Adam Goldberg) in Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan is the polar opposite: Personal and intimate to the point of being excruciatingly uncomfortable to witness.
It’s also a thematically profound moment, given that the assailant ends up being none other than the same German soldier the squad–led by the pleading of interpreter Timothy Upham (Jeremy Davies)–chose to spare in an earlier encounter, casting deep shades of gray over the very idea of mercy or ethics in war, when “mercy” may well be rewarded by more death. Upham is even on hand to once again bear witness to this sequence, but petrified with fear and unable to lift a finger to assist, burdened by the shame of knowing that his inaction played a role in multiple deaths. Mellish and the German soldier scramble in a life-and-death test of strength until the German finally gains the upper hand, slowly descending the knife toward Mellish’s chest. It’s utterly heartbreaking; Goldberg’s performance turning from defiance to elemental pleading, straining “Listen to me, stop!” as his death looms. The whole thing is so painfully, agonizingly slow, which ultimately makes it tougher to watch than any of the hundreds of senseless deaths in the chaotic opening D-Day invasion sequences. Haunting. —Jim Vorel
14. Elias gunned down – Platoon (1986)
Director: Oliver Stone
In Oliver Stone’s Platoon, Willem Dafoe’s Sgt. Elias represents the last, lingering vestiges of compassion in an American conflict like the Vietnam War, opposed polemically by the hard-edged, soulless belief in ruthless efficiency and victory espoused by Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger). Scarred both inside and out, Barnes is a man whose humanity has been steadily sanded away by his years in the conflict, and he has learned to survive while also building something of a cult of personality around himself: Men look to him rather than the inexperienced Lieutenant for an idea of how to behave and what basic human rights actually mean on the barbaric front lines of a guerilla war. It’s not that Barnes doesn’t care about the men in his command, but he does seek to mold them all in his own supremely nihilistic image. To Barnes, that means stopping at nothing to achieve his aims, even when it comes to the murder of Vietnamese civilians. The conscience of Sgt. Elias, meanwhile, potentially positions him as the angel on the platoon’s shoulder, which makes him too much of a threat to Barnes’ control for the latter to leave alive.
So when Barnes sees his opportunity to remove Elias from the playing field, he takes it, gunning down his supposed ally in cold blood in the depths of the jungle, far from prying eyes. Tragically, Elias turns out to not actually be dead, and the rest of the platoon ultimately witnesses his death as they’re airlifted out via chopper: Fleeing from a squad of NVA soldiers, Elias is riddled with bullets as he seemingly pleads for the assistance of his retreating comrades, unknowingly sowing the seeds of Barnes’ ultimate destruction. The image of the bloody and muddied Dafoe, his hands raised in the air before he finally pitches over dead, remains probably the most indelible cinematic symbol of the Vietnam conflict, conveying the hopelessness of men stuck in an unwinnable quagmire that obliterates any attempt to preserve dignity or compassion. —Jim Vorel
13. Tommy gets whacked – GoodFellas (1990)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Tommy, the mobster with the hair-trigger temper, should be difficult to feel sorry for; those in his orbit might well feel relief once he’s gone. But his foolish, borderline innocent pride in being told he’s going to become a made man—he dresses up, shows his doting mom—makes that last-second realization that he’s being brought to his death (for, of course, killing a genuine made man) deeply sad. Pesci has countless terrific scenes in Scorsese’s gangster masterpiece, but he probably deserved that Best Supporting Actor Oscar just for his micro-reaction to his fate, which is even more memorable than the actual kill-shot. —Jesse Hassenger
12. I cannot self-terminate – Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Director: James Cameron
It’s reasonable to question what “death” truly means for a humanoid robot like the Terminator–if such an entity can be rebuilt, its switch flipped back on, or its consciousness stored in the cloud somewhere, is an actual death ever really possible? And if not, why shed tears over an artificial death? But James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger managed the seemingly impossible in their superior sequel to 1984’s The Terminator, taking the remorseless, passionless killing machine who served as an antagonist to Linda Hamilton and turning him in this film into a sympathetic figure thanks to a small tweak in programming, now a protector to John Connor rather than a silent assassin. This T-800 seems to be a different breed, curious about the human condition and empathic to the degree that he seemingly begins to absorb human tendencies, both intentionally and through simple proximity. And having gained so much pathos, Cameron naturally chose to kill him for maximum emotional payoff.
After the T-800, John and Sarah Connor manage to barely defeat the self-rebuilding, “liquid metal” advanced prototype Terminator so cunningly played by Robert Patrick, there’s only one step left in averting the potential for a future in which the self-aware defense system known as Skynet is able to wipe out the human race: The last vestiges of the Terminator design must be destroyed, which means that the T-800 can’t stick around. Bound by his programming to be unable to do the deed himself, it falls to Sarah and John to give him the heartbreaking, Old Yeller-style mercy killing by lowering him into a vat of molten steel. The sense of tragedy is palpable, beyond the likability of the robotic character, because with how much he’s already learned about human life, who’s to say what this Terminator could have become with more time? What might he have been able to achieve, or to teach us? When Schwarzenegger observes that “I know now why you cry,” he’s demonstrating not only his understanding of why the humans want to preserve his artificial life, but also his reticence to go, having discovered what an independent existence could potentially offer. Knowing that the Terminator wishes to stay lends another level of nobility to his sacrifice as he descends into the steel. He knows what he’s giving up for his mission. —Jim Vorel
11. Billy Costigan in the elevator – The Departed (2006)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Conventional wisdom holds that death scenes become more grueling and upsetting the more drawn-out they are; think of how often a swift demise has been timed like a punchline since the original Final Destination. But Martin Scorsese flips that script in The Departed, with one of the most startlingly sudden movie deaths of all time. When Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), the rattled undercover cop desperate for a way out, finally closes in on his criminal counterpart Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) and arrests the long-sought mole, he’s ambushed by one of Sullivan’s friends and abruptly shot in the head. A form of justice is eventually served, but the pitilessness with which Billy exits the picture – no big hero moment, no parting line, no lingering whatsoever – is a chilling reminder of the ruthlessness required to stay ahead in this world. Scorsese sacrifices one of the biggest stars in the world (and the most sympathetic character in his movie) to make the point. —Jesse Hassenger
10. Father Karras’ sacrifice – The Exorcist (1973)
Director: William Friedkin
The war for the soul of 12-year-old Regan MacNeil, as depicted in William Friedkin’s essential horror film The Exorcist, ultimately isn’t one that can be won without sacrifice. Really, it’s fair to ask if it can be won at all, when it means losing the likes of Father Lankester Merrin (Max von Sydow) and Father Damien Karras, two servants of God who are both ready to lay down their lives to spare the girl from an eternity in hell. The ordeal proves to be too much for the heart of Father Merrin, who seemingly expires from an attack brought on by the physical and spiritual struggle, which leaves the poor, doubting Father Karras in a moment of true despair. Wracked with the guilt of his mother’s death, the demon’s taunting and insistence that she’s now in hell, and the seemingly insurmountable task of driving evil from the MacNeil home, Karras flies into a rage, demanding that the demon enter him instead. The demon, seemingly delighting in the concept of possessing a willing priest and forcing him to carry out acts of evil, gives in to the request … only for Karras to reassert his own will just long enough to hurl himself from the window of Regan’s bedroom, tumbling down the concrete stairs below to his death. Containing the demon within himself, Karras makes himself a Christ analog, sacrificing himself that we might live. It’s an absolutely pyrrhic victory, but one that does seem to spare Regan’s soul.
Those wishing to commemorate this noble but macabre death can still visit the actual, narrow staircase, which remains a popular tourist site in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., with a plaque designating the location erected in 2015. —Jim Vorel
9. Machine gun ambush – Bonnie & Clyde (1967)
Director: Arthur Penn
It’s just relentless, the barrage of gunfire that kills real-life criminals Bonnie (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde (Warren Beatty) at the end of Arthur Penn’s seminal film. It’s not that the duo hasn’t caused plenty of violence and death themselves before they reach this point. But seeing their bodies absolutely wracked with a hail of bullets is stark and unforgiving in a way that the rest of the movie isn’t, very much by design. It also subverts the enforced morality of the gangster movies that Bonnie and Clyde re-envisions; the ”punishment” for the movie’s own somewhat irreverently ambiguous attitude toward these gangsters doesn’t feel like moral righteousness or restored order, but a horrific massacre. —Jesse Hassenger
8. My brother, my captain, my king – The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Director Peter Jackson
For a cinematic hero, there’s “going out fighting,” and then there’s this. Boromir of Gondor is of course a flawed hero in many respects, one who is ultimately undone by psychological exploitation of the massive burden he places on himself to be the savior of his doomed nation. Boromir sees more clearly than most that against the forces of Sauron, the withered remains of Gondor simply can’t offer more than a token resistance in the long run. He can feel the noose tightening around his people, and he’s willing to embrace any chance of staving off ruin. It’s not a desire for some kind of personal power or glory that leads him to attempt to seize The One Ring from Frodo–even as Frodo evades him, Boromir is accusing him of bringing the ring to Sauron, of hastening Gondor’s downfall, because protecting his people remains his ultimate priority. Boromir simply doesn’t believe in his heart that the quest is achievable, and his lack of faith ultimately leads to his corruption. Like his father in The Return of the King, he is overtaken by despair.
The Fellowship of the Ring, though, goes to great pains to illustrate the bond and kinship that does exist between Boromir and the younger hobbits in particular, who he guards over in a paternalistic fashion. Even though he’s distrustful of the “ranger” who would supplant his father, his fierce loyalty to Merry and Pippin ultimately leads him to the series’ most heroic death, as he is struck down by arrow after unnaturally large arrow, regathering his strength each time as he hews more of the uruk-hai in an attempt to hold them off long enough for help to arrive. On his deathbed, he acknowledges his failings and makes his peace with Aragorn, affirming his nobility and vowing that he would have stood side by side with him at the coronation. Boromir’s loss–the only member of the Fellowship to die–ripples through the rest of the series, deeply impacting residents of Gondor who have lost the one man they dared to hope might be able to protect them. —Jim Vorel
7. Nick’s one shot – The Deer Hunter (1978)
Director: Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino’s epic war tragedy The Deer Hunter is one of the few films in its genre to take its characters through the full cycle of war’s destruction of the soul–from blissful ignorance, through the battle scars of active combat and psychological toll of imprisonment, and through to the gaping emptiness of what comes afterward. Its most painful moments all occur after Mike (Robert De Niro), Steven (John Savage) and Nick (Christopher Walken) have technically survived their ordeals, in the scraps of life returned to them, when they’re expected to reenter polite society as if nothing had happened. All three find this to be a near impossible imposition, due to what they suffered abroad, and the inability for anyone in their old lives to truly understand. But Walken’s Nick is hit hardest of all, deserting his unit and ultimately turning to drug use, holed up in Saigon gambling dens where he’s turned “professional” in Russian roulette, the very same form of psychological torture he was made to endure as a prisoner.
There’s nothing in cinema that quite compares to Walken’s face here, when De Niro’s character finally rediscovers him near the film’s conclusion, in a futile attempt to bring his friend home. He’s become an utter shell of the man he was before the war, but you can see him fighting, resisting Mike’s attempt to break through the wall of nihilism, knowing that if he lets Mike in, the tidal wave of pain that will surely follow will sweep him away. For just a moment, he finally recognizes his brother in arms, and in that moment, when he pulls the trigger for who knows how many hundreds of times, the seeming invincibility his despair has given him falls away. Perhaps it would have been the last time he’d ever pull that trigger. But his number has come up, and he dies in Mike’s arms, just one more casualty never to be officially reported among the war dead. —Jim Vorel
6. The wrath of God – Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Direct, divine retribution isn’t depicted on screen all that often–we tend to tell stories with a bit lighter touch when it comes to those who have trespassed against God being struck down by (often ironic) comeuppance, in order to avoid what could seem like dogmatic moralizing. Steven Spielberg, on the other hand, leans into the awesome power and downright barbaric vindictiveness of the Old Testament God of the Hebrews in the closing moments of Raiders of the Lost Ark, depicting what it might look like when an omnipotent deity finally decides to directly single out some guys for cosmic punishment. And oh my vengeful lord, it is not pretty.
You can’t argue that scheming archaeologist Belloq and Nazi officers Dietrich and Toht haven’t earned a memorable demise, given all they’ve done in Raiders–after all, they’ve effectively burglarized sacred artifacts on Hitler’s whim, stealing the religious symbols (and their associated power) of the very same people that they’re systematically slaughtering back in Europe. That the Ark of the Covenant is ultimately a Jewish relic adds an especially despicable layer of attempted appropriation to the Nazi expedition; Hitler is literally attempting to use the faith of the Jews, and their own God, against them. One almost wonders what kind of alternate reception from the almighty that the Nazis could possibly have expected, or perhaps they’re all simply so arrogant that they expected to be welcomed with open arms when the ark was opened. Regardless, that obviously isn’t what goes down. Bolts of lightning pierce the onlookers; faces shrivel and melt in a gory display; heads explode. Indy and Marion are spared for showing just enough humility in the face of the divine, and God effectively dares anyone to try what they just tried again. Some things are better left undisturbed. —Jim Vorel
5. Don Corleone goes quietly – The Godfather (1972)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
After all the violence of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) ends his life playing with his grandson in a little backyard orange grove, collapsing from a heart attack. It’s not exactly peaceful in his sleep, but it stands in clear contrast to the many characters who are gunned down throughout the movie, and offers a glimpse at Brando playing Corleone with his guard down; instead of inspiring fear and deference with his power, one of his last acts on this Earth is to reassure his young grandchild after accidentally scaring him. This little slice-of-life moment turns out to be one of the most memorable mob-scene deaths of all time, intimate and ironic. —Jesse Hassenger
4. Tears in rain – Blade Runner (1982)
Director: Ridley Scott
So much of what makes the setting and mythos of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner so effective in the original 1982 film are the little details of the universe that are merely suggested and never expounded upon. When an expiring Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), the renegade replicant speaks of things such as “C-beams” that “glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate,” these words are essentially meaningless to us, but they evoke the fantastical life that Batty has managed to live in the short time allotted to him by his replicant construction. He wants more time, and who are we to deny his ingrained desire to continue to exist? What kind of cruelty was it, to design human-built creatures in this way, complete with the ability to feel existential dread and ennui as their arbitrarily allotted time draws to a close?
Ultimately, Batty chooses to save a dangling Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), rather than allowing his nemesis fall to his death after a rooftop chase in a storm. Knowing that his time is up, Batty laments that as he passes, his memories and experiences will all pass with him. Why does he spare Deckard? Perhaps it’s a final show of mankind’s hypocrisy, an act that places Batty on stronger moral footing than his arrogant creators. Or perhaps he simply wants to preserve the only person in Deckard who will remember him when he’s gone, keeping alive some spark of his existence and the impact he had on the universe. With poetic candor, he hangs his head and his consciousness departs. We don’t know where it goes, any more than we know where a human soul might go when we die. When we cross the final barrier, we all do it with the same trepidation. —Jim Vorel
3. Marion Crane takes a shower – Psycho (1960)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Perhaps the single most famous death scene in American movies, the famous shower stabbing in Psycho also upends the movie’s narrative, which until that point had been about Marion (Janet Leigh), a woman on the run who seals her fate when she stops over at the Bates Motel. The score and cutting (literal and figurative) in the sequence where “mother” attacks Marion in the shower create the impression of something more graphic than what director Alfred Hitchcock actually shows – and that perception is so strong that it more or less merges with reality to become as explicit as it appears, even though both the blood and nudity are technically within the bounds of the diminished Production Code. Thousands more horror-movie “kills” would follow; this is pretty much the slash to begin all slashers. —Jesse Hassenger
2. Quint’s mad scramble – Jaws (1975)
Director Steven Spielberg
Through much of Steven Spielberg’s original summer blockbuster Jaws, it can seem like the haggard local fisherman/shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) is nursing a not-so-secret death wish. He drinks heavily. He refuses all assistance when joined by Sheriff Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) and Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) in hunting the elusive, giant great white. He’s so incensed by the thought of aid or rescue that he eventually smashes the radio equipment, rather than allow Brody to call for help as the Orca takes on water. Perhaps it’s survivor’s guilt that is weighing down Quint, some lingering shock from the story he tells of his WWII experience with the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, given that many of the other waterborne survivors were ultimately killed by sharks as they bobbed helplessly in the endless expanse of the Pacific. Perhaps Quint wants to take revenge on the natural world for what happened to him, or simply assert that he has some power or agency in his life. Or maybe he just wants to die.
Regardless of what Quint thinks he might want, when finally faced with the gnashing … er, jaws … of the great beast, which represent the razor-edged boundary between life and death, the fisherman most assuredly finds out that he does in fact want to live. He doesn’t just allow himself to slide down the shattered stern of the Orca into those chomping teeth, he kicks and claws and scrambles as best he can to avoid that grim fate. Unfortunately, he’s come to the conclusion too late, but that doesn’t stop Quint from fighting like hell, stabbing at the shark’s face with a machete even as it’s crunching his bones and preparing to drag him down to a watery grave. His body ultimately slides out to sea, symbolically reunited with his lost comrades from the Indianapolis. Of all the deaths in Jaws, it’s the most gritty and desperate, a moment that the entire “shark movie” subgenre has failed to top in the subsequent 50 years. —Jim Vorel
1. The chestburster – Alien (1979)
Director: Ridley Scott
The thing that so immediately stands out about Alien’s most infamous moment is just how calmly the scene begins. Kane (John Hurt) has just been through an incredible ordeal, having been the victim of an unknown alien attack, a creature that affixed itself to his face and rendered him unconscious. But when the creature detaches and dies, it initially appears that the danger has passed. And indeed, the dinner scene in the Nostromo mess hall as the crew prepares to return to stasis begins with an undeniably atmosphere of joviality, the crew relieved and content that Kane will be okay. The man is hungry! He has an appetite, he’s making jokes, and absolutely nothing seems to be amiss. The crew members are cracking wise, making bawdy comments about each other. It’s a nearly carefree atmosphere, and these long haul space voyagers have seemingly earned a rest. And that’s when it happens.
Suffice to say, all is not well. Kane begins to cough and then to convulse, as something from within makes its presence known. The crew of the Nostromo is about to become a bit better acquainted with the life cycle of the vicious, acid-blooded extraterrestrial creature that we refer to as the xenomorph. It’s just such a hideous thought experiment: To become the carrier to this creature, to be violated in that way, but somehow be unaware of it, right up until the moment that it punches a hole through your chest and escapes into the outside world. The split-second shot of actress Veronica Cartwright, covered in a spray of blood and beginning to panic, says it all. How could you ever let your guard down again, after seeing that? It’s the moment that Alien ascends from being an impeccably designed science fiction story into one of the most disturbing horror films in cinema history. Kane, for his troubles, ends up as a corpse jettisoned into space, but perhaps he’d be comforted by knowing that he also ended up as the greatest movie death of all time. —Jim Vorel
Jim Vorel is Paste’s Movies editor and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter or on Bluesky for more film writing.