Lighten up! Let's look at popular death scenes

[cantdog]

Bab 5

This probably won't mean anything to that many people, but Lord Refa's death in the Babylon 5 episode "And The Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place" has to be one of the most memorable death scenes I've ever seen.

Right, right! I'd forgotten!

 

[gauchecritic]

The death I remember (in fact the only scene really) from Seven Samurai is when they are recruiting the members and there are a crowd of onlookers watching an angry guy take on a Samuria. The guy goes charging in and the Samurai drops him with one slice, again in slow-mo I think.
That always reminds me of Bruce Lee describing RL street fights in Hong Kong that rarely lasted for more than about 10 seconds as compared with cinematic versions.

Bullitt. One of the first films I can recall that has the recipient of a 12 gauge being physically blown backwards.

A little blamed but significant in my view, precursor of post-modern realism in violence on screen, everyone expecting cut away or black out when Vincent Price's character plunged the 'impliment' into the suspects 'mark of the Devil' (Mole) to see if it bled. Witchfinder General.

Hopkins being bludgeoned and hacked to death in a frenzy.

Speaking of Price, every single death in "The Abominable Dr Phibes."

Gauche

 

[Guest]

Gauche, I'm so glad to learn you know Phibes. Everyone: see this and the 'sequel', Dr. Phibes Rises Again'. I loved the character names: Dr. Vesalius (Jos. Cotten!), Drs. Hedgepath and Dunwoody, Vulnavia (really), and an Inspector Trout.

You remind me of another fave Price film with a variety of gruesome deaths - "Theatre of Blood". Price is a has-been Shakespearean actor out to murder the top London critics. He does so one-by-one per murder scenes out of the plays. Diana Rigg plays his sidekick daughter. Christopher Morley is a fey man with pet doggies, his death is via Titus Andronicus (hint: the pie). It's great fun, and truly enjoyable for Sh're lovers.

Perdita

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

I beleive it was in "Mysteries of the Black Museum" where one guy was murdered adusting the focus on his binoculars.

That released two 6-inch long needles back into the guys eyeballs.

I think Vincent Price was in it, but maybe not.


Anyway, it certainly cured ME of voyuerism.

 

[Guest]

Burley, It was Horrors of the Black Museum with Michael Gough. Here's a blurb:

"Gough gives a performance that is memorable in its pure arrogance and contempt. He gets a wonderfully demented soliloquy: “The world thinks Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde were figments of a great writer’s story. But, no, I have clearly demonstrated it is a fact. Man is born with a dual nature. Society tries to suppress evil, but not I ... One must never place any trust in a woman. It was no secret that Satan was able to tempt Eve before Adam.” It was one of a string of demented performances that Gough was to enliven the Anglo-horror cycle with and he became a staple in other English Cohen films such as Konga (1961), The Black Zoo (1962), Berserk (1967) and Trog (1970)."

M. Gough fan, Perdita

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

Burley, It was Horrors of the Black Museum with Michael Gough...

I’m surprised that I was that close to the correct title.

What I remember to this day, is hearing the needles slide out – swooonk!

Then he pulled out the binoculars, with the bloody needles sticking from the rear lens. GASP!

Then, his face close up, with blood pouring out of his eye sockets – Shudder!

You would think that they would know better than to run it uncut, on the Friday Night Late, Late Show, when eight-year-olds were breaking curfew to watch.

 

[Belegon]

The death due to superstition in Master & Commander got me. If you've seen it you know what I am referring to and if not I tried not to ruin it.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

There was another Vincent Price/quasi-Poe movie whose title I can't recall, but it was about a guy who's terrified of being buried alive. and so he has this elaborate crypt built and a coffin equiped with a bell-rope that's to be put in his hands when he's laid to rest so he can yank on it if he wakes up alive in the coffin.

I forget the details, but apparently one of his ancestors was buried alive and when they disinter him they can see where he clawed at the lid trying to dig his way out. Creeped me out.

I'm going to be cremated.

---dr.M.

 

[Guest]

I'm going to be cremated.

Or possibly baked alive? Couldn't resist, Mab.

necromantically, Perdita

 

[shereads]

Gauche, I'm so glad to learn you know Phibes. Everyone: see this and the 'sequel', Dr. Phibes Rises Again'. I loved the character names: Dr. Vesalius (Jos. Cotten!), Drs. Hedgepath and Dunwoody, Vulnavia (really), and an Inspector Trout.

You remind me of another fave Price film with a variety of gruesome deaths - "Theatre of Blood". Price is a has-been Shakespearean actor out to murder the top London critics. He does so one-by-one per murder scenes out of the plays. Diana Rigg plays his sidekick daughter. Christopher Morley is a fey man with pet doggies, his death is via Titus Andronicus (hint: the pie). It's great fun, and truly enjoyable for Sh're lovers.

Perdita

I can't bear gruesome movies, even when the brutality is over-the-top. I must have died violently in another life; either that or I just have an overactive imagination. I always have a sense when I see Vincent Price stabbing someone with an ice pick for fun (or Hannibal Lecter doing whatever unspeakable things he was doing when I turned off the TV) that somewhere in the world - many somewheres, as recent history confirms- gruesome torture is being inflicted on someone helpless, and that I'm seeing a cartoon of their pain.

I had nightmares after watching "Looking for Mister Goodbar," which had very little blood (dark room, strobe lights) but a lot of torn-flesh sounds as this woman begged and fought for her life. Fought for a long, long time. It was based on a true story, and until then I had never had occasion to think about how long it would take to be stabbed dozens of times, and how it must feel, and sound.

I haven't voluntarily watched a movie that featured a brutal death-by-sharp-object since then.

 

[shereads]

Death-by-Requium: Amadeus.

What a piece of work that was.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

There was another Vincent Price/quasi-Poe movie whose title I can't recall, but it was about a guy who's terrified of being buried alive ...

Doc,

I imagine you are thinking of "The Tell-Tale Heart." It was part of the ninth or tenth grade curriculum in my highschool.

They probably made a movie version.

Vincent Price put out a slew of Poe films way back in the fifties and sixties.

I have even seen part of one on TV, with Peter Lorrie dressed as a big black bird (the original subservient chicken?) — The Raven, I imagine.

 

[shereads]

There was another Vincent Price/quasi-Poe movie whose title I can't recall, but it was about a guy who's terrified of being buried alive. and so he has this elaborate crypt built and a coffin equiped with a bell-rope that's to be put in his hands when he's laid to rest so he can yank on it if he wakes up alive in the coffin.

I forget the details, but apparently one of his ancestors was buried alive and when they disinter him they can see where he clawed at the lid trying to dig his way out. Creeped me out.

I'm going to be cremated.

---dr.M.

That's based on reality. On a tour of Savannah, our guide told us that during a cholera epidemic, the tradition of the "wake" had to be dispensed with out of fear of contamination. Bodies were taken to the cemeteries as soon as a physician or whoever else was around decided they were dead. Rumors that some people had awakened from deep comas on the way to burial led to the practice of rigging graves and crypts with bells.

I'm with you on cremation. I think embalming is a godawful violation of privacy. It's bad enough that you're dead, without having to be that intimate with a mortician.

(I read The Loved One. I know they're crazy. )

Perdita, at least the Big Easy-Bake is fast and final. Worst case scenario is that the ashes in the urn are really from the ashtray of the crematorium operator. But you won't care if you're dead.

For the record, i'd like to have my ashes mixed with some massage oil and used for something interesting.

 

[Madame Manga]

Gangster movies? Oh dear, I wasted so much of my youth on '30s rumrunner flicks and film noir that it's hard to pick from among my favorites...ah, here we go.

Angels with Dirty Faces, 1938. Jimmy Cagney's character, Rocky, is a famous gangster sentenced to the chair for shooting a policeman. His best boyhood friend is now a priest. The young street rats who worship gangsters scoff at the priest's efforts to straighten them out. They tell him that even though Rocky is going to die, he'll never show yellow--he'll spit in the guard's eye as he takes the last walk.

The priest visits Rocky on his execution date, and he begs him: please don't let those boys follow in your path. Don't be a hero to them--show yellow so they'll be ashamed of you. Rocky sneers at him, and marches steely-eyed to the death chamber. The priest bows his head in sad resignation and shakes hands with him at the door.

The next sequence is shot entirely in shadows on the wall. We never see Cagney's face. Rocky begins to moan. He kicks and struggles and begs. His cries build to a crescendo. He has to be dragged to the electric chair and strapped in by force while still wailing and sobbing, the guards making scornful comments. The priest gradually realizes what Rocky is doing and raises his face, his eyes shining. And then the lights go dim.

MM