13 Movie Shootings Designed To Shock

Let me start by saying this post is not for the faint-hearted. The scenes can be quite confronting. Then again, they’re only movies for God’s sake.

And such was their impact that they also went a long way towards ensuring their movie became one of the greats of all-time. They are designed to blow you away - as well as whichever actor/character is on the receiving end of the particular ‘shot’.

These may not all be among the greatest, or most memorable, death scenes in film or even the most graphic or brutal - they are for other lists – but more the ones you just didn’t see coming, really snuck up on you, or the ones you may have anticipated but still left you shocked when it came to actually sitting through it. And as the title says, these are just ‘shootings’.

Another word of warning – there are plenty of spoilers ahead.

 

13. OF MICE AND MEN (1992)

The unfortunate victim: John Malkovich as Lennie Small.

Poor dim-witted giant Lennie never saw it coming. One, he was shot in the back of the head, and two, it was by his best mate and protector George Milton (Gary Sinise). George wasprotecting Lennie though, from a lynch mob who had set out to hunt him down after he accidentally killed the young wife (Sherilyn Fenn) of a land-owner the pair had been working for. The movie, also directed by Sinise, was adapted from the classic novella of 1937 by John Steinbeck, so if you knew the story, the ending probably wouldn’t have been much of a surprise. `I tend the rabbits’.

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12. GOODFELLAS (1990)

The unfortunate victim: Michael Imperioli as Michael ‘Spider’ Gianco.

Poor young, innocent Spider was just trying to get a foot in the door to the Mafia when that foot gets shot by Tommy De Vito (Joe Pesci) during a night of cards, just for the hell of it.  The young ‘gopher’ recovers but, after standing up to the crazed gangster Tommy, who suffering from a bout of small-man syndrome, is suddenly shot again, this time in the stomach, several times, killing him. Like numerous other ’whackings’ during the film, such as De Vito’s own, it probably wasn’t a huge shock. It is Goodfellas after all.

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11. PULP FICTION (1994)

The unfortunate victim: John Travolta as Vincent Vega.

Poor simple Vincent had only just been taking a dump in the toilet of Butch Coolidge’s apartment when Butch himself returns home. The disgraced boxer, on the run from mobster Marsellus Wallace, pumps lead into the hit-man with his own semi-automatic machine gun. Oh well, shit happens I guess. And there’s plenty of shit happening in this Quentin Tarantino cult classic. Ironically, Butch only dropped into his place to find the watch that his father had had stuck up his arse to avoid it being confiscated by his Vietnamese captors for several years during the war.

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10. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

The unfortunate victim: Duane Jones as Ben.

Poor Ben had just survived an attack by the walking dead – the result of radiation from a NASA satellite – while others in an abandoned house had perished, when more brain dead morons, this time a posse of rednecks, pop him. Appearing certain to see the credits roll, Ben had simply gone to a window to see if the coast was clear to flee to safety. After receiving a bullet to the head, he was buried with the corpses of ‘dead’ zombies. It was quite a controversial move by director George Romero to kill off the hero, especially as he was black, and Martin Luthor King and Malcolm X had recently been assassinated.

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9. L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997)

The unfortunate victim: Kevin Spacey as Det Sgt Jack Vincennes.

Poor celebrity LA cop Vincennes thought he was in the company of a friend and confidante when he dropped around to visit Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell), but after a coffee in the kitchen he gets a bullet in the heart from the now revealed-to-be corrupt senior officer. The plot just got a whole lot thicker. Doesn’t have the impact of at least two other Spacey movie deaths – those being from American Beauty and Se7en – but was the biggest surprise. He did after all have top-billing, ahead of the younger Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce.

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8. EASY RIDER (1969)

The unfortunate victims: Peter Fonda as Wyatt and Dennis Hopper as Billy.

Poor ‘counterculture’ bikers Wyatt and Billy were just innocently cruising through the countryside – with their drug money - when outta nowhere a couple of rednecks in an old pick-up truck decide to have a little ol’ fashioned redneck fun – knocking off out-of-towners. Wyatt and Billy, after having a wild time on the road (and coming across a dorky Jack Nicholson), and seemingly bound for a life of luxury with their payment, didn’t quite get the ‘Deliverance treatment’, but instead both shot and killed by one of the rednecks, using a shotgun. The money also goes up in flames after a bullet hits Wyatt’s gas tank.

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7. PULP FICTION (1994)

The unfortunate victim:Phil LaMarr as Marvin.

Poor Marvin was just minding his own business in the back seat of hitman Jules’ car when, after the vehicle hits a bump, the gun of fellow hitman Vincent (John Travolta) accidentally goes off. The gun just happens to be pointed at Marvin’s face at the time. Jules and Vincent were probably going to do away with him anyway – as they had with his four small-time crime associates - but wouldn’t have been planning to leave the mess that his splattered head made in the car. The shooting sets up a classic Quentin Tarantino scene involving the director’s own character of Jimmie, Harvey Keitel’s The Wolf, fragments of skull and some nice new sheets.

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6. FULL METAL JACKET (1987)

The unfortunate victim: R. Lee Ermey as Gunnery Sargent Hartman.

Poor old Hartman was only doing his job at boot camp, instilling a little fight into his marine cadets before sending them off to battle in Vietnam. But what he got from Private Pyle (Vincent D’Onofrio) was a little too much fight after subjecting the overweight misfit to endless ridicule. Even while Pyle aims his rifle at him, Hartman asks the young man ‘What is your major malfunction, numb-nuts? Didn’t mommy and daddy show you enough attention when you were a child?’ Of course Pyle doesn’t stop with the death of Hartman. More brilliant work from one of the great directors, Stanley Kubrick.

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5. BURN AFTER READING (2008)

The unfortunate victim: Brad Pitt as Chad Feldheimer.

Poor naive, no, make that ridiculously stupid, gym instructor Chad was only trying to embezzle $50,000 out of ex-CIA analyst Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), and is hiding in the man’s closet when he meets his surprise demise. It’s not at the hand of Mr Cox though, but his wife’s lover, Treasury agent Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), who after taking a shower is shocked to find a grinning Chad staring out from behind some clothes. Unfortunately for Chad, Harry has a hold of his gun at the time.

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4. VON RYAN’S EXPRESS (1964)

The unfortunate victim: Frank Sinatra as Colonel Joseph Ryan.

Poor heroic American soldier Col Ryan had just done all the hard work and led an escape by a group of mainly British PoWs from the clutches of the Nazis during the Second World War, but just wasn’t quite fit or fast enough to haul his own ass out of danger. As the train carrying the freed soldiers heads for the safety of Switzerland, Ryan, running along behind, scrambles to jump on board. He’s The Chairman of the Board, of course he’s going to make it. Nup. Shot in the back by the Germans. It would’ve come as a surprise to most, even those who had read the 1964 book the film is based on, as Ryan lives in that. But, Sinatra himself is said to have insisted on the change of ending. (Note: The video below is the trailer to the movie and not the actual scene.)

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3. THE DEER HUNTER (1978)

The unfortunate victim: Christopher Walken as Nick Chevotarevich.

Poor Vietnam veteran Nick had survived much worse in his life so a little game of Russian Roulette in a Saigon bar after the war shouldn’t do too much harm.  He’d been forced to play it while a prisoner of war and lived to tell about it. But, drug-addicted Nick isn’t quite himself, in fact, he doesn’t really know who he is  – or his best mate Mike Vronsky (Robert De Niro), who is right in front of him.  That is until the moment before he puts the gun to his head, says ‘one shot’ and pulls the trigger. Suffice to say the bullet was there waiting, waiting to be used in one of the most dramatic scenes in one of the most dramatic movies of all-time, winner of five Oscars including Best Picture.

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2. GET CARTER (1971)

The unfortunate victim: Michael Caine as Jack Carter.

Poor revenge-seeking London hitman Carter was just taking a little stroll along the bay, happy in the knowledge that he had done away with the last man left involved in the murder of his brother Frank when a last bullet makes an entry. After he is about to toss his own gun into the water - job done - you expect the words ‘The End’ to come up on the screen, but instead there is one final act to be played out that stuns the viewer and leaves Carter himself lying dead on the murky black shoreline. He receives a shot to the head from an unknown sniper perched on the clifftop.

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1. THE DEPARTED (2006)

The unfortunate victim: Leonardo DiCaprio as Billy Costigan.

Poor hard-working undercover cop Costigan had just spent the best part of this brilliantly intense 150-minute movie putting his life on the line to bring down ruthless Irish-American crime boss Costello (Jack Nicholson), and his snitch, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), when some minor player steps in. Costigan has Sullivan in handcuffs and about to take him down to the local cop shop - and presumably bring a fitting climax to the film – before things take a sharp turn with yet another dirty cop Barrigan (James Badge Dale) showing up. Costigan’s death completely blind-sided this viewer. It was shocking but played a massive part in making The Departed a truly memorable movie and certainly deserved of a Best Picture Oscar. It was certainly more grisly than Leo’s death scene in Titanic (1997).

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Worthy of a mention …

THE BOONDOCK SAINTS (1999)

The unfortunate victim: Skippy the Cat Poor

Skippy was just sitting there on the kitchen table (why the kitchen table I don’t know, but anyway …) when ‘The Funnyman’ David Della Rocco, flapping his arms around, accidently blasts him. Ultimate black comedy moment from this memorable cult crime hit.

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