Best Film Death Scenes

1994 - 1

Color of Night (1994)

In this hybrid erotic-psychological thriller by director Richard Rush, it was part murder-mystery and lurid sexy romance; the film's tagline was: "In the heat of desire love can turn to deception. Nothing is what it seems when day turns into night." Its themes included domestic abuse, double identities and split personalities, traumatic blindness, deception, and a who-dun-it mystery, with multiple shots of sculpted faces and mirrors.

• Dr. Bill Capa (Bruce Willis), a distraught New York City psychoanalyst suffered from stress-induced, psychosomatic color blindness; he quit his practice and traveled to LA
• during Capa's stay in LA, he resided with analyst/author friend Dr. Bob Moore (Scott Bakula), who was in the midst of counseling a collection of disturbed patients in a Monday night group therapy; Dr. Moore was receiving various death threats, possibly from one of his patients
• in a very bloody scene, Moore was brutally stabbed to death in his Los Angeles office late one night; he was tackled, mercilessly stabbed 38 times with a blade extending from the killer's gloved fist, and then pushed backwards through a glass door, with jagged shards of glass impaling his abdomen; the assailant was black-clad and unidentified
  • [Note: By film's end, one of the male patients, sexually-confused "Richie" Dexter (Jane March) was also revealed to be sexy and provocative female Rose. Her overprotective deranged brother Dale (Andrew Lowery) had committed Dr. Moore's murder, fearing that Rose's identity would be revealed. He had forced his pretty sister Rose to play-act the role of their deceased brother "Richie."]

The Crow (1994)

In director Alex Proyas' archetypal revenge killer action story (based on a comic book), star Brandon Lee (as character Eric Draven) tragically died on the set, when shot in the chest during the filming of a scene in which he confronted street thug Funboy. The shell came from an improperly-cleaned gun that was supposed to be loaded with blanks. It was falsely rumored that the tragic scene was left in the final cut of the film.

• in Detroit on October 30th (Halloween Eve or 'Devil's Night'), on the night before his wedding, guitarist-musician Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) and his fiancée Shelly Webster (Sofia Shinas) were brutally raped-murdered by violent gang members led by cocaine-snorting crime lord Top Dollar ((Michael Wincott), including knife-wielding Tin-Tin (Laurence Mason), drugged-up Funboy (Michael Massee), car buff T-Bird (David Patrick Kelly), and Skank (Angel David)
• on the anniversary of his death, undead Eric Draven's soul (with white-faced Kiss-like makeup) was resurrected from his grave site by a black crow, to assume the mantle of The Crow (a supernatural avenger), in order "to put the wrong things right"; one-by-one, he sought vengeance against his own murderers, now that he was immune to physical harm
• the second killer on Draven's list for revenge was a local street thug - morphine-addicted Funboy; Draven placed his hand on Funboy's gunbarrel and dared him to shoot:
  • "Take your shot, Funboy. You got me dead bang."
• after a hole was blown through his palm, Funboy was thrilled: ("Bingo! He shoots, he scores!"), but Draven healed immediately, then taunted Funboy with a joke:
  • Draven: Jesus Christ? Stop me if you heard this one: Jesus Christ walks into a hotel. (Draven was shot again) Ow! He hands the innkeeper three nails, and he asks... (He was shot again)
    Funboy: Don't you ever f--kin' die?
    Draven: Can you put me up for the night?
• Draven then disarmed Funboy and shot him in the leg (Funboy: "Look what you've done to my sheets!"), then stabbed Funboy in the heart with drug-filled syringe needles - causing a massive overdose of morphine; it was a spectacular death scene in its own right

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

This Coen Brothers' screwball comedy, similar to Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) , was about a NYC firm named Hudsucker Industries. Dim-witted business college graduate Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) from Muncie, Indiana had just obtained a job there in the mailroom in late 1958.

• as the film opened, the company's founder and president Waring Hudsucker (Charles Durning) was meeting with his board of directors, hearing a favorable financial report: "In short, we're loaded." Hudsucker laid his pocketwatch (set for 12 noon) on the table, cleared his throat, stood up, and stepped up onto the table
• uncharacteristically, he made a long ambling run down the boardroom's shiny table toward a set of windows at the far end of the room.

• as the clock struck twelve (synchronized with his own watch), he committed suicide, by diving through the skyscraper window and propelling himself into mid-air (an act known as defenestration); his fall (45 floors "counting the mezzanine") was followed by the camera all the way down to the ground in a drawn-out plummet, seen from above and from below
• as he approached the ground, he wiped his sweaty eye, and signaled for a clear place to land; his fall ended with a splat (off-screen) and an overweight woman screaming down at the body
• a few of the board members commented:
  • "He could've opened the window"
  • "Waring Hudsucker never did anything the easy way."

The Last Seduction (1994)

In director John Dahl's modern-day dark noir, it featured a lethal, sexy, amoral, cold-blooded and brainy femme fatale - a scheming telemarketing manager who stole her rich doctor-husband's drug money, and then went undercover in a small-town to hide out and find a naive male she could dupe to assist in her larcenous and evil plans, and carry out the murder of her husband.

• after a NYC drug deal (the sale of medicinal cocaine obtained by her doctor-husband Clay (Bill Pullman)) amounting to almost a million dollars, the beautiful Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino) stole the money
• after fleeing to a small upstate NY town, she proceeded to use her sexual wiles (via a one-night stand) to manipulate a dumb, love-struck boyfriend - a gullible stud named Mike Swale (Peter Berg), to murder Clay; she acquired a job as manager of an insurance company, taking the name 'Wendy Croy'
• the murder plan (an "unpleasant chore") was to have Mike stab Clay in his NYC apartment; however, the scheme went awry when Mike turned chicken and yelled: "I can't do it, Wendy, I can't do it" - and then he saw the Gregory's wedding picture; he realized that the victim was not a cheater named 'Cahill' but Wendy's husband, and that he had been seduced into committing her husband's murder
• Wendy entered the apartment to check on the killing, where she found both Clay and Mike had teamed up, and Mike knew of her deception: ("So you were gonna have me kill your husband")
• in a clever double-cross, Bridget killed her own husband by spraying Mace down his throat, after kissing him, and then calmly told her naive, cuckolded boyfriend:
  • "Now we have a future....I did it for us, Mike."
• then, she taunted and mocked Mike about her knowledge that his 'wife' Trish was a trans-gendered male; as she unzipped her pants, she prompted a disturbing flashback for Mike that revealed the truth:
  • "You should have told me you never slept with a man before. It must have been some wild night, you getting married so fast"
• she aggravated the 'intruder' Mike and incited him to slap and rape her by removing her pants and displaying old fashioned men's underwear to him, reinforcing Mike's fears of being homosexual

• she angered him further over his damaged marriage, and how he must have been shocked on his wedding night:
  • "He couldn't really - had to keep the goods hidden for a whole two days. What did he do? Tell ya that little bobbly thing at the back of your throat was a clitoris!? You married a man, you farm faggot!...I'm Trish. Rape me."
• Mike began to rape her from behind as she was laid out on a table; she reached forward and surreptitiously dialed 911 to record their role-play and conversation and his self-incriminating confession:
  • "I'm gonna rape you. I'm gonna f--king rape you, bitch!"
• she also made sure to repeatedly scream out the accusation: "You killed my husband!" with his concurrence: "God-damn right I did!"
• the call was recorded and traced, and Mike was arrested, jailed and obviously out-maneuvered and set-up for the crime; his public defender (Jack Shearer) had no way to defend Mike's actions and contest the evidence against him, and he was destined for the electric chair

Legends of the Fall (1994)

Director Edward Zwick's melodramatic epic drama, the winner of the Best Cinematography Academy Award, was about a pioneering family living in the wilds of Montana in the early 1900s:

• Colonel William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins), a retired military officer and patriarch, had three sons:
  • Alfred (Aidan Quinn), the eldest son, with a beautiful fiancée Susannah (Julia Ormond)
  • Tristan (Brad Pitt), wild, rebellious and impulsive, the favored son, and knowledgeable about Native-American ways
  • Samuel (Henry Thomas), the youngest son, and most naive
• in the film's closing; there was a mystical, shuttered freeze-framed death of wild, reckless, now-elderly middle son Tristan; he grappled with a great brown grizzly bear he had wounded (by cutting off a claw) as a teenager
• Native American One Stab (Gordon Tootoosis) narrated the film's last lines:
  • "I remember when he was a boy. I thought Tristan would never live to be an old man. I was wrong about that. I was wrong about many things. It was those who loved him most who died young. He was a rock they broke themselves against however much he tried to protect them. But he had his honor and a long life and he saw his children grow and raise their own families.
    
    Tristan died in 1963 in the moon of the popping trees. He was last seen up in the north country, hunting. His grave is unmarked, but it does not matter. He had always lived in the borderland, anyway, somewhere between this world and the other. It was a good death."

The Lion King (1994)

Disney's acclaimed animated feature film (considered an interpretation of Shakespeare's Hamlet) was about the lethal struggle between two brothers.

• when young "Lion Prince" Simba was born in Africa to his ruling father Mufasa (the 'Lion King"), his younger brother (Uncle) Scar was made the second in line to the throne; Scar was jealously angry and envious of his nephew Simba, and plotted with three spotted hyenas (Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed) to kill Mufasa and Prince Simba, take over the Pride Lands, and make himself king
• Mufasa died a cruel and extremely sad death after rescuing young son Simba from a large stampeding herd of wildebeests in a narrow gorge; the disastrous stampede of panicked wildebeests was engineered by Mufasa's wicked, power-hungry, dark-maned brother Scar and the hyenas
• after heroically grabbing Simba and safely placing him on a small outcropping, Mufasa fell back into the chaos of the stampede, but then struggled to climb up a steep rock cliff. On the ledge at the top of the cliff, Scar refused to assist and help him up, but instead pierced Mufasa's paws with his own claws. He sarcastically exclaimed: "Long live the king" before he tossed him off. Simba screamed: "NO!!" as he saw his father plunging down in mid-air

• Mufasa fell to his death from the rock cliff to the valley floor far below
• after the wildebeest herd passed by, young Simba scampered down, called out: "Dad!", and finally located his father's dead body. He vainly attempted to awaken his father by nudging him and tugging on his ear:
  • "Dad? Come on. You got to get up. Dad? We got to go home."
• he called out: "HELP! Somebody! Anybody," but only heard his own echo. He shed some tears, and then cuddled up next to his father, underneath his massive paw
• the evil Scar came up to Simba and asked: "Simba, what have you done?" Scar falsely comforted Simba after the cub began to take the blame for the accident:
  • Simba: "There were wildebeests and he tried to save me. It was an accident. I didn't mean for it to happen."
  • Scar: "Of course, of course you didn't. No one ever means for these things to happen but the King is dead. And if it weren't for you, he'd still be alive. What will your mother think?"
  • Simba (sniffling): "What am I gonna do?"
• Scar suggested that the careless Simba run away and never return. As the shamed Simba ran off, Scar then cruelly ordered his three spotted hyena cohorts to pursue the fleeing cub and "kill him," so that he could ascend to the throne

Natural Born Killers (1994)

Director Oliver Stone's controversial and violent romance-crime film, inspired by Bonnie and Clyde (1967), told about two serial killers on a rampage.

• in the film's pre-title credits introduction, Mallory Wilson (Juliette Lewis) and Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson) slaughtered most of the redneck patrons in a diner; then, the murderous couple fled into the desert
• Mallory had a disturbing flashback of her traumatic home life when the two first met
• in Mallory's home, she lived with sexually abusive, unemployed father Ed Wilson (Rodney Dangerfield) who often threatened molestation, and called her a "stupid bitch"; he grabbed her butt: ("If your ass is in this house, it's my ass")
• her neglectful "old bag" mother (Edie McClurg) was also constantly intimidated by Ed
• Mallory instantly fell in love with meat-delivery boy Mickey when he came to the door, delivering a 50-lb. package of beef; they went on a joy-ride after stealing Ed's car
• the family was introduced as part of a sitcom fantasy (similar to All in the Family or Married With Children) about a dysfunctional family, called "I Love Mallory," complete with a laugh track of canned guffaws
• soon after, Mickey was imprisoned for grand theft auto, but he escaped and returned to rescue Mallory
• there was a dual death scene of them both murdering Mallory's parents; Mickey struck Mallory's abusive father Ed in the face with a crowbar, dunked his head into a fish-tank to drown him, and struck him unconscious

• then they gagged and bound Mallory's mother in her bed, and burned her alive after dousing her with charcoal lighter fluid and setting her on fire