Though horror movies are primarily the ones recognized for featuring brutal, rewind-worthy death scenes, such scenes are certainly not exclusive to the genre known for blood, boobs and monsters.
In fact, its not uncommon for non-horror movies to feature death scenes that are a whole lot more brutal than the ones seen in horror films, and its ten of those movies that were here to spotlight today.So read on to relive ten of the most brutal non-horror movie death scenes of all time, and feel free to drop us a comment and add to the list with some of your favorites!
In no particular order
10 Best Non-Horror Deaths
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#1
THE STORY OF RICKY (1991)
In preparation for this post I spoke with a priest and he assured me that it’d be utterly sacrilegious to kick the list off with any film other than Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, so let’s obey the big man and start there. If you haven’t seen this Japanese gem, it’s about a dude who single-handedly wipes out a whole lot of corruption in a prison system, using his superhuman strength to punch his way through all the bad guys (LITERALLY). I feel pretty safe in writing that Story of Ricky is the goriest non-horror film in the history of cinema, and there’s so much spectacularly over the top brutality on display in it that it’s almost impossible to single out any one moment. But if you’re going to force me, I’ll have to go with the infamous head explosion scene, wherein one dude’s entire head explodes between the hands of another. I like to call it ‘The Clap of Death,’ and let’s just say I’m glad that it’s a way to die that’s not even remotely conceivable, from an anatomical standpoint.
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#2
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (2005)
Though he started out as the master of body horror, earning that title thanks to films like Videodrome and The Fly, David Cronenberg has more recently been making movies that are a bit more mainstream, for lack of a better word. 2005 saw the release of A History of Violence, the tale of a peaceful man (Viggo Mortensen) forced into a life more violent in the wake of the self-defense murder of two men who attempt to rob his small-town diner. Though the movie all around is bit more palatable to mass audiences than some of Cronenberg’s earlier works – aside, of course, from that utterly awkward 69 scene – that’s not to say it doesn’t have its fair share of Cronenbergian brutality. During the robbery scene, Mortensen’s character shoots one of the men directly in the back of the head at close range, and it’s revealed moments later that the bullet blew the entire bottom of his face off on exit, leaving him gurgling in a pool of blood. Guns are bad, mmkay?
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#3
DREDD (2012)
There are few movies on this planet as unapologetically brutal as 2012's Dredd, which effectively washed the taste of the 1995 film out of our collective mouth, and replaced it with a whole lot of blood. I didn’t actually count, so don’t hold me to it, but I’m pretty sure the gory action film boasts a higher body count than the entire Friday the 13th franchise, which is no easy task considering there are at least 27 films in that series. So un-family friendly is the film that a fictional drug called Slo-Mo was created for it, essentially for the sole purpose of showing people dying in horrific ways – in slow-motion. Though any number of the film’s kill scenes could’ve made this list, it’s the slo-mo swan song of lead villain Ma-Ma that’s most ma-ma-memorable, plunging hundreds of feet to her death and landing directly onto her face. Because this is Dredd we’re talking about – of course she landed on her face.
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#4
CALIGULA (1979)
In Sleepaway Camp 3, Angela Baker buries a victim in dirt up to her neck, proceeding to run over her exposed head with a lawnmower. A decade prior, the highly controversial based-on-true-events film Caligula had already put that memorable scene to absolute shame, introducing an ultra-violent device that’s commonly referred to as ‘the killing machine.’ Essentially, the machine is a human-sized lawnmower with massive spinning blades capable of lopping a head clean off in a single blow, and in the film we see two unlucky prisoners buried up to their necks and mowed over like they’re blades of grass that have grown too long. Though Caligula was of course a real Roman Emperor, I’m going to choose to believe that the so-called killing machine was a fictional creation for the movie. Because sometimes, ignorance truly is bliss.
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#5
AMERICAN HISTORY X (1998)
Many films over the years have taken the ‘less is more’ approach to brutal scenes, with one notable horror standout being The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Oftentimes, our minds are capable of conjuring up more frightening images than any special effect could ever wish to, and American History X’s most chilling scene is a perfect example of that. It’s likely that I will never get the infamous ‘curb stomp’ scene out of my head, no matter how long I end up living, as it’s hands down the most upsettingly disturbing scene I’ve ever witnessed. Like most of the kills in Leatherface’s first outing, it’s what’s implied that makes us feel like we saw a lot more than we actually did, and just thinking about the scene quite frankly sends shivers up my spine. So let’s move on, shall we?
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#6
ROBOCOP (1987)
Though RoboCop had become a bonafide crime-fighting icon by the time 1990’s second sequel came around, the franchise’s roots were far less family-friendly. In stark contrast to this year’s PG-13 remake, Paul Verhoeven’s original film was incredibly graphic, so much so that a whopping eleven submissions to the MPAA were returned with the dreaded ‘X’ rating – oftentimes reserved for films of the pornographic nature. Verhoeven was forced to cut out many scenes for RoboCop’s original release, in order for the ratings board to reduce the rating to an R, though those gruesome bits were subsequently restored in home video versions of the film. One such scene was of course Alex J. Murphy’s execution by multiple shotgun blasts, which is so overly long and excruciatingly brutal that you feel every shot. Murphy’s demise is of course only one of a handful of gruesome moments in the film, with the infamous acid bath scene being a close second on the brutality scale.
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#7
DRIVE (2011)
I’ve always been a big fan of scenes that blend horror with beauty, and Drive’s oft-praised elevator scene is one of the absolute perfect cinematic mixes of the two. In the scene, Ryan Gosling’s unnamed ‘Driver’ is riding an elevator with his love interest Irene, when he realizes that the third wheel inside the fast-moving metal box is looking to kill him. Rather than immediately dispatch the man, Driver instead shares a passionate kiss with Irene, before ultimately caving the dude’s head in with a few well-placed boot stomps. What makes the scene so beautiful is how much is said without a single word being spoken, Driver’s kiss to Irene serving as an in-advance apology for her being forced to watch him turn the man’s head into pudding. And what makes the scene so horrifying is, well, the fact that a human being’s head is turned into pudding. Oh, Gosling. You so charming.
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#8
CASINO (1995)
If there’s any scene on this list that rivals American History X’s curb stomp on the disturbing meter, it’s Nicky Santoro’s demise in Casino, which never ceases to be incredibly painful to watch. Never one to shy away from violence, Martin Scorsese showed every brutal second of the murders of Nicky and his brother, the mob first forcing Nicky to watch his brother get beaten to death and then directing the fury of their metal baseball bats towards him. From the visuals to the sounds of the bats meeting human flesh and bone, the double murder/burial scene is one of the more realistic death scenes of them all, made all the more horrific by the fact that it was directly lifted from real life events. This right here is cinema at its most difficult to watch.
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#9
BURN AFTER READING (2008)
Speaking of Martin Scorsese, he started somewhat of a trend with 2006’s The Departed, by shockingly blowing out the brains of big time stars whose brains you’d never expect to see blown out. Presumably in an effort to one-up the master, the Coen Brothers shocked with a similar scene in their dark comedy Burn After Reading, and shocking is the perfect word to describe the totally unexpected death of Brad Pitt’s character. Whereas movie death scenes can often be seen coming from a mile away, with musical cues and other tricks of the trade paving the way for them, the gunshot to the head of Pitt’s goofy personal trainer completely came out of left field, the character hiding in George Clooney’s closet one second and his brains decorating it the next. Certainly not the kind of scene you’d expect to see in a movie that had you in stitches just moments prior, but ‘expect the unexpected’ might as well be the motto of the brothers Coen.
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#10
RAMBO (2008)
Not that the Rambo franchise was ever one intended for children, but the fact that the movies at one point in time spawned a cartoon series and an action figure line is especially baffling when you watch 2008’s fourth installment. More than any other film in the series, Rambo is essentially a 90-minute showcase of brutal war violence, depicting both good guys and bad guys meeting some of the most gruesome ends in the past several years of big screen cinema history. This is another one of those films where it’s hard to even single out specific moments, but the one that immediately comes to mind is Rambo’s all-out assault with a truck-mounted aircraft machine gun, which slices through the enemy forces like a flaming knife through butter. The extended sequence of carnage almost dares those with a weak stomach to continue watching the film, while at the same time begging gorehounds to reach for the rewind button. I fall into the latter category, in case you were wondering.
