It is fair to say that from fade up on the beach to the moment you see the waters once again still, with the buoy bell dinging we are experiencing the opening of “Jaws”.
Gotta be one of the most gripping opening sequences in film history. Susan Blacklinie as Chrissie Watkins? Sexy, wholesome, and a great screamer. Who could ask for more?
( She also had a simply sublime body )
Cartooniverse
Or maybe this?
Not a movie, but the opening to Farscape: The Peacekeeper War was pretty rockin’.
One of my all time favorite openings is from a schlock horror film from the 80’s: Mother’s Day
This film starts right up without credits, and at the end of the first 7 minutes or so (before the credits start) you will sit up and yell, “Holy Crap!”.
Without giving it away, lets just say you think you know what is going to happen, but there is one hell of a twist.
The beginning heist in Heat is entirely worth watching just for itself. If only the end of the movie were as good…
The 6-minute hetero missionary position f**k in Betty Blue. A real buzzer.
It may already have been mentioned, but may I offer Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. I’m going to cheat a little and suggest that the ‘opening scene’ is the entire sepia sequence, from Butch asking why they replaced the old bank to the confrontation between Sundance and the card player. That takes a lot of beating in my book.
The Cell
Opening sequence – When I saw it, all I could think was “Whoa… this is gonna be good.” I was thinking something along the lines of Se7en… twisty-turny, edge-of-the seat fun. Then the movie veers abruptly into a pathetic Marilyn Manson carnival freakshow. What an absolute waste.
Hard to beat the intro to American History X for memorable.
Zodiac’s intro is also perfect for its subject matter. The fuzzy yet indie and rebellious feel-goodness of the teen couple necking in their car, when the Zodiac comes in out of nowhere and suddenly ruins their shit. It was David Lynch’s way of making you feel the exact same sense of shock that suddenly struck San Francisco when the real-life Zodiac first hit the scene.
For that matter, the original Dawn of the Dead had an awesome opening, too. The chaos, isolation and frustration inside the newsroom was a perfect microcosm of the harrowing ordeal the main characters were about to go through.
But the use of “When the Man Comes Around” in the remake has to be one of the most fitting musical choices in the history of cinema. Only Johnny Cash could so perfectly capture the bleak horror of a world gone terribly wrong.
Three pages and not a mention of the old Crimson Permanent Assurance?
(That’d be the beginning of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. There’s one particular spot in downtown Minneapolis that I cannot approach without looking up Lasalle and thinking of that bit.)
Actually, there is one break. I rented this from Netflix after seeing it in the theatre just because I wanted to see that tracking shot again. In the directors comentary he mentions the break (I wouldn’t have spotted it w/out his comentary. It was when the camera pans in the 90 deg angle walkway, about halfway through).