After Watching the latest revised Planet of the Apes I realized that so many movies depend on a twist ending as a gimick to sell a picture. This made me think of my favorite from the Original.
I’m trying to imagine the impact of that last scene on the first audience in the 60’s. Must have been mind blowing when you had no prepration for it.
What is the greatest twist ending in fims of all time?
Oh my God… I’m home… all this time… They did it. They finally really did it… YOU MANIACS!!! YOU BLEW IT UP!!! awwww Damn you… GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!! (a little late Chuck… looks like he already had)
I’d have to nominate The Sixth Sense. I never saw that coming. Nothing in the movie pointed to the twist yet it fit in very neatly. It was very well written.
Some of my favorite, just off the top of my head. No spoilers, except for the fact that these movies have surprise/twist endings.[ul]
[li]Memento[/li][li]The Usual Suspects[/li][li]Body Heat[/li][li]The Sixth Sense[/li][li]Brazil[/li][li]Monty Python and the Holy Grail :D[/li][/ul]
Because the all reviews of Sixth Sense mentioned there was a twist ending I decided to guess what it would be before I saw it. Once you knew there was a twist it wasn’t too hard to guess what it would be. The neat thing was being in on the twist and seeing whether they had cheated. Obviously they had not. Damn good movie, but I wish reviewers wouldn’t give away the fact that there is a twist.
I couldn’t let “The Crying Game” go without a mention. Of course, the surprise wasn’t right at the end, was it? I can’t remember the sequence, but I remember being utterly shocked and surprised.
That may be true for someone without a remote familiarity with Ambrose Bierce–for the rest of us, well…
My pick is Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd–impossible to make into a movie effectively, methinks, and still quite a shocker with a very literary conceit.
I’ve weighed in on these before. In the movies my favorite twist endings are:
The Last of Sheila – gives you all the clues, but I guarantee you won’t get the ending. Written by Anthony Perkins (“Morman Bales” in Psycho) and songwriter Stephen Sondheim! The half-brother of Sleuth. Sleuth– Anthony Schaeffer’s homage to and comment on twisted mysteries
Body Heat
Charade – Peter Stone’s best – virtually a textbook on plot revelation. Stanley Donen directed. Comedy with an impressive cast, esp. Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.
Mirage – made by the same team as Charade, but not played as a comedy. Surprisingly dark vision with Gregory Peck and Walter Matthau.
** The Sting** – wonderfully twisted, beautifully set up.
** The Odessa File ** – Frederick Forsyth’s early work was characterized by twists, but they didn’t all translate well into film (The Day of the Jackal was a wonderful film, but I suspect most people didn’t fully appreciate the twist at the end). This one had the biggest impact. Jon Voigt plays a German journalist trying to find Nazi war criminals by infiltrating their secret organization. Interesting point – not only did the organization ODESSA exist, but the Nazi that was being hunted – Edward Roschmann – also really existed, and was alive when the film was made.
Angelheart was a goodie, although you started to suspect at some point that something was going on. I also remember being sort of impressed by Total Recall, which I had expected to be absolutely moronic. I totally didn’t see the ending of the usual suspects coming-- I don’t read many reviews and didn’t have a tv so I didn’t even know that the film was about.
I remember watching Naked Lunch as a teen, before I had read the book-- I got halfway thorugh the movie thinking it was a science fiction film, then “Ohh… he’s hallucinating. Hah hah!”
Also the X-files episode with the giant fungus that eats the agents was good.
Jeez, and I still don’t know if I’m sure what was going on in Fight Club. Or Blade Runner-- did we figure out that Decker is a Rep himself?
I don’t remember it too well and I don’t think I got all the way to the end, but House of Games, the Mamet film, seemed to be heading for plot twist after plot twist.
The ending to The Sixth Sense was easy to guess. Not because of what was given to the audience, but because of what wasn’t.
Honestly, how many movies show someone getting shot and then don’t even show any scene in the hospital, going to the hospital, leaving the hospital, or anything?
As soon as the movie cut to a scene with Willis after he was shot, I turned to my friend who had seen the movie and said, “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Of course, my asshole friend laughed, said, “No, you’re WAY off” and I spent the rest of the movie guessing wrong.
My sarcastic nomination for the OP: Battlefield Earth. The surprise ending was that it had one. “For the love of GOD, why won’t it end? sob please, let it end! Dear lord why won’t it end already??” I was beginning to think it wasn’t going to.
Someone said you would guess SIXTH SENSE if you read Bierce (a reference to the classic short sotry Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge). SS wasn’t nearly as close to that story as
the movie JACOB’S LADDER was. And the season finale
of DANK ANGEL (whoops! DARK ANGEL) was one of the best rip-offs of Owl Creek I ever encountered. Had me fooled completely.
I second the folks who said MEMENTO and SUSPECTS. Nobody
mentioned CITIZEN KANE.
And by the way, the brilliant thing about THE STING was the
way they use the opening credits. When they tell you at the beginning that so-and-so (and they show you a photo) plays Police Lieutenant Jones (or whatever) who will suspect that he doesn’t?
I don’t think the twist in Planet of the Apes would have surprised me had I not known ahead of time about it…there were just far too many clues that it was Earth - the apes spoke English and obviously descended from Earth species, the plants, animals, and geography were all obviously Terran. I’m pretty bad about catching twist endings…Sixth Sense and Fight Club were obvious to me. The Sixth Day had me guessing for a bit, I knew what the twist was but not one important detail of it. The Usual Suspects is about the only movie in recent memory that surprised me.
Badzt Maru–
I’m not so sure.
There may have been a few clues but the dialogue was deliberately set up to draw attention away from the truth.
Heston at one point claims that they are on a planet orbiting a star in Orions Belt. Another line talks about the fact there is no moon, and several coments are made about the alien nature of the night (turns out that is the radiation from the war)
As for the apes speaking English that is a staple in most Sci Fi Movies. They don’t expect the audience to read the Apes dialogue through the whole movie.
I opened this thread specifically to nominate this book and am glad to see that someone shares my opinion. I read this book ~10-12 years ago unaware that there was a twist beyond the normal twist one might expect in a “whodunit”. The ending stunned me; I sat there in silence trying to figure out if I’d just read the greatest mystery novel ever or if I’d just been shafted. Looking back, I take the former attitude.
