# Lopped-Off Limbs in Popular Cinema
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [August 30, 2005, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266 "2005-08-30T15:32:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Tracy\_Lord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tracy_Lord)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/21 "2005-08-30T19:45:58Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> Androids and Robots losing parts I can take – in principle they can be repaired. Despite the gee-whiz technology of Star Wars, though, cutting off people’s limbs is a whole 'nother ball game.
Of course, in Star Wars that does go all the way back to the original trilogy, with hands flying every which way.
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### Author:  [@Rufus\_Xavier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rufus_Xavier)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/22 "2005-08-30T19:51:49Z")
“I’ll bite your legs off!”
- The Black Knight
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/23 "2005-08-30T19:59:26Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Of course, in Star Wars that does go all the way back to the original trilogy, with hands flying every which way.
Lucas’ films _do_ have a way of involving a lopped-off limb in almost every film. (See the link posted by **Terminus** above. Great link.) But his first flick was hardly a limb-fest. I don’t count C3PO’s reattached piece. That leaves us with the bar fight.
Now compare with Sith – limbs flying everywhere – Dooku and Grievous land Vader lose multiple limbs. Windu and others. _None_ of the earlier films compare with this.
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### Author:  [@BMax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMax)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/24 "2005-08-30T20:17:57Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> Androids and Robots losing parts I can take – in principle they can be repaired. Despite the gee-whiz technology of Star Wars, though, cutting off people’s limbs is a whole 'nother ball game.
I’m not sure about that. Darth Vader is a…what was it? “seven-foot magical cyborg”, Episode 3 is about him becoming that. So, he _has_ to lose the limbs.
I don’t know _why_ it’s all happening now, as opposed to 10 years ago, except the technology being there to show it
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/25 "2005-08-30T20:28:02Z")
> [@](#):
>
> I’m not sure about that. Darth Vader is a…what was it? “seven-foot magical cyborg”, Episode 3 is about him becoming that. So, he has to lose the limbs.
But he’d already lost body parts by then. We didn’t get to see it until now.
Heck, in **Little Big Man** Mr. Merriwether, Martin Balsam’s character, gradually loses parts throughout – a hand, a leg, an eye. We just don’t get to see it.
If they remade LBM today would we be treated to the gradual on-camera whittling away of Mr. Merriwether?
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/26 "2005-08-30T20:35:55Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> Androids and Robots losing parts I can take – in principle they can be repaired. Despite the gee-whiz technology of Star Wars, though, cutting off people’s limbs is a whole 'nother ball game.
Why? They all get repaired, too.
As ahs alredy been pointed out, the arm-chopping in _Star Wars_ goes all the way back to the original, when Obi-Wan whacks the arm off that guy with the walrus teeth. Luke loses his hand in _Empire_, and Vader loses his in _Jedi_. _Phantom Menace_ is the only one where no biological characters lose an arm, although Darth Maul does get bi-sected. If there is, indeed, a trend here, I think the Star Wars franchise should be exempted from it, as hackin’ off limbs has been part of the series since '77. There was a lot more in the last movie, but the original trilogy only had two guys running around with laser swords at any one time, which dramatically cut down (hee hee) on opportunities for losing limbs. The new trilogy has armies of guys with lightsabers, so its only natural that the number of cropped limbs increase.
On other fronts, _Braveheart_ (1995) had Mel Gibson drawn and quartered, and the battle scenes featured quite a few de-limbings. _Big Lebowski_ (1998) featured a severed toe. _Saving Private Ryan_ (1998) had the wounded soldier on the beach in Normandy wandering around, carrying his severed arm, and that was possibly the least disturbing dismemberment in the film. In _Master and Commander_ (2003) one of the young ensigns gets his arm surgically removed after it gets gangrenous. Lt. Dan got his legs blown off in _Forrest Gump_ (1994). Julie Taymor’s _Titus_ (1999) had Lavinia get both her arms hacked off and her tongue cut out, and that was just because it was faithful to a five-hundred year old play. _Once Were Warriors_ (1994) featured a castration with a broken beer bottle, which is a whole heck of a lot more unpleasant than most of the other things I’ve listed here. There’s the aforementioned Black Knight scene from _Moty Python and the Holy Grail_ (1975). As a sort of reverse of this whole thing, Mila Jovovich’s character in _The Fifth Element_ (1997) was grown from a severed hand. I seem to recall a few amputations being performed in the surgery tent at the beginning of _Dances with Wolves_ (1990). Michael Ironside got both arms chopped off in an elevator in _Total Recall_ (1990). Aragorn chopped off the arm of the orc who killed Boromir in _Fellowship of the Rings_ (2001), and I’m pretty sure all the movies in the trilogy featured someone or something losing a limb at one point or another. _Conan the Barbarian_ (1982) had a couple decapitations, which is sort of like having all of your limbs chopped off at once. For that matter, _Ice Pirates_ (1984) had a decapitation that did not adversely affect the character’s ability to participate in the rest of the movie. Does the sledgehammer scene in _Misery_ (1990) count?
Looks like, if there is a trend here, it’s been going on for at least ten to fifteen years now. _Sin City_ and _Kill Bill_ are nothing new.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/27 "2005-08-30T20:57:29Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Looks like, if there is a trend here, it’s been going on for at least ten to fifteen years now. Sin City and Kill Bill are nothing new.
Nope. Go to any of the films I list and count the loppedf-off parts. Now go to yours and do the same. Don’t cheat.
There’s a _Big_ just in the histogram lately with severed parts per film. Genuine trend.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/28 "2005-08-30T20:57:37Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Looks like, if there is a trend here, it’s been going on for at least ten to fifteen years now. Sin City and Kill Bill are nothing new.
Nope. Go to any of the films I list and count the loppedf-off parts. Now go to yours and do the same. Don’t cheat.
There’s a _Big_ jump in the histogram lately with severed parts per film. Genuine trend.
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/29 "2005-08-30T21:31:37Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> Nope. Go to any of the films I list and count the loppedf-off parts. Now go to yours and do the same. Don’t cheat.
> There’s a _Big_ jump in the histogram lately with severed parts per film. Genuine trend.
I don’t think two films constitutes a trend. In 1998, there were two computer animated films staring an ant. That wasn’t the sign of a trend of ant-themed movies, it was just a coincidence. Or plagiarism, if you’re not feeling charitable.
And I’m not counting _Sith_, sorry. That’s been going on in the Star Wars films for thirty years, even if it got stepped up for the last one.
And without doing a frame-by-frame comparison, I’d say _Saving Private Ryan_, _Braveheart_, and _Fellowship of the Rings_ compete with _Sin City_ and _Kill Bill_ for dismemberment and general manglings.
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### Author:  [@Crown\_Prince\_of\_Irony](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crown_Prince_of_Irony)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/30 "2005-08-30T21:59:06Z")
> [@Miller](#):
>
> . . . _Big Lebowski_ (1998) featured a severed toe.
must resist. . . can’t
You want a toe, Dude?!?! I can get you a toe!!!
sorry
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### Author:  [@Dusty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dusty)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/31 "2005-08-30T22:07:00Z")
> [@Beware of Doug](#):
>
> How graphic do we wanna get? If not very graphic, we can go back quite a ways in film history. _Kings Row_ (1940), one of Ronald Reagan’s better star vehicles, featured Reagan getting both legs needlessly amputated by a vengeful doctor. And, of course, coming through a happy man. This was the source of RR’s famous quote: “_Where’s the rest of me?_”
Goes back further than that. The same plot device was used in _The Penalty_ in 1920, when Lon Chaney’s character had his legs needlessly amputated by a foolish doctor and the more experienced doctor said nothing and actively covered up the mistake. The rest of the movie is his going more and more insane in his plot for revenge against the two of them.
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### Author:  [@Bomzaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bomzaway)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/32 "2005-08-30T23:17:36Z")
When I was a kid living in Japan back in '76, I remember seeing a TV show about a blind Samurai (the name escapes me). In one of the episodes, he’s sword-fighting with a gang of ruffians and one of them swings and misses, thereby leaving his exposed arm splayed out on a table. In a flash, the blind Samurai deftly hacked the guys arm and the table in two. It was extremely realistic looking, too early for CGI, and way too smooth to be stop action. I don’t know how it was done, but I can still see the whole sequence in my mind to this day; the table falling away, the arm rolling off the table, the surprised look on the guys face. Obviously it shocked the hell out of me back then.
While I’m thinking about it, I’m pretty sure that on that same TV show, another assassin would crack two walnuts in his hand prior to performing his style of dealing death. He’d get very close to his target, then plunge his hand into his or her chest, and squeeze his victims heart. Upon which time the screen would cut to an x-ray view of a beating heart, a hand grasping the heart, squeezing, and exiting. Cut back to the regular scene with the assassin pulling his hand away (I don’t recall it being bloody) and his victim falling dead. Again, shocked the hell out of me. The cracking of walnuts was a way for the assassin to strengthen his fingers to prepare for “the plunge”.
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### Author:  [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/33 "2005-08-30T23:23:49Z")
> [@Bomzaway](#):
>
> When I was a kid living in Japan back in '76, I remember seeing a TV show about a blind Samurai (the name escapes me). In one of the episodes, he’s sword-fighting with a gang of ruffians and one of them swings and misses, thereby leaving his exposed arm splayed out on a table. In a flash, the blind Samurai deftly hacked the guys arm and the table in two. It was extremely realistic looking, too early for CGI, and way too smooth to be stop action. I don’t know how it was done, but I can still see the whole sequence in my mind to this day; the table falling away, the arm rolling off the table, the surprised look on the guys face. Obviously it shocked the hell out of me back then.
The blind swordsman would probably be Zatoichi. There’s a whole series of films on his exploits, the latest of which is the eponymous [Zatoichi](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363226/). It’s got a whole slew of severed limbs and spurting arteries itself.
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### Author:  [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2005, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/34 "2005-08-30T23:26:06Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> Another thing – in Bill II, The Bride announces to The devastated 88 after she plows through them “All your limbs belong to me!” Really? What did she want with them? Have an Arms Sale?
She was going to open a second hand store. Speaking of which, there’s **Evil Dead** , in which Ash chops his _own_ hand off - and then traps it under a rubbish bin weighted down with a copy of **A Farewell To Arms**. Groovy.
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### Author:  [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)
#### Post date: [August 31, 2005, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/35 "2005-08-31T05:17:06Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> We’ve never had relentless protagonists before? This bounty of limbs is something new. The Terminator was as relentless as they come, but I don’t recall hacked-off limbs in any of those flicks plenty of impalemts, though, and other mayhem.)
Not hacked off perhaps, but in T2 he kneecapped about 100 cops with large-calibre bullets. Doubtful anyone was walking home anytime soon.
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> Another thing – in Bill II, The Bride announces to The devastated 88 after she plows through them “All your limbs belong to me!” Really? What did she want with them? Have an Arms Sale?
I thought she let them all take their limbs except for the lawyer babe, but it’s been a long time since I watched it.
Another pre-SW limb-severing is _Jaws_, which has one severed leg and multiple severances from Cassie.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [August 31, 2005, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/36 "2005-08-31T08:56:44Z")
There also seem to be a number of films where there’s a sort of _I’ve been sliced into pieces, but you can’t tell it yet_ moment; there was one based on a video game (resident evil, was it?) where people are sliced into neat little chunks by lasers, but they stand there motionless for a few seconds, before falling apart. There was quite a similar bit in quite a similar movie (something about a haunted hospital) where someone gets sliced in half vertically (ear to ear, shoulder to shoulder) and just stands there for a bit, then one half falls over.
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### Author:  [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)
#### Post date: [August 31, 2005, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/37 "2005-08-31T12:15:11Z")
> [@](#):
>
> I don’t count C3PO’s reattached piece. That leaves us with the bar fight.
… and the comment by Han Solo about how wookies “tear your arms off” if they get upset.
BTW, has no one gone back to Captain Hook? I think he’s the earliest hand-cut-off that I can recall.
And there was a movie in the late 50s called THE VIKINGS where Tony Curtis gets his hand cut off by Kirk Douglas (or perhaps the reverse.) Dismemberment wasn’t so easy to show in a movie back in those days, so it was a very dramatic event.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [August 31, 2005, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/38 "2005-08-31T12:15:33Z")
> [@](#):
>
> I thought she let them all take their limbs except for the lawyer babe, but it’s been a long time since I watched it.
Nope – I just watched it, so it’s clear in my mind. She let them all go except the lawyer babe, but said that they had to leave the severed limbs. That was so weird it stuck in my mind. That _has_ to be from one of the Asian films Tarentino is paying homage to – I can’t see Thurman, for instance, in or out of charcter, coming up with that one on her own.
(“Second hand store” – snicker. Wish I’d come up with that one.)
Some o’you folks seem to think that because you’ve come up with examples of other films where limbs get hacked off you’ve disproven my point. But I never said people never lost limbs. I’m saying the current limb and head) count per film has suddenly soared. Yeah, **Monty Python and the Holy Grail** and **Boxing Helena** (which no one’s mentioned) give us a measly four. Now go watch Kill Bill I or Sith again.
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### Author:  [@awldune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/awldune)
#### Post date: [August 31, 2005, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/39 "2005-08-31T15:20:41Z")
Kill Bill vol. 1 is an aberration. It’s being deliberately over the top and is referencing ultra-violent samurai films from the 60s and 70s anyway.
There has been an interesting run of movies featuring disembodied eyeballs, however. Off the top of my head, Pirates of the Carribean, Minority Report, and Kill Bill vol 2.
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### Author:  [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)
#### Post date: [August 31, 2005, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lopped-off-limbs-in-popular-cinema/319266/40 "2005-08-31T19:26:00Z")
A rival anchorman got both arms cut off (in separate incidents) in **Anchorman: The Legend of Run Burgundy**. _Excellent_ movie.
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