I caught a flick called SS Doomtrooper on the Scifi Channel last night…it was a scream. Basically The Dirty Dozen vs. Wolfenstein. Probably not a classic, but I sure as hell had fun watching it.
Anyway, the ending reminded me of one of the old laws of action/adventure/horror movies…of the “core” group of heroes in the heart of the action, typically only the leader and his/her love interest survive to the end credits. Everyone else, including but not limited to the sacrificial black guy, gets killed.
Doomtrooper bucked this by…wait for it… Having the hero’s buddy also making it out alive.
That got me to thinking…what other a/a/h movies are out there that have more than two heroes making it to the last reel—especially if they’re otherwise normal dumb, ultraformulaic summer popcorn movies? Which one has the record for the most surviving heroes?
I’m ashamed to say I can’t think of any myself at the moment, but I know I’ve seen some. Anyone want to chime in?
Big Trouble in Little China - The Hero, the Sidekick, the Sidekick’s Cousin, the Girl, the Sidekick’s Girl, and the Sidekick’s Cousin’s girl all make it out alive, as does the elderly mentor.
the most recent “War of the Worlds”: Tom, Dakota, the idiot son (who kind of deserved to die), the ex-wife, the ex-wife’s new husband, and the ex-wife’s parents survived.
Slight hijack: The ex-wife’s parents deserve a special mention for surviving two entirely separate wars of the world - those actors portrayed the hero & heroine in the 1950s film version.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Banzai’s gang survives and adds a new member.
“The Longest Day” had almost all the major characters surviving. Eddie Albert was the official “last casualty” and there was the guy who mistook a bolt sliding for a metal cricket. But pretty much everybody else who had a significant line lived.
Sorry, will try to remember that for future reference. (Don’t have a copy of the film to rewatch. Maybe I should correct such an obvious video library deficiency.) But still quite a few survive.
But Rawhide (Clancy Brown) reappears for the walk down the LA aqueducts at the end of the movie over the end credits. He was dead at the actual end of the movie though. The promised sequel to Buckaroo, Buckaroo Banzai versus the World Crime League, supposedly was reworked into Big Trouble in Little China , which would have been interesting as a Buckaroo Banzai movie.
I Tivoed it and haven’t finished yet, but I decided that Parker Lewis (actual Parker Lewis, not the disposable character they decided to name Parker Lewis–though that was funny) and British Guy With Red Hat (and probably French Resistance Chick) would survive, but Young Dumb Guy (character named Lewis) and Tough Greek Guy would buy the farm.
Don’t wreck the ending. Yes … I actually tivoed this–House of the Dead 2 was too much fun not to try again.
Of the Nine, the only one who’s dead when the final credits roll is Boromir, and he’s the one who made a grab at the Ring so it was justice of a sort. All four hobbits come out okay. Even Gandalf is alive for the party and he actually died at one point. Even most of the supporting characters survive.
Are we counting by proportion or absolute number? Because surely there’s some war movies where an entire large part of an army survives, hundreds or thousands of them. I suspect this would be especially prevalent in the WWII John Wayne propaganda-style movies, where the Americans are invincible and any single GI can whup 20 of anyone else’s best.
Yes … I actually tivoed this–House of the Dead 2 was too much fun not to try again.