Ransom. Coulda been a taut-nerve kidnapping drama with a darkly amusing twist ending. Instead we got something out the Hayes code playbook where bad guys have to pay for their crimes.
Body Double. Completely stupid, but the ending stands out by relying on a dog pushing his way through what must be the fragile car window in history.
You aren’t very familiar with the Coen brothers, are you? I thought it was amazing.
It’s at least partially based on a 1963 Kurosawa movie with a different story but similar ending. Otherwise, I know what you mean but I don’t think that makes it cliched if one specific movie decides to end that way. Also, Mel Gibson needs to go crazy and kill people in his movies, and he didn’t fulfill that quota yet.
Though I do hate the “I can’t kill the bad guy, but it’s ok when he falls off a cliff accidentally” moral meme.
Oh I don’t know - rich kid, brain damage, saved Lewis’s life, forced at gunpoint to participate (all on video). I can see a prosecutor thinking, “why bother.” Great little lesser known movie too.
I hated Extremeties a pretty good setup that turns to shit. Farrah Fawcett plays (very well) a woman who is almost raped in her own home. She manages to capture and imprison the rapist who tells her that he has set things up so that he will be able to convince the cops that she is a nut not a victim. He will be set free and will get her. She believes him and thinks she should kill him and bury him in the yard. Her housemates return and they argue to and fro about this moral dilemma - if they call the police he will get off, to be safe she must kill him. So with no warning at all he confesses to being a serial killer so that if they call the police he’ll be jailed for life The end.
As for Python they had already used the police device in episode 29 The Money Programme which features *The Argument Sketch *. The entire history of the Holy Grail script is available online without much effort. The original rejected script was called Monty Python’s Second Film. The shooting script for the movie, with annotated differences, is also available. It indicates that the ending is entirely as written.
I didn’t really get the ending to no country for old men, but I won’t say I didn’t like it. It was definitely memorable. If somebody wants to give me a spoilered explanation, that’d be cool. What was the speech at the end all about?
I pretty much think that the ending to all these movies that have been mentioned so far have been good.
I enjoyed Synecdoche, New York, for a while… but the movie petered off into blah by the end. The very very end of it was kind of cool I guess. Confusing movie overall.
Didn’t care to much for the end of Glorious Basterds but it wasn’t the worst I suppose.
The ending was by far the best part of that film.
Consider the title, and that the sheriff has just retired.
Yeah, or how about Travels With My Aunt? That one always bugged me.
But not as much as Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I’m surprised no-one’s mentioned that yet. Everybody gets arrested. I think they just ran out of movie.
On a more serious note, Two-Lane Blacktop. It fits the film, but still. There’s a canon of 70s New Hollywood films with abrupt and/or silly downer endings from that period - Electra Glide in Blue, Easy Rider, Phase IV. Vanishing Point. THX 1138. Yes, you were trying to make us leave the cinema filled with an ineffable feeling of loss. It worked when Vittorio De Sica did it. But you, quasi-indie mainstream New Hollywood of the early 1970s, you were not quite Vittorio De Sica. But you tried, I’ll grant you that.
yeah, that’s what I came here to add. It annoyed me so much, I don’t think I’ve seen another Tim Burton movie since
Well…They will just have to learn their lesson and not do…whatever it was they did.
How about the ending of Wicker Man starring Nicholas Cage? AHHHH!! THE BEES!!!
I heard that they were setting it up for a sequel. They had a script all set for Monty Python’s Second Holy Grail Film, but it was rejected.
Come on, considering the film, it was an awesome ending! There are movies that one should watch while stoned…watching this one makes me feel stoned.
I don’t know if it’s a stupid ending, or a great one, but I’ll throw in Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. I think some people cheered at the end of the movie because it was finally over.
Sorry, but having the editors splice in a couple of 2-second scenes doesn’t mean that that the ending is properly set up. Or that it isn’t lame.
OH! League of Extraordinary Gentlemen! I guess everyone involved was genuinely clueless about what a steaming turd it was, and thought fans would clamor for a sequel. No spoiler alert: They killed off Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery), buried him, and showed the beginnings of a voodoo ceremony to revive him.
Oooh, good one!
I’ve never read the book, but I’ve gathered that there’s something about Dave meeting the aliens who created the Monolith. OK, whatever. Still, if you’re not going to film enough of that ending to make sense, then don’t try to half-ass it! Just have the movie end with Dave disappearing into the Monolith.
RE: Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
The whole MOVIE is a series of spliced-together scenes. Seriously, do you think Lancelot’s attack on the wedding, or Tim the Sorcerer and the battle with the rabbit, or King Arthur’s encounter with the Knights Who Say Ni, or Sir Robin’s minstrels, or King Arthur’s battle with the Black Knight, or Sir Galahad’s adventure after wicked, naughty, evil Zoot turned on the Grail light, were in any way necessary to advance the overall plot of searching for the Holy Grail?
It’s Python humor. It’s what they did. I understand it’s a matter of taste, but to try to argue they didn’t intend for the movie to end the way it did, even after being told the script was shot as written, is sorta silly.
Reportedly nobody liked the ending of the 1975 film Lucky Lady, so they re-filmed it multiple times (spoilers, but who cares? Who even saw this movie?):
I’ve heard about yet another filmed ending, besides these.
Donnie Darko. I know this is a cult fave but the ending was a sloppy mess. The DVD actually had a lengthy text (the book that one woman wrote) as an extra which explained in more detail what all that weird time travel/alternative universe/whatever-you-want-to-call-it stuff was about, and it was STILL stupid.
Which is a pity, because the first two-thirds of the film was good and the general idea of the ending was good. They clearly didn’t know how to get to the end in a coherent fashion.
“Hauled away by the police” sets up a sequel? Monty Python’s Moldy Jail?
Besides being a blatant sequel grab, it was okay. And really, after the same Hot Topic pseudogoth film being made 12 times, this is the straw that broke the monkey’s back?
Common mistake. That wasn’t a movie; it was a trailer for many youtube parodies.