Not sure how unexpected it is, but Travis Bickle’s ‘rescue’ of Iris from her pimp in Taxi Driver (1976)
Leon tells Holden about his mother in Blade Runner (1982)
Gene Hackman’s war correspondent runs afoul of Nicaraguan troops in Under Fire (1983)
I was so prepared by what I had read to be shocked and revolted by that reveal at the end, that it was anticlimactic to actually see it. I wished I hadn’t read the spoilers (which anyway were not so identified, because the movie was both old and a classic, not considering that it had been out of circulation for a very long time).
I hate violent movies but I can think of one scene…Annie Wilkes talking the sledgehammer to her bound victim’s ankles in “Misery”.
ETA I guess this is not a classic film, sorry about that!
I hate to be pedantic but I think there should be a rule for what constitutes a “classic” film in the context of this thread. Basically, it should only cover those movies made before 1968 which is when the Motion Picture Production Code was replaced by the MPAA rating system. Anything after that really wouldn’t be that unexpectedly shocking since the dam burst in terms of violence (and sexual content) immediately after that.
de niros character raping his girlfriend in the backseat of the car after she turned down his marriage proposal in once upon a time in America
The victim death of a guy strapped to a wheelchair, engulfed in flames, and rolling down a long parking lot garage ramp. The movie was Manhunter.
I don’t think it’s considered “Classic”, but the violent scenes of torture to Oliver Reed’s character, Father Grandler, in Ken Russel’s film The Devils (1971) got that film an X-rating in the US and Britain. It was banned in Finland until 2011.
Of course, it had nudity and sexual content, as well, but the violence definitely put it over the top. had the film contained no nudity, i think it still would’ve gotten that “X”.
You still really can’t get it on DVD. There was a bootlegged release, and a legitimate roundabout release that was cancelled after three days.
I also found this tidbit at imdb:
The so-brief-blink-and-you-missed-it scene in Midnight Cowboy where Joe Buck gets gang raped.
He’s gang raped? For someone reason I thought it was implied that his girlfriend was and he was forced to watch.
I think Un Chien Andalou has to be right up there. I wonder how many people in 1929 expected to sit in a theater and see a razor slice open an eyeball in the first 5 minutes.
In the 1941 serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel, starring Tom Tyler, there is a scene where Captain Marvel fights a group of gangsters on the roof of a skyscraper. One of the gangsters lunges at Cap. Cap casually tosses the gangster over the edge of the roof.
In another scene, the good guys are attacked by a horde of bandits. Billy Batson (who was portrayed as a teenager, though the actor was 25 at the time) mans a machine gun, and mows them down in droves.
You could not do that in a kid’s movie today.
The last time I watched The Adventures of Robin Hood, I got to the scene where Errol Flynn bursts into the banquet hall with a deer carcass slung over his shoulder. I found myself wondering if any modern vegetarians would be Triggered by that scene.
Kathy Bates hobbling James Caan in Misery.
Kid Sampson, not Hungry Joe.
My entry: LA Confidential. Captain Smith suddenly murders Sgt. Vincennes.
No, they were both raped by the gang. IIRC he has flashbacks of the event when a gay client goes down on him in a movie theater, leading him to beat the guy up later, which was also shocking violence.
Speaking of James Caan there is the death of Sonny Corleone at the tollbooths in The Godfather.
Another unexpected and shocking scene in Psycho:
The reveal of Norman’s mother as a taxidermied corpse isn’t violent but it is creepy and gory for a film released in 1960.
Had any movie prior to Cool Hand Luke shown someone really well and truly getting the shit pummeled out of him? Because even NOW in an era of constant over-the-top violence, the boxing scene with Dragline still seems unbelievably brutal.
Fun fact: the guy who wrote the book that the movie was based on, is still alive at age 91.
In Went the Day Well? (1942), a small Brit town is occupied by Germans as an advance post for a planned invasion. It contains at least a couple scenes of shocking violence – an axe to the head and a grenade smothering - all the more shocking because they are perpetrated by elderly ladies.
Cool Hand Luke was released in 1967. Brando gets the shit pummeled out of him in On the Waterfront (1954) and The Chase (1966). Ditto Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars (1964). I am sure I am forgetting others.
I still have to laugh at, even considering it was 1954, longshoreman Terry Malloy “swearing” to the mob boss just before he fought him:
“Youre a dirty, lousy, rotten, stinkin…MUG!”
Gosh darn it all. 