Bowman (Keir Dullea) crosses space only to find himself in a neoclassical bedroom, viewing himself as an old man, then transforms into a foetus that floats through space.
The daddy of all gut-punch endings, as Darth Vader duels with Luke Skywalker, then tells him, “I am your father.” Talk about warping our fragile little minds.
Then Return of the Jedi reveals Luke’s been copping off with his sister!
“You maniacs! You blew it up . . . God damn you all to hell!” It’s little surprise that Chuck Heston is a mite angry – the planet he’s crash-landed on is, in fact, a post-apocalyptic Earth, as signalled by a blasted, semi-sunken Statue of Liberty.
The Bleakest Film Noir Ever Made concludes with PI Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) finally learning what’s in the McGuffin briefcase (yep, Pulp Fiction nicked it). It’s a nuclear apocalypse.
Philip Marlowe never had to deal with this kind of shit.
This B-movie slasher is something of a (ahem) camp classic, its crazed finale revealing that traumatised heroine Angela is not just the killer but actually Peter, her long-“dead” brother (don’t ask).
A full-frontal nudity shot establishes that ‘she’ is, in fact, a ‘he’.
You’ve got to hand it to Brian De Palma: before shock endings were de rigueur, he scared the bejesus out of viewers by having Carrie (Sissy Spacek) make a grab from the grave as the sole survivor, Sue Snell, lays flowers.
It really is Spacek’s hand, by the way – she insisted on being buried to perform the stunt.
Nosy PI J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) unveils deceit, corruption and murder, but the real kicker comes when he discovers that the young sister of his client Evelyn (Faye Dunaway) is also her daughter.
So much for Hollywood delivering feel-good endings.
