These Are The Best Movie Death Scenes Ever, As Chosen By 29 Horror Directors

One of the most difficult demands of being a theatrical actor is dying on stage. Most people can draw on life-experience to reasonably emote just about any other situation, but very few of us aboveground folk can approximate what it looks like to be killed. In movies, however, it’s a different story. While some movie deaths actually do require Stanislavski-grade acting, many others involve enough blood-squibs and special effects to render performance beside the point. These are the deaths that magnetize the morbid fascination of horror movie fans.

The ABCs of Death 2 is a horror anthology wherein each letter represents another short film and another grisly way to shed this mortal coil. (We’ve already seen the lone crowdsourced entry, M Is For Mastication, and it is both disgusting and rad.) In order to promote the new film, Drafthouse Films asked the 29 directors involved to pick out their favorite movie death scenes, and the result is like a short, plot-free version of The ABCs itself–a supercut of blood and guts.

Some of these were probably chosen for nostalgic reasons; Leonardo DiCaprio’s sendoff in Titanic or Scar’s death in The Lion King. Some are funny, like the man who turned out to be made of porcelain in spy spoof Top Secret! The crushing of The Terminator is included, for some reason. Of course, many of these deaths were chosen because they are ridiculous and gruesome and the gorehounds among us can’t seem to get enough.

Here’s a list of the movies from which these scenes come:

1. Contraband
2. Theatre Of Blood
3. The Terminator
4. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
5. Alien
6. Once Upon A Time In The West
7. Hidden (Cache)
8. Sometimes A Great Notion
9. Scarface
10. Men Behind The Sun
11. King Kong
12. Blue Velvet
13. Titanic
14. House (Hausu)
15. The Stepfather
16. Le Trio Inferno
17. Top Secret
18. Songs from the Second Floor (Sånger från andra våningen)
19. The Deer Hunter
20. Let The Right One In
21. Death Proof
22. Suicide Club
23. Robocop
24. The Lion King
25. Shogun Assassin
26. Jaws
27. The Dark Knight Rises
28. The Fury
29. Hard Core Logo

H/t to JoBlo