The Best of Death

With that idiot Bush bringing the world to ruin and the spectre of death hanging over us like a sinister cloud of icy doom, and Ryan Seacrest's presence growing unabated and increasingly grotesque, it seems a perfect time to reflect on my favorite scenes of personal destruction in movie history.

In descending order:

10. The Chairman of the Board, Francis Albert Sinatra himself, being riddled with grease gun bullets as he runs vainly to the safety of the fleeing train in Von Ryan's Express. Note the respect even the Nazis had for the peerless Sinatra...rather than let a common soldier gun down the tanned troubadour, the SS officer personally picks up the machine gun and drills Frank under the horrified gaze of his fellow escapees, one of whom had a pretty cool mustache. It was a heavy ending even for a film filled with grim death, including Francis himself committing the unpardonable sin of greasing the only female in the movie, a hot Italian chick who offered herself up to the Chairman, only to be rebuffed. Perhaps Frank was impotent due to the poor rations being served in the prison camp he had only recently escaped from. Frankie Baby's death scene loses points cause the German offers no witty quip after gunning down Von Ryan, and only stares at him with a stoic look, somewhat tinged with apathy and regret...sort of as if he is thinking, "That was kind of pointless...I wonder if Dean Martin is going to kick my ass now?"

9. The Count of Monte Cristo...Guy Pearce quickly and ruthlessly dispatches the cat he had earlier cuckolded. Does it come any colder? At least toy with the man Guy! Hold him up for a few rounds and give him a measure of dignity! Undoubtedly that Aussie bastard had other nuts to crack, and by nuts I mean whores, and so did not waste time sparring with Senor lost his wife and now will lose his life. The attendants barely have time to tie up the horses before Guy takes his cold steel and runs it through the hapless loser who dared have a spouse hot enough to catch Guy's eye! Lesson learned douchebag!

8. With Mel Gibson running futilely to save him and his mates, Mark Lee whispers his mantra in the trenches at Gallipoli, before going over the top and running headlong to his doom. What devotion to duty! What a sense of honor! What a waste of good cotton and wool! To think of the seamstresses who put so much care into his uniform, only to have their efforts wasted as Captain Glory Hound throws care, and his life, to the wind and surges forward, his steel spring legs pushing him faster and faster into the onrushing torrent of Turkish bullets. The frame freezes as Lee's torso is thundered against and stopped cold by the fusillade of fire, and la Gibson's haunting screams fill the air, his mind breaking at the sound of his friend's death

7.Dutch SS man gets blown to shit while taking one on the unforgiving steppes of Russia in Soldier of Orange. Napoleon could have told the Germans not to invade Russia, but who could have warned against pissing off an impish Russian lad with a crust of bread casually thrown into the mud? Sure the Dutchman was a little rude and somewhat wasteful perhaps, but I don't think tossing a grenade into the outhouse is a proper response for the relatively mild offense of dropping a half eaten roll into the muck and mire. Truly it was a merciless war, when the impish pranks of youth are replaced with murder on the toilet bowl.

6. Sarah Jessica Parker looks in a mirror and turns to stone, thus dying, and oddly enough never getting another TV gig or advertising campaign again, thus sparing me from her visage forever and ever, in Sex and the City, the movie. Now of course I have not seen, nor will I ever see, this egregious shit bomb of a film, this stain on humanity, and in fact I now carry a cyanide capsule under my tongue at all times, which I am prepared to crack open and swallow should I ever find myself in a situation where this affront is playing and I have no other escape. If the mirror bit does not work perhaps the Russian kid from Soldier of Orange can make a cameo with his trusty grenade and send her and her Jimmy Choos to Hades.

5. Dude who says, "I LIKE IT!" a lot, in Robocop, gets hit by car and melts all over the windshield. Was it the awesome power of the stout sedan that ran him down which caused his body to splash all over the hood, or the fact that he had recently fallen into a vat of some toxic substance which caused his flesh to liquefy and render him rather delicate that most contributed to his death? Probably a combination of both. How tragic to see that his ultimate demise was not at the hand of Robocop, but of his fellow thugs and miscreants, who had shared so many good times blowing things up and creating mayhem in Old Detroit. What choice did they have? Clearly in his wet and melting state he was of no use to the cause, and would have left some rather unpleasant stains on the upholstery.

4. Vanity cannot escape John Glover in 52-Pick Up. This is actually a terrible death scene, and I cry now just thinking about it. That big meanie trapping precious beautiful Vanity in some maze of doom, and causing her to bash up her sports car as she crashes to and fro in a vain attempt to escape that glowering psychopath's merciless hand of death! Run Vanity! Use your judo! Disrobe in a last desperate attempt to sway him from killing you with one last vision of your loveliness!

3. Annoying chick gets eaten by a shark in Into the Blue....very satisfying. Snickers should use that death in a commercial. Jacques Cousteau should resurrect himself so he can dive down into the deep blue sea, find that shark, and give it a commendation of some sort.

2. Auggie Doggie Schellenberg rebuffs the French Priest's offer of paradise in the afterlife in a heroic gesture of resignation in Black Robe. As he lies in the falling snow listening to the contemptuous rebukes of his smoldering daughter to the priest, he readies himself for the long sleep and his rendezvous with the She-Manitou. The Black Robe beseeches him, tells him Jesus loves him, and offers him a one way ticket to paradise and eternal joy, but the old Injun will have none of it, and just wants to expire in peace. It sums up life nicely, everyone is stupid, snow is cold, and when a hot chick rails against religion in general and priests in particular, and urges everyone to obey the dream, cause the dream must be obeyed, you pack up your canoe and follow cause you want to taste her again.

1. Roy O'Bannon wacks the psychotic sheriff Nathan Van Cleef in Shanghai Noon. Sometimes good does triumph over evil, and miracle Roy, down to his last shell, manages to put it right through that no good dirty sheriff's tin star. Can all of life's problems be solved through assassinations? Probably not, one needs a good conditioner to take care of split ends after all, ( HAHAAHA, they should use that in Sex and the City), but it calls to mind the words of Abraham Lincoln, uttered in one of his lesser known speeches, largely having to do with his beard, but also including this nugget of wisdom, "... southern people are dumber than the rest of us, drag the country down, and we might benefit by killing most, if not all of them, save for the cooks, cause I do enjoy a well prepared crayfish. Why in the hell did we not just let them secede anyway? Whose brilliant idea was it to go to war in order to hold on to backward states infested with a bunch of idiot inbred hicks, especially Texas. I need to relax, whose up for the theater tonight?"

NOTE: Of course the great Jason Statham's incredible murder/death fall from the helicopter in Crank would top this list, save for the wonderful fact that Chev Chelios cannot be killed, and thus lives to make more incredible films.

Also I forgot about the peerless Jean Paul Belmondo in Le Doulos...a very classy way for a very shady man to die. I hope when I leave this putrid idiot infested planet it is moments after checking my chapeau in a mirror and bidding my favorite whore adieu with a curt but sweet message of indifference.