It was a tough job picking out just ten, and many of you may be disappointed not to see your own sick favourite on the list... but cinema is a subjective art and so too is head removal. The following is a list of classic movie deaths which have stayed with me since I first saw them. Honourable mentions must go to Scanners, Maniac and Story of Ricky, but I'll save exploding head's for another day...
10. Machine Girl 20082009 has seen a rise in popularity for Japanese gore-flicks here in the UK. With the previously import-only Meatball Machine being given a full UK DVD release by the 4-Digital imprint together with the well publicised banning of this year's Grotesque, the Japanese have seemingly reclaimed their rightful place as the sickest movie makers in the known universe.
One of the more successful and widely known of these movies is the massively tongue-in-cheek gore revenge epic Machine Girl. The film's many memorable sequences include the titular character's use of her rail-gun appendage to seemingly flay her opponents alive (just like real bullets don't...), a sequence in which our heroin has her arm deep-fried in batter, the legendary drill-bra and lastly the flying guillotine which provides the first of our classic decapitations.
An apparent homage to the 1975 martial arts film Master of the Flying Guillotine, what really makes this particular head-removal stand out from the pack, is the seemingly endless geyser of blood that spurts from the freshly relieved neck and the comedic yoink! action as the brilliantly unconvincing weapon makes off with the victims noggin.
09. Nightmare In A Damaged Brain 1981One of the original video nasties banned in the UK during the 80s and a seeming cash in on the success of William Lustig's awesome Maniac from the previous year, it's no surprise that this grimy piece of schizo-killer trash really doesn't live up to it's awesome name. That said, a flashback sequence late on in the film provides easily one of the most visceral decapitations of it's time.
Upon catching his Dad bumping uglies with a mistress, the young killer, dressed in bow-tied sunday best, swings an axe through the neck of the illegitimate lover, somewhat killing the mood by drenching Dad in a shower of neck blood. The head bounces away in slow motion while axe-boy proceeds to hack away at the still twitching corpse still mounting his no-doubt boner-less old man.
08. The Exterminator 1980Something of an under-rated gem, this low-budget revenge/cop flick is set apart from the sleuth of similar titles of it's time by the grisly Vietnam flashback scene at the start of the film. Throwing more explosions at the screen than a Rambo movie, it's plain to see that the entire budget was spunked away in this short 15 minute scene. What little money was left from the pyrotechnics was presumably spent on the disturbingly life-like dummy of one of the viet-cong captives which is then gruesomely beheaded in obligatory slo-mo.
It's something of a shame that the rest of the movie fails to out-gore this first killing, the only other memorable death involving an industrial meat grinder which is rather disappointingly portrayed by what appears to be bolognese sauce dripping from the out pipe while the screams are heard off screen. Thankfully the rest of the film is saved by the inclusion of B-movie favourite Christopher George playing a smarmy but somehow likable detective who manages to charm even when bribing a sobbing prostitute.
07. Braindead 1992A classic in every conceivable way, Peter Jackson's symphony of gore contains enough head-divorce to fill this entire list. It's difficult to imagine that the beardy blockbuster maestro responsible for the CGI snooze-fest Lord of the Rings was also the man behind the legendary zombie dinner party where our hero Lionel attempts to get some food down the neck of his un-dead guests in an all too literal way. Also worthy of note is the half-blended head at the climax of the movie which is kicked across the blood-drenched floor like a hockey puck.
But by far and a way the most memorable scene of the movie is the kung-fu priest and his total annihilation of a small gang of punks, ripping off arms and kicking off legs to the war cry "I kick ass for the Lord!" - the scene climaxes in a round-house kick that separates a now limbless zombie with his bonce which then spins through the air, tragically landing on the priest's neck delivering some fatal zombie chomps. Classic stuff.
06. My Bloody Valentine 3D 2009I can't say I had particularly high hopes for this first hollywood installment into a resurgence of new school 3D horror movies. But the fact is, it is bloody brilliant. Typical of post-millennia hollywood horror fare, the film is, of course, a remake of a vintage slasher. But unlike the completely awful Michael Bay productions of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Amityville Horror, My Bloody Valentine 3D is actually better than the original... and perhaps most importantly, 3D.
Surprisingly for such a slick production, there's plenty of grizzly grindhouse blood and guts and gory set pieces. The difference between this and the torture voyeur films such as Hostel and Saw is that the frenetic brutality and fast pacing, make for an exhaustingly fun experience. The decapitation comes early when one of a seemingly endless supply of bimbos gets a shovel in the mouth which is then satisfyingly kicked into a wooden support behind. Body falls. Head slides away. Nice.
05. Haute Tension 2003A few years before balls-out classics such as Frontiers and Martyrs cemented Frances reputation as the new home of cerebral horror, this slasher come thriller was splitting opinions the world over as to whether neo French horror was anything more than style over substance. But whatever you're view of this film and it's undeniable plot holes, one thing is for sure - it contains one of cinema's greatest and grisliest beheadings.
Phillipe Nahon's vile killer, his foot barely through the front door, begins trussing up the protagonist's unlucky father, sticking his head through the bannisters and dropping an enormous bookcase onto his cranium with inevitable consequences. This potentially comical death scene is instead rendered graphically disturbing thanks to the awesome FX work of gore legend Giannetto De Rossi, the man behind the infamous eye-gouging scene from Zombie Flesh Eaters.
04. Evil Dead 1981The first of the Evil Dead trilogy, while arguably outshone by the spectacular second installment, still packs a fair punch and is certainly not lacking in both charm and classic horror moments. Most talked about beyond Bruce Campbell's manic performance as uber-hero Ash is the awesomely what-the-fuck tree rape scene and that haunting sound of pencil pushed into ankle.
But often over looked is Ash's brutal beheading of his un-dead sweetheart Linda using the very shovel he'd used to bury her not 10 minutes earlier. Classic head-spin ensues, but being departed from her noggin doesn't stop Linda from getting frisky with Ash as she proceeds to bleed profusely into his chisel-chinned face, her abandoned head looking on in approval.
03. Re-Animator 1985While mid-80s horror may have been dominated by endless slasher sequels and Gremlins style monster cash-ins, it didn't spoil America's appetite for the handful of genuinely original horror films of the era and subsequently, films like Re-Animator have become bona-fide cult icons. I say "films like Re-Animator" but, genuinely, there is nothing quite like it. Even it's sequels, while entertaining slices of trash cinema in their own right, don't come close to the unique mix of camp Lovecraftian atmosphere and vile grindhouse gore.
If there's one thing people get excited about when talking about Re-Animator, it's the infamous scene between the headless Dr Hill and the very naked love interest of the movies hero. Quite definitely the most macabre cunnilingus on celluloid, even the zombie extra's in Porn of the Dead were polite enough to keep their head on their shoulders when going down south. But this list is about decapitations and the precursor to the infamous "head" scene is one of the most brutal here. Once again, the shovel serves as weapon of choice, but what sets this one apart is Hill's disturbing spasms as his head rolls off with a sickening rip.
02. Day of the Dead 1985The third film of the incredible Romero zombie saga is probably the most under-rated of the series. The social satire and sharp wit synonymous with Day's predecessors is never more strong only this time the shambling undead are convincing and the gore brutal even by today's standards thanks to the now finely honed skills of effects legend Tom Savini.
Towards the end of the film, virtually all of the inhabitants of the underground bunker are personally over-come by hoards of zombies and ripped to fleshy pieces with varying degrees of brutality, famously climaxing with Captain Rhodes' classic show of bravado in the face extreme mutilation as he invites the corpses feasting on his intestines to "choke on 'em". The scene that makes this list however comes a little earlier as one of the few survivors is pinned to a table and gruesomely freed from his head. The attention to detail is incredible as the unlucky victim's scream turns to a shrill cat-like shriek as his vocal chords are stretched to breaking point. Truly brutal.
01. The Omen 1976The granddaddy of all on-screen decapitations. For many like myself this film would have been seen at a younger age being as it is for the most part a creepy family favourite rather than a shlocky gore-fest. As such the beheading of one of the lead characters would come as a vivid shock, doubtlessly giving nightmares to hundreds of unsuspecting teens.
Revisiting the film a good ten years later I was mistakenly expecting to be underwhelmed. The whole film is saturated with a powerful sense of dread like nothing before or since, it's plain to see why The Omen is regarded as a staple British horror film. And the beheading doesn't disappoint either... the familiarity of the scene proves only too well how ingrained on my psyche this classic death had become. What I failed to remember was how many different angles we are treated to as the grisly spectacle is played over and over in that slow motion we have come to expect from a good head pruning. Great stuff.
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