I know many of you hate off-screen deaths--when filmmakers cheap out on us because They're trying to shoot for a PG-13 rating or simply don't have the money for lots of make-up effects.
However, I've seen some death scenes in films that invovlve absolutely no gore at all, yet are very, very effective, and wouldn't have worked as well if we had seen what happened.
One such scene comes to mind is Andrew Divoff's death in "Graveyard shift".
Any others?
Old Yeller.
The sawing of the annoying guy in the wheelchair in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was done so well audiences at the time didnt realize all the gore was really off screen.
I remember one of the PRIME SUSPECT movies/mini-series where they ended a scene with a guy pointing a gun at this teenage kid and the kid pleading. In the following scenes they did a walk-thru of the forensics, describing the last moments of the murder. This was very effective as it invited the viewer to use their imagination and was probably better than what they could have shown on-screen.
Steve Buscemi's death in Fargo.
And most of the murders in Se7en...
Bela Lugosi in Plan 9. Hands down. :)
There was a fun one in Sorority House Massacre II: Nighty Nightmare. As the killer is hacking up a girl, you see the spray of blood on the wall, complete with the shadow of the guy's hand holding the squirt bottle.
The chainsaw scene in Scarface.
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You can’t give it, you can't buy it, and you just don't get it!-Aeon Flux
Ralph Feinnes blowing the kid's brains out with his rifle in Schindler's list.
The first thing that came to mind was Marlon Brando throwing that guy's head at Martin Sheen in APOCALYPSE NOW.
As far as Old Yeller goes, I remember a Kids in the Hall sketch that was absolutely hilarious. Old Yeller has to be put down, and the kid shows up with his rifle. "I'll do it, it's my dog." So the kid pulls the trigger and a HUGE gout of blood shoots up and hits him in the face. It doesn't sound funny, but you have to see it. And if you do, keep watching the episode, because it gets even funnier.
HA!
i gotta see that old yeller sketch!
The two off-screen deaths that always come to mind for me are from the original black-and-white "Bad Seed" film and a crime drama re-enactment from a TV show, the name of which I have forgotten. The Bad Seed included a bunch of off-screen deaths, but the one actually portrayed (instead of merely alluded to) was the death of the janitor, whom the murderous little girl set on fire. (We hear his screams and see the mother watching in horror, but there are no shots of his charred, smoking corpse or anything.) This was, of course, a 1950s film; among other things, people then realized that things can be far more horrible when you imply them instead of showing them.
The more contemporary example, employing this same lesson: that crime drama re-enactment. Though I've forgotten the name of the show and all of the rest of the details, I remember the story: a little girl disappeared, and the cops eventually followed the trail of evidence to a certain man's home. In the re-enactment, when they opened the man's refrigerator (one of the old kind with a latch, the kind that got discontinued precisely because kids would sometimes get trapped in them), out tumbled the little girl's naked corpse. Of course, this being properly done, we the viewers were not shown anything we were not supposed to see. Still, I can remember what a horrifying moment that was.
To make things worse, there was never any mention of how she was murdered, only that she was murdered. (They caught the guy who did it, of course.) The narrative didn't mention any mutilation, and the body shown in the re-enactment had no visible marks on it. Maybe the special effects department was just too cheap to bother with things like strangulation marks or stab wounds or whatever, but I keep thinking, when he was done with abusing her in various ways, maybe he just shoved her in there, and closed the door and left her to die very slowly in the semi-frigid air...
So there you have it, the dual purpose of an off-screen death: keeping TV censors happy, and leaving it all up to the imagination, where it can be far worse than any amount of on-screen gore.
Yeah, I remember that one.
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The villains' street name was "The Street." And the kid had to be killed, because he killed the villains' right hand man. But, instead of "The Street" doing the shooting, he made the boyfriend of the boy's older sister doing the shooting. And, I believe, the gun was a .357 Magnum. And as the kid was only about 14, you can imagine all the damage that was done.
I can remember the walk through afterwards as well. As the man, who did the walk through, could tell what the kid was doing, while he was being shot, from the blood splatters that were left. How the kid probably had his hands up and was running from place to place trying to escape, but he couldn't escape, because he was down inside an abandoned swimming pool, when he was shot.
But, the most gross thing I remember, is though they hosed down the pool, after the kid was shot, or because they hosed down the pool, the forensic team was finding shards of bone, teeth, bits of flesh, in the pool's filter.