The 10 Best Movie Suicides
In the opinion of the Movie Feast crew, here are the ten best.
MAJOR spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned.
Little Bill’s suicide in the final moments of 1979 is the most startling moment in the midst of a film that introduced me to the seedier elements of life; coke, sex, guns. Boogie Nights was a world changer for me, the kind of movie experience that re-arranges how you view the rest of filmic history. PT Anderson has always been one of my favorite filmmakers, but reviewing the first movie of his that I saw reaffirmed my love for his work. There Will Be Blood is his masterpiece, a mean-spirited picture that breathed smoke and left the history of this country in ashes. Boogie Nights was the first, though, and it remains my favorite. This seems to be Anderson in his purest form. The whimsical characters never get too grating, as they do in Punch-Drunk Love. Nor does the director’s cynical edge take over completely, as it does in Blood’s final minutes. Boogie Nights is a film about broken people living sad little lives, who after enduring great hardship and turmoil are allowed to sort of put some of the pieces back in plece. And the soundtrack kicks fuckin’ ass! So many great moments, but the absolute emotional pinnacle of everything is William H. Macy blowing his brains out. Was this my first exploding head seen in a movie? It very well may have been. I watched this movie with the first girl I saw in her underwear. Maybe this contributes to the nostalgic air of the proceedings. Whatever. Little Bill’s scene is breathtaking, bracing, a note-perfect end to a jubilant first half of a picture.
Max Renn celebrates the new flesh in Videodrome (1983)
– Doug Tilley
8.
Neil Perry contemplates a change of career in Dead Poets Society (1989)
The odd thing about the fate of poor Neil is that I’ve never seen suicide used as a tool used to signal rebirth before. In most movies I’ve seen, usually the act of taking one’s life is wrapped in the misery usually associated with the dark path you have to be on even to consider harming yourself. However, Neil’s suicide represents the spark that inspires the new guard to challenge the outdated trappings of the old guard. It is not necessarily a happy event, but it does take on a rather upbeat theme when theevents that transpire after Neil’s death are weighed against the price the young man paid for the sake of his art and his identity.
Brooks finishes the job in The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Motome Chijiiwa commits Harakiri in Harakiri (1962)
One should be forgiven if, being familiar with samurai (especially as they’re represented in film), one has the impression that the road and courtyards of feudal Japan were littered with the disemboweled bodies of the disgraced and dishonored. Yes, we all know that ritual suicide existed, and that it really did happen, but certain films often give you the impression that samurai went around cutting open their stomachs willy-nilly, and I have a hard time believing that. I don’t believe in a universal human condition, but I do believe that humans share certain qualities, and the will to do yourself in for some minor infraction strikes me not as something that only belonged to a certain historic period, but is in fact something entirely alien.
Anyway, the point is, Masaki Kobayashi’s 1962 absolute fucking masterpiece of a film, Harakiri, treats the ritual like an inhumane tradition practiced and enforced by an authoritarian and chauvinistic system. It also treats it as a physically gruelling and brutal ordeal. In the film’s suicide scene, the young ronin Motome Chijiiwa (Akira Ishihama) is forced by a crowd of unfriendly samurai to not only commit sepukku, but to do it with his own wooden blade–a punishment for having sold the steel ones, something a true samurai should never do, supposedly. Chijiiwa begs for respite, but his pleas go unheeded. And so he takes his wooden blade, and tries to do himself in with it.
The first stabs don’t even break the skin; no, Chijiiwa has to brace the handle of the wooden sword against the ground and lean all of his weight against it. When the wood finally thrusts its way into his abdomen, he begs for the second to strike off his head, but the man won’t, not until Chijiiwa has slit his stomach “properly.” So Chijiiwa bites off his own tongue, hoping to bleed himself to death. Despite the fact that all of this is filmed in black and white–and the shots are sensitively chosen, so as not to accentuate the violence of the suicide–the scene is still gut-wrenching, driving home the terror of the situation and the cruelty of those who propped up such a system in the first place.
Anton Phibes lays himself to rest in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a masterpiece and is the very epitome of campy cinema. Everything about it screams wonderful excess from the dialogue to the scenery to the costumes and naturally, to the escalating mayhem resulting from Dr. Phibes’s (Vincent Price) pursuit of poetic justice through creative vengence.
Even more astounding than the “Ten Biblical Plagues of Egypt” themed murders that Phibes commits throughout the movie is the rather bizarre way Dr. Phibes ends his life once he believes his mission is done. As if people being eaten alive by locusts or being crushed under gigantic frog masks wasn’t over the top enough, Phibes keeps the bizarre deaths rolling and commits suicide by placing himself in a stone tomb with the corpse of his wife and then proceeds to drain the blood from his body and replace it with embalming fluid!
The final payoff is the ominous and ironic prologue from Inspector Harry Trout (Peter Jeffrey) that the stone tomb Phibes placed himself in alongside his dead wife represented Darkness, which was the last Biblical plague Egypt suffered. However, director Robert Fuest knew a cash cow when he saw one and naturally Dr. Phibes would escape the clutches of death itself and return to kill again
Father Karras is a man possessed in The Exorcist (1973)
OK, so it’s 1973, and you’ve just filmed a movie where a little possessed girl speaks in tongues, projectile vomits, masturbates with a crucifix, and utters the immortal line: “Your mother sucks cocks in Hell.” How do you finish big? How do you live up to that build? Remember, CG is years and years away. No big computer effect is gonna do the heavy lifting for you.
William Friedkin’s solution is to have Father Karras (Jason Miller), in the ultimate selfless act, take the demon Pazuzu into himself, saving little Regan, and then fling his body down a flight of approximately 74 small, pointy stairs. The stunt man really takes one for the team on this, supposedly getting only ½ inch rubber mats on each step. I have no idea how they actually got the effect of the camera rolling down them. These “Exorcist Steps” are located at the end of M Street in Georgetown, and apparently are still quite the tourist attraction.
Had Father Karras done away with himself in a less spectacular fashion–hanging, gunshot, cyanide pill–the ending of the film could only be a let down. As it is, Father Karras’s suicide is one of those classic film moments, the sort of thing that justifies horror films as a legitimate genre.
Joe Dick quits the band in Hard Core Logo (1996)
It may take a viewing or two, or perhaps just a little thought, to realize how just bad Joe Dick (Hugh Dillon), the singer and front man of the seminal punk band Hard Core Logo, has it. Sure, you might think that Pipefitter and John Oxenburger have it worse–I mean, they’re just the rhythm section, for Christ’s sake–but these dudes are married, or at least have stable relationships. For them, and for Billy Tallent, the band’s successful guitarist, reuniting and touring with Hard Core Logo is a break from the real world. For Joe Dick, this isn’t a vacation. Everything else has been fake for him, but this, his band, this is real. More importantly, for Joe, the tour reunites him with Billy, his missing other half, a man that he quite obviously loves.
And then it all falls apart.
Joe Dick’s suicide is abrupt and terrifying, and it drives home how desperate and alone Joe has been all along. Standing outside of the last place Hard Core Logo will ever play, smiling vacantly into the camera, Joe Dick takes a drink, and in one movement pulls out a pistol and blows his brains out. Hard Core Logo, a film that is a fun sprint, and at times very humorous, ends with this body blow to its audience, forcing them to rethink everything that came before.
Richie Tenenbaum slits his wrists in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Despondent over being spurned by his step-sister, his personal failures and the collapse of his family, Richie cuts his hair and beard before whispering “I’m going to kill myself tomorrow”. What follows is a disturbing, atypically violent suicide attempt set to Elliot Smith’s “Needle In The Hay” (knowing that Smith himself committed suicide certainly adds to the dour tone) that becomes a significant turning point in The Royal Tenenbaums and marks a seriousness that director Wes Anderson usually avoids in his films. While the following hospital scenes are almost comical, this scene features the near-death of the film’s most sympathetic character and is quite difficult to watch. It makes me wonder how a Wes Anderson drama (or, even more extreme, horror film) might look if he were to abandon his more whimsical tendencies.
I remember, as a lad, watching Full Metal Jacket with the family. Since my father had seen it before, he knew what was coming, so when Gomer Pyle was preparing for his final exit, I was told to cover my eyes. And, like a dutiful son, I did–but I could still hear what happened, and my mind filled in the rest. It was disturbing. Of course, as soon as I could, I watched the film without parental supervision, and the suicide was just as horrifying as I’d previously imagined. It’s one of the first times I remember being genuinely upset watching a movie.
I am not one of those who sees the second half of Full Metal Jacket as a huge letdown from the first half, though I know that’s a popular opinion. That being said, Pyle’s suicide is such a powerful climax that the final scenes of the film can only suffer by comparison.
Pyle’s was the most memorable to me because it is the most philosophical. Kubrick did a masterful job of showing just how dark of a place you have to be emotionally and mentally to do that to yourself.
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