Booze Talkin #22

Last Updated on July 26, 2021

A Perfect Ending

BEWARE: LOTS OF SPOILERS AND A PENIS BELOW!

Horror movies are judged and/or remembered for their endings more than any other genre of films. It almost always revolves around the death or survival of any number of key characters thus allowing itself to linger around the heads of the viewer a little bit longer than your average romantic comedy. Get it right and you’re looking at the chance for a franchise. Get it wrong and you’ll have to settle for a direct-to-DVD prequel. One way or another, you’ll get to milk this bitch.

I’ve been racking my brain for the past week, trying to come up with the perfect horror ending. Something that has left me shocked, entertained, a little disturbed, and highly satisfied. And I’m talking about the moment just before the credits roll – there’s been some quality final scenes in horror films only to have them wrap it all up in a pretty little package before they fade to black (ALIEN, ALIENS, THE EXORCIST – 3 films I consider perfect the way they are BTW). It’s that chance to catch our breath at the end that takes away some of the lasting impact. Let’s take a look at three films that have, what I consider, the perfect endings.

HALLOWEEN not only boasts one of the greatest moments in the history of horror (that split second pictured above), it also uses it as a lead-in to one of the creepiest cliff-hangers ever made. Loomis finally tracks down The Shape just as he’s about to finish off the last remaining babysitter and plugs him with a chamber full of bullets. There’s three things that make this iconic (not including the aforementioned moment above): 1. The moment Loomis turns the corner into the bedroom and Myers is just standing there staring at him. 2. The music playing throughout the entire last act. 3. The camera scanning the streets of Haddonfield trying to help us locate Myers after we realize he’s still alive. There’s no cheesy final scare or silly twist, it’s just full-blown panic mode until Carpenter decides we’ve had enough and slams the door in our face.

Carpenter does it again with THE THING. There’s the same sense of dread and refusal to spoon-feed us the answers. What’s made this finale that much more powerful is the fact that nobody has ever even attempted to extend this story. You need to really step back and take a look at that. A classic horror film that is considered by many (myself included) to be one of the ten greatest horror films ever made that relied heavily on special effects and a monster that was seemingly unkillable. How there isn’t at least a remake and/or four sequels to this film absolutely boggles my mind.

Lastly, if you were to argue that, pound for pound, SLEEPAWAY CAMP has the greatest horror ending of all time, I’d have a hard time disagreeing. This film is nothing without that last scene (pictured above). It’s just another horribly acted 80s slasher that would have been forgotten half way through my grade 7 sleepover party. Instead, it has burned itself deep into the dark crevices of my brain. There’s something about Angela’s mane that makes her all the more creepy. The abnormally giant mouth coupled with the little pecker covered in blood don’t help matters either. And this is exactly how it ends, gawkers just standing around trying to comprehend what they’re seeing, barely scared, just confused as all the rest of us. Freeze frame. Credits. Try to shake that the next morning during ‘He-Man’.

Maybe it’s the booze talking but it seems less is more for me. I’ll take the atmospheric music and the threat of the unknown over cheap jumps at the camera and forced twists any day. In a day and age when just the mention of a “huge spoiler” kind of spoils the surprise anyway, maybe it’s time to just get down and dark and leave the audience feeling dirty and abused because somebody pissed all over their happy ending.