Bang! (Top Ten Movie Scenes)

Member Name: skittle

Product:	Top Ten Movie Scenes
Date:	09/11/07 (92 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Just the best bits

Disadvantages: Ten choices is not enough

There are scenes from certain movies that I can practically recite by heart, I’m sure there are for most of us. However, there are some scenes with practically no talking at all that are still burned into my brain. Here are ten of my favourites:

- Ghost Ship
You don’t even need to have seen the film to know which scene I’m talking about with this one, it was included in the trailer. First time I saw it I was literally left staring speechless at the TV, and that really doesn’t happen to me often. The scene goes like this – “camera pans in on to the deck of an old fashioned and glamorous cruise ship, it’s dark and there’s a party in progress with a very beautiful lady singing on stage. The Captain spots a young girl travelling alone, the only youngster on board the ship, and very kindly asks her to dance. Everybody on the ship is up and dancing, or standing around the dancefloor gossiping. A whirring sounds is heard – then a piece of machinery breaks free, you hear a buzzing, uncoiling kind of sound, like somebody casting a fishing line – we go to the little girl to watch her clinging tight to the legs of the Captain as all around her people who were dancing only a second ago are now lifeless corpses, cut in half like ripe camembert by a wire that cut across the whole deck just like a cheese wire. She looks up to the Captain whose legs she is still clinging onto, and who is, miraculously, still standing, just in time to watch his torso slide bloodily from his legs onto the deck.” Still stuns me now, even just thinking about it.

- Schindlers List
This one is more poignant than shocking, although it is far more emotional with it being based on fact rather than fiction – “Schindler, a man made wealthy by the war, and the owner of a factory employing Jews during the Second World War, is sitting on horseback on a hill overlooking the Jewish Ghetto. Below, we see the Ghetto in black and white, apart from one bright splash of red, a little girl in a bright red coat. Later, when the Ghetto is cleared, bodies are pulled from the buildings and loaded onto carts to be taken away and, presumably, buried. Again, the scene is in black and white apart from the same splash of red on the little girls coat on the back of one of the carts.”

- Raiders of the Lost Ark
Now, those of you an age to remember this film can probably guess exactly which scene I’m referring to, its been copied so many times over the years for adverts and spoofs that even you youngsters may recognise it – “Our hero, Indiana Jones, is running down a tunnel that’s filled with all kinds of traps, yet we have no idea what he’s running from, then it begins to catch up with him and its… A giant ball of rock! The rock is rolling and tumbling at enormous speed as our hero evades trap after trap in a massive effort to escape. Will he make it?” Of course he does, Indi escapes and all’s well, but what an exciting beginning to a film!”

- The Italian Job (1969 Version)
Charlie Croker has planned an elaborate bank job to steal huge amounts of gold and make his escape by bringing the Italian city of Turin to a standstill. This, in my opinion, is the daddy of all car chases – “Three mini’s, one red, one white and one blue (by total coincidence, I’m sure) race through the streets of Turin whilst all of the traffic lights are changed in their favour – but when the streets get clogged, the minis take to the pavements and shoot through buildings, up and down stairs and even sewers to get away from the scene of the crime.” This car chase is one that really has to be seen to be believed, I’m certainly no expert but it’s the chase that sticks in my memory more than any other, and did wonders for the image of Mini.

- Dirty Dancing (one)
This is one of my favourite movies of all time (yes, I am very sad, I know) so just one scene from this movie would never be enough for me. Here’s the first one – “Baby has offered her services to stand in for Penny as dance partner for Johnny at a local hotel, there’s just one problem, she can’t dance. This ‘scene’ is more like a huge chunk of the film to be honest, but it begins with Johnny stating that Baby can’t learn the dance in time and carries on as he teaches her how to dance. We see Johnny teaching her in an old loft, then when they nearly have an accident and begin to lose patience with each other he takes her out into the nearby countryside to teach her how to balance on an overturned tree. They then go on to learn ‘lifts’ in the lake, cue much squelching, dripping, clothes clinging and all round adolescent hormonery, as Johnny and Baby get much closer in the water.” Yes, even I know it’s all a bit over the top and obvious, but I still love it.

- Dirty Dancing (two)
Well, I did warn you there’d be more than one. This time – “Baby and Johnny are dancing together in the dance studio to Love is Strange by Sylvia and Mickey. Baby is mocking Johnny for doing everything that he’d been criticizing her for earlier in the film. Then, they start actually doing actions along with the music, with Baby ducking behind a convenient screen, only to poke her head out and give Johnny a ‘come hither’ signal as the music goes ‘come in, loverboy’. The scene ends as Johnny and Baby begin to look like they’re going to get a little fruity on the dancefloor and they’re interrupted by Neil coming up the stairs”. Yes, I know, it’s cheese on a stick, but it makes me happy.

- Dirty Dancing (three, but this is the last one, I promise)
This time, Johnny has been fired for doing the dirty (and we’re not talking about dancing here) with Baby, so instead of finishing the Kellerman final show with a dance, it is ending with a rather bizarre and frightening song, instead. Then Johnny storms into the room and utters the immortal line – “Nobody puts Baby in a corner. He reaches out a hand and pulls Baby to her feet, practically dragging her up onto the stage, where everybody else (including the owner of the Hotel) just melts away to leave the stage free for them. Johnny’s cousin puts on I’ve Had the Time of my Life by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes. Johnny looks deep into Baby’s eyes, and they begin to dance the final dance of the season.” Sigh, makes me wish I hadn’t married a Computer Programmer.

- The Shining
You’ve guessed already? Then I won’t muck about too much – “Jack Torrance has gone a little odd whilst living in a huge Hotel in the middle of nowhere of which he’s the out of Season caretaker. It’s whilst he’s running wild around the corridors and rooms of the Hotel trying to kill his family that he comes across his wife, who promptly locks herself in the bathroom. Oh no, what on earth can Jack do? Bash in the door with an axe is what, and as he peers in through the gash in the door, the stuff of Nightmares is made ‘Here’s Johnny!’” Scared the pants off of me.

- Alien
I wan only a youngster the first time I saw this film, and I thought I was coping really well with watching a horror film, this really wasn’t so bad, they’d had first contact with an alien, it had dropped onto the face of John Hurt and they couldn’t remove it, but then it fell off on it’s own so no problem there, right? I could handle this – “things go on as normal on the spaceship until suddenly John Hurt’s character, Kane, gets violent stomach pains. In agony he writhes onto his back, then BLAM an Alien bursts right out of his stomach, there’s blood and guts everywhere as this thing sits there half in, half out of Kane’s bloody remains spitting and snarling at the rest of the crew.” Tell me it didn’t scare the living daylights out of you! I won’t believe you, but tell me anyway.

- Jaws
Another classic film that I loved from the first moment I saw it, and I could’ve picked so many top scenes from this one. But this one is my utmost fave – “They’ve harpooned the shark, but they can’t catch him and nights falling, so they may aswell have a little drink, right? The three men are drunkenly comparing war-wounds, and things are starting to get a little merry. The conversation turns a little rowdy and they all start singing ‘show me the way to go home’ and hammering with fists and metal cups on the table. The camera suddenly switches to a view of the boat from the outside, at water level, in the dark. We go back inside the boat with the singing reaching fever pitch, only to have it all stop in an instant when something hard bumps into the bottom of the boat – the fish is hunting them!” Love it, gets my heart going every single time.

So, that’s my ten, and now that I’m really thinking about it, three scenes from Dirty Dancing was really pretty self indulgent when I think of all those great scenes I’ve left out instead. I could’ve had the scene from Trainspotting where Begbie throws an empty pint classes over the balcony and it lands on the head of a girl beneath. Or the orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally, or when Thelma and Louise drove off the side of the cliff, or the scene from Rocky when he starts training and the Eye of the Tiger comes in… Can’t I do my favourite 20?

Summary: Or the bit in Babe where the farmer dances and the pig gets better...