10 WTF Movie Endings – Nostalgia Central

Psycho (1960)

Turns out that stabby Mrs Bates is actually Norman in drag! That’s right, our motel man is a phallic-knife-wielding nutjob – Freud’s wet dream. Audiences in 1960 wouldn’t have seen that coming and probably needed a good shower afterwards. No, wait . . .

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Bowman (Keir Dullea) crosses space only to find himself in a neoclassical bedroom, viewing himself as an old man, then transforms into a foetus that floats through space. No wonder the tagline was “The ultimate trip.”

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

The daddy of all gut-punch endings, as Darth Vader duels with Luke Skywalker, then tells him, “I am your father.” Talk about warping our fragile little minds. Then Return of the Jedi reveals Luke’s been copping off with his sister!

Planet of the Apes (1968)

“You maniacs! You blew it up . . . God damn you all to hell!” It’s little surprise that Chuck Heston is a mite angry – the planet he’s crash-landed on is, in fact, a post-apocalyptic Earth, as signalled by a blasted, semi-sunken Statue of Liberty. Probably the greatest reveal in cinema history.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

The Bleakest Film Noir Ever Made concludes with PI Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) finally learning what’s in the McGuffin briefcase (yep, Pulp Fiction nicked it). It’s a nuclear apocalypse. Philip Marlowe never had to deal with this kind of shit.

The Mist (2007)

Driving through the beastie-clogged mist to his house, where he finds his wife dead, our hero (Thomas Jane) lets go of his last shred of hope and shoots his fellow passengers –  including his son. Then the mist clears, and Armageddon recedes. WTF?!

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

This B-movie slasher is something of a (ahem) camp classic, its crazed finale revealing that traumatised heroine Angela is not just the killer but actually Peter, her long-“dead” brother (don’t ask). A full-frontal nudity shot establishes that ‘she’ is, in fact, a ‘he’.

Carrie (1976)

You’ve got to hand it to Brian De Palma: before shock endings were de rigueur, he scared the bejesus out of viewers by having Carrie (Sissy Spacek) make a grab from the grave as the sole survivor, Sue Snell, lays flowers. It really is Spacek’s hand, by the way –  she insisted on being buried to perform the stunt.

Chinatown (1974)

Nosy PI J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) unveils deceit, corruption and murder, but the real kicker comes when he discovers that the young sister of his client Evelyn (Faye Dunaway) is also her daughter. So much for Hollywood delivering feel-good endings.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

After 80 minutes of darkness, snapping twigs and wobbly camerawork, we’re desperate for resolutions. Instead, we get Mike standing in a corner. Over a quarter of a century, a meta-sequel and a reboot/sequel later, we still need answers!