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15 Famous Fights to the Death

These famous fights to the death should, together, sate even the bloodthirstiest film fans.

The Hunger Games
Photo: Lionsgate

Nearly two dozen teens bite the big one in The Hunger Games, sure to be cinema’s most popular source of adolescent bloodshed. There’s no darker vicarious thrill than watching someone perish on screen, as many an action junkie will certainly tell you. In light of Jennifer Lawrence’s blockbuster standoff against her oppressed peers, we’ve got 15 famous fights to the death, which, together, should sate even the bloodthirstiest film fans.


Aliens

Sigourney Weaver and the Alien Queen in Aliens (1986). It’s become a rally cry for every pop-savvy supermom: “Get. Away. From. Her. You. Bitch.” The sight of Sigourney Weaver strapped into a yellow robot loader may have first elicited laughs, but surely no one was giggling once she got down to business with the Alien Queen, who puts up quite a fight and nearly tears her opponent’s leg off before being jettisoned into space. A most epic fatal scuffle.


Face/Off

John Travolta and Nicolas Cage in Face/Off (1997). Throughout John Woo’s slam-bang movie star showdown, the running trick is that Nicolas Cage is John Travolta and John Travolta is Nicolas Cage. They simply swapped mugs (and, y’know, suffering wife Joan Allen didn’t know the difference below the shoulders). When things boil down to one last fight, and Cage/Travolta is pleading that Travolta/Cage just die already, the latter tries to spoil the former’s victory by scratching up and destroying his borrowed face. His plan is thwarted, thankfully, as a whole new package would probably be too much for Joan to get used to.


Kill Bill Vol. 2

Uma Thurman and Daryl Hannah in Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004). You want serious bone-crunching action? Cram it into a confined space. It isn’t quite fair to include Uma and Daryl’s trailer brawl on a list of fights to the death, since the brutality only ends when Uma plucks out her ex-cohort’s (one remaining) eye. But with nothing but desert for miles, a Black Mamba on the loose, and no vision to navigate a route home, one can safely assume Elle Driver is as dead as a tumbleweed.


Torn Curtain

Paul Newman, Carolyn Conwell, and Wolfgang Kieling in Torn Curtain (1966). Sometimes bad guys just won’t kick the bucket. In Alfred Hitchcock’s 50th film, a paranoid Cold War thriller, Paul Newman’s undercover scientist is followed to a remote farm by Wolfgang Kieling’s East German officer, who attacks and puts up a relentless fight, even when Carolyn Conwell’s homemaker chips in to help. Hot food, a knife, and even a shovel are involved, until at last Newman and Conwell gas the German in an oven. Talk about irony.

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Sin City

Bruce Willis and Nick Stahl in Sin City (2005). From Torn Curtain to torn genitals. Certainly the most gratuitous scene in a film that scoffs at censors, Bruce Willis’s last attack on Nick Stahl’s pedophilic Yellow Bastard isn’t pretty. “I take his weapons,” Willis says. “Both of ‘em.” Which means, of course, bye bye, yellow balls. Even for the most desensitized viewer, this moment of comic-book castration is disgusting. It’s also indelible.


King Kong vs. Godzilla

King Kong and Godzilla in Kong Kong vs. Godzilla (1962). The third installment of Japan’s Godzilla series paved the way for other movie-monster grudge matches like Alien vs. Predator and Freddy vs. Jason. It pitted that dreaded lizard of the east against everyone’s favorite tower-climbing ape, the only sizable opponent formidable enough to stand a chance. Nevermind the plot; let’s focus on the fight. Godzilla drop-kicks Kong and tries to kill him with “atomic breath.” Kong electrocutes Godzilla, hurls him by the tail and chokes him with a tree (fo’ real). Finally they wind up sparring underwater. Kong emerges and Godzilla sleeps with the fishes…until next time, of course.


Under Siege

Steven Seagal and Tommy Lee Jones in Under Siege (1992). “You and I, we’re the same.” So goes Steven Seagal’s banal response to psycho Tommy Lee Jones’s why-I-did-it speech, which is followed by a nasty knife fight between the ’90s superstars. Seagal has the upper hand from the first swipe, slashing Jones in the chest, the wrist, the shoulder, and so on. Before long, he overtakes Jones, shoves a thumb in his eye, stabs him in the head, then shoves that head in a monitor. Ouch.


The Adventures of Robin Hood

Eroll Flynn and Basil Rathbone in The Adventure of Robin Hood (1938). One of cinema’s most beloved swordfights, Eroll Flynn’s duel with Basil Rathbone in The Adventures of Robin Hood is this list’s classiest skirmish, with each well-dressed gent one-upping the other’s zippy lines while fencing along to perfect choreography. Rathbone, naturally, winds up on the losing end, taking a blade to the gut before falling off a steep ledge. Ever-grinning, Flynn sheaths his weapon and struts away in his tights.

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Ben-Hur

Chariot race in Ben-Hur (1959). A race doesn’t qualify as a fight to the death? It does when it’s the most famous scene of William Wyler’s masterpiece, which sees at least three men trampled by horses during Charlton Heston and company’s spectacular chariot race. One last man is caught beneath two quartets of galloping steeds, leaving him bloodied and barely able to roll over on the kicked-up sand.


She Done Him Wrong

Mae West and Rafaela Ottiano in She Done Him Wrong (1933). In Lowell Sherman’s Pre-Code New York story, Mae West plays a Bowery barroom singer whose boss funds the jewels he gives her by running a prostitution ring. Also featuring Cary Grant, whom West claimed to have “discovered” for the film, She Done Him Wrong sees Rafaela Ottiano start a fight with West over a diamond pin, only to be stabbed by her rival. When cops come to search the room, West combs Ottiano’s lifeless hair to cover up the truth.


From Russia with Love

Sean Connery and Robert Shaw in From Russia with Love (1963). In Bond’s second outing, Sean Connery rides a train car with Robert Shaw’s Red Grant, tricking him into opening a brief case that’s triggered with tear gas. So begins a tough brawl that many regard as game-changing, as director Terence Young drops the score to amp up the grit, kicks on a blue light to drench the fight in color, and lets the brutality stretch on longer than the norm. After being strangled with Bond’s own gadget, Connery finally stabs Shaw with a knife, and strangles him right back.


V for Vendetta

Hugo Weaving and the praetorian guards in V for Vendetta (2006). John Hurt lies dead, Tim Piggot-Smith lets his praetorian guards unleash a hail of bullets at Hugo Weaving, and soon all that can be heard is the echo of empty shells. “My turn,” Weaving says calmly. And with that, the Guy Fawkes vigilante unveils an arsenal of knives, hurling each at his opponents and killing every one, with Smith saved for last. The knives are given nifty CG trails, and the bullet-time slow mo manages to feel fresh (the Wachowskis executive produced). A great standoff where one takes out many.

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Saving Private Ryan

Adam Goldberg and German soldier in Saving Private Ryan (1998). Perhaps the most devastating film fight ever, Adam Goldberg’s lengthy scuffle with a German soldier couldn’t end more devastatingly, as the tables finally turn and his American roughneck is conquered by his opponent. A plea for mercy is futile, and a dagger is slowly pushed into Goldberg’s chest. Worst of all is Jeremy Davies’s cowardly peer, who sits downstairs, lacking the courage to help his fellow soldier.


Duel in the Sun

Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun (1946). Produced by David O. Selznick and directed by King Vidor, the passionate western Duel in the Sun culminates with a shootout between Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones, whose tumultuous, on-again-off-again lovers cap off their strange affair by busting caps in each other. Consumed by lust, and scarred by a patchy journey that involves forced affection, police, and Peck’s brother (the third corner of a love triangle), the two gun toters die in each other’s arms.


The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). The grave is dug first in the immortal climax to Sergio Leone’s famed spaghetti western. It’s a promise that one member of the trio of Clint Eastwood (Good), Lee Van Cleef (Bad), and Eli Wallach (Ugly) will be taking a dirt nap by the end of a three-way Mexican standoff. It’s Bad who gets the bullet, winding up in the grave near Ugly’s dig site. Eastwood and Wallach live on to share a bounty of gold, but tension remains between the two, with the latter nearly strung up by the neck as the former rides toward the sunset.

R. Kurt Osenlund

R. Kurt Osenlund is a creative director and account supervisor at Mark Allen & Co. He is the former editor of Out magazine.

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