Death becomes her... Lucy Liu prepares for a little slice and dice in Kill Bill I.
Quentin Tarantino has been responsible for a fair few memorable movie demises since his viscerally violent 1992 debut, Reservoir Dogs. Think the moment in Kill Bill I when Lucy Liu glides menacingly across the table to decapitate her Yakuza boss minion, or the comic scene in Pulp Fiction in which John Travolta's Vincent Vega accidentally shoots poor Marvin in the face as he and Samuel L Jackson's Jules discuss the vagaries of the latter's decision to get out of the killing business.
Interviewed in the new issue of FHM magazine, Tarantino is asked about his own favourite death scenes, and the results are illuminating, ranging from the sort of cult B-movie fare which you would bet on the director referencing, to more mainstream, if still mightily trashy, material.
The scene in Dario Argento's Tenebre in which the victim paints the wall with blood after having her arm chopped off is first on QT's list. Then there's the section in Jason X where the killer puts a female laboratory worker's face in a sink of liquid nitrogen, solidifying her face, then smashes it against the counter so it breaks like glass.
But we'll let Tarantino describe his top grisly death in his own words.
"There's a terrific slasher movie called The Prowler, it was out right after they'd come down hard on those movies, but they got X-rated violence in. I don't know who got a blowjob to get it done, but someone must have. There's a girl in the shower, with her boyfriend lying on the bed, and the prowler comes up and sticks a bayonet through the top of his head so it comes down through his chin. It's really slow. And he goes into the shower, where the chick is naked, and he stabs her with a pitchfork and as she's screaming, he lifts her up the wall."
What are your favourite movie death scenes? And how many do you think would have got past the censor in the era of "video nasties"?
