A lot of my friends have been going through break-ups and divorces lately, which means they’ve probably also been hearing that old familiar friends/family/Facebook folk wisdom about how the end of a relationship is like a death, which must be properly mourned.

And, given that we're down to our next-to-last Thursday list before getting dumped for some younger, sexier blogs by Nerve, your pals here at the Screengrab, having moved beyond denial, anger and bargaining, figured we oughta tackle grief -- well, grief and “holy shit, did you see that guy’s head explode?  How frickin' cool was that?” -- with THE SCREENGRAB’S FAVORITE DEATH SCENES OF ALL TIME, including...

The Guy With The Exploding Head, SCANNERS (1981)



Holy shit!  How frickin' cool was that?  I remember first seeing the aforementioned Exploding Head Guy during one of the montage sequences of the 1984 theatrical clip show Terror in the Aisles (a horror film comprised entirely of classic moments from other horror films, kind of like the Scary Movie franchise without the dick jokes). Later, I saw David Cronenberg’s Scanners in its entirety, although the only thing I really remember about it now is the scene above, where renegade telepath Darryl Revok (B-Movie Hall of Fame villain extraordinaire Michael Ironside) totally blows that bald dude’s skull apart -- with his mind! -- in one of the most memorable death scenes in cinematic history...second only, I suppose, to John Hurt’s demise in Alien (below) for its shock value imagery. In a way, then, it’s sad to realize that, in the wake of Saving Private Ryan and the recent wave of torture porn cinema, the image of a bloody cranium bursting like a ripe watermelon is now considered tame enough to show as a sight gag on The Daily Show. (AO)

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ALIENS (1986) & GALAXY QUEST (1999)



Life will be more stressful in the future, partly because of the ravenous extraterrestrials and tyrannical galactic tyrants we’ll encounter, but mostly because the ticking clocks in our race-against-time adventures will be replaced by soothing female voices announcing our impending doom every few seconds. That’s the case in Aliens anyway, a movie Roger Ebert called “so intense that it creates a problem for me as a reviewer: Do I praise its craftsmanship, or do I tell you it left me feeling wrung out and unhappy?” How’s this for suspense: not only does Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley find herself trapped in a space colony infested with slimy, ravenous xenomorphs (and the equally slimy Paul Reiser), but following a mishap with a nuclear reactor, the whole joint winds up on the verge of self-destruction!  And then the evil Alien Queen grabs Newt (Carrie Henn), the sweet little orphan girl Ripley’s been trying to save for most of the movie!!  And then, just when Ripley and Newt finally escape to the roof of the burning, exploding complex, they discover their ride is gone!!!  And then it turns out the Alien Queen knows how to use elevators!!!!  And she’s got David Fincher with her!!!!!  And that damn soothing female voice won’t stop reminding everyone how close they are to death!!!!!!  Aiiiieeeeee!!!!!!!!!  Later, in the smartly high-concept Galaxy Quest, Weaver once again winds up in a desperate space race against time, trapped with co-star Tim Allen in a real-life starship designed by a much friendlier bunch of aliens to mimic the specs of their old TV starship...including the standard issue self-destruct gizmo that always counts down to zero in the most suspenseful possible way. (AO)

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Each Thursday this summer we’ll hop in the Screengrab time machine and jump back thirty years to see what was new and exciting at the neighborhood moviehouse this week in…The Summer of ’78!

Jaws 2

Release Date: June 16, 1978

Cast: Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Joseph Mascolo, Jeffrey Kramer

The Buzz: Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…

Keywords: Shark Attack, Waterskiing, Beached Whale, Lighthouse, Ribbon Cutting

The Plot: It’s been a few years since that pesky shark attack ruined the summer for the residents and tourists of the quaint New England island town of Amity. Brody (Roy Scheider) is still the chief of police, and inexplicably enough, sleazebag Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) is still the mayor. (“Re-elect Mayor Vaughn! He didn’t let all of you get eaten!”) Mrs. Brody is now working for a slick real estate developer, and eldest son Mike is a horny teenager with a sailboat. Everything seems normal, until a series of freak accidents awaken a fishy fear in Brody.

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Roy Scheider has died in Little Rock, Arkansas, at the age of 75. He had battled cancer in recent years; the cause of death has been reported as complications from a staph infection. Scheider made his film debut in a 1962 horror movie called The Curse of the Living Corpse and throughout the 1960s worked on the stage and on such TV soaps as The Edge of Night, Love of Life, and The Secret Storm. He began to get small movie roles in the late '60s, and had a breakout year in 1971, when, as a thirty-nine-year-old juvenile, he played Jane Fonda's pimp in Klute and Gene Hackman's police partner in The French Connection. (In interviews, and ultimately in a commentary track on The French Connection DVD, Scheider liked to tell a story about how he won the part after someone saw him blow a stage audition and was impressed with the brio with which off the director.) Scheider got an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the role, which would ultimately lead to his getting his first leading role in The Seven-Ups, a 1973 cop thriller directed by the French Connection producer Philip D'Antoni. But it was of course the 1975 Jaws that was Scheider's biggest hit and the movie that made him a familiar face to the public at large, and beloved to a generation of pop-eyed movie freaks.

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