Joker

Jason Bourne and Jackie Chan taught us that anything and everything can be used as a weapon if you’re resourceful enough – a magazine, an armchair, a tea-towel – just about anything can incapacitate an advancing enemy. But not all are used as deadly weapons, and it takes that extra level of inventiveness – as displayed by the fellow above – to turn something as everyday as a pencil into a killing machine.

So to celebrate those magical moments of violence, we’ve compiled a list of the very best death by inanimate object moments from the history of film. The only real rule here is that the primary function of each item cannot be violence, and the less obvious a weapon the better…

Honourable Mention

Porn Mag – Alien

Alien Ash Choke

As if the sexual undertones of Alien weren’t quite obvious enough in the issues relating to male penetration, they’re handily personified in the character of Ash, the villainous android who is presented as sexually atypical as part of his oddity. The scene that best explores this is when he attempts to kill Ripley with the pornographic magazine, one of the most explicit symbolic representations of rape ever committed to screen.

His attempt to choke Ripley is at once at echo of the phallic intrusion of the aliens, and at the same time is an expression of his own frustrated non-sexuality.

An affecting scene, which only qualifies as an honourable mention here because he failed to kill the xenormoph foiling hard-case.

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