12 Alternative Horror Movie Endings You Didn't See

You gotta stick that landing right? The final moments of a movie are going to resonate with the audience more than any other part, and thus the film industry puts a great deal of effort into getting that last scene perfect, often screening multiple endings for test audiences to gauge reactions.

The Cluedo spoof classic Clue provided three different endings to avoid this particular issue altogether, yet not all films have that artistic luxury (or inclination), relegating a proverbial warehouse of unused footage to an eternity on YouTube.

Luckily for us then, plenty of alternate endings survive online and in the bonus features of home releases.

Some are truly terrible, I mean, would you believe there was an alternate ending to The Shining? That iconic final shot of Torrence alive and well in 1922 nearly didn't make the cut!

However others can actually improve on the canonical finale, yet much of that is down to personal preference.

In this feature, twelve horrors have been given a second chance at redemption. Featuring Morbius The Living Vampire in a brief on-screen appearance twenty three years ago, a classic Romero zombie flick, two Stephen King chillers and very different fate for the world's leading authority on boiling bunnies, here's how these horrors could've ended...

Ash Williams is having a sh*tty day. A romantic weekend away in a cosy log cabin turned into a frenetic skirmish with the demonic 'Deadites.' Worse still, he's somehow been transported to medieval somewhere by the time of the third Evil Dead movie, Army of Darkness.

Yes, the alternative ending here is hardly a secret anymore but it's just too damn good to leave off this list.

Now, which ending is considered canonical and which is the alternative? Well, that depends on which side of The Pond you're from.

In the UK, we got the ending which the Americans consider to be the alternate one. Here Ash, the cowardly but tenacious numb-nuts, is victorious in the battle against the Deadites but is still lost 600 years in the past.

Given the opportunity to return home, he drinks one too many drops of a sleeping potion and consequently wakes up in a post-apocalyptic nightmare, replete with famous trashed landmarks, Roland Emmerich style.

On release, this of course left UK fans brimming on the possibility of a fourth movie, which would disappointingly never be made, at least not in the way we thought.

The US ending, however, transports Ash safely back to the S-Mart department store, still trying to impress the girls. Raimi decides to remind us that despite all the sword and sandal malarky, this is still Evil Dead territory. Cue Deadite, cue shotgun, cue the best one-liners since Arnie's 80s hey day - "The name's Ash, housewares." Genius.