10 Horror Movies That Unbelievably Cut What We Wanted To See

10. Nash Gets Ripped Apart - The Hitcher

Cult classic 1986 horror film The Hitcher boasts one of the most memorably twisted death scenes in the genre's history, at least in theory.

Deep into the movie's third act, female lead Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is abducted by murderous psychopath John Ryder (a brilliant Rutger Hauer), who ties her between two trucks.

Ryder is behind the wheel of one of the trucks, and in the event that he hits the gas, Nash will be ripped apart. He attempts to goad protagonist Jim (C. Thomas Howell) into shooting him, but when Jim refuses, Ryder hits the pedal, killing Nash.

Despite the film hardly shying away from gore up to this point, we never actually see Nash get torn in half, director Robert Harmon instead focusing on Nash's hands being pulled tight and her screams before fading to black.

While you can certainly argue that leaving audiences to imagine the grisly outcome is more effective, the sudden decision to deprive audiences of a gory death scene felt contradictory to the film's style and tone up to that point.

One of the film's producers ultimately even blamed its commercial disappointment on the decision not to show Nash's death:

"There's other gore in the movie, other killings, but this is the main one. It's the motivation for the hero. You can't show all the killings we showed and then not show the main one. It's cheating the audience."

The 2007 remake tried to rectify this by showing the gender-swapped outcome in all its nauseating glory, though that didn't much help its general reception.