Watching a great film can have a profound impact on you. Sometimes the film can entertain you beyond your wildest dreams, make you open up your mind to new ideas and cultures or take you on an emotional ride that leaves you speechless. Some of the best films in cinema history can also leave us with an amazing parting shot, the last shot in the film before fading to black, that can bring those feelings deeper into our minds. A great final shot in a film can leave a mark on us, one that can sometimes sum up the entire film, leave us wanting more, satisfy the story and characters or haunt us forever. Any great film wort its salt is going to have a masterfully composed and iconic parting shot. It is the final visual thesis from the director and cinematographer to summarize what they were intending to do with the film from the moment the film began, and some of the most renowned shots in film history have been at the climax of these films. We now take a look at 10 of the most celebrated final shots in film history.
10. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, loosely based on the twisted murder spree of farmer Ed Gein, is one of the earliest examples in the "slasher" genre of horror film. Produced on a shoe string budget in the heat of a Texas summer, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre would prove to be one of the biggest independent films of all time and put director Tobe Hooper on the map. The film weaves through an almost documentary style, as a small group of teens are picked off one by one by a sadistic inbred family in slaughterhouse fashion. In the film's climax, the heroine Sally (Marilyn Burns) frantically escapes the chainsaw wielding Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) from the side of a highway after a night of horror that has left all of her friends dead, leaving Leatherface behind. As he watches his would be victim speed away in the back of a pickup truck, Leatherface wildly begins flailing his whizzing chainsaw about, while a warm Texas sunrise shines in the background. This final shot, which according to cinematographer Daniel Pearl was actually composed during a sunset, is a beautiful and haunting coda to this violent, brilliant and now classic film.