10 Alternate Endings That Almost Ruined Classic Horror Movies

The Proper Ending: When a group of looting bikers break into the shopping mall and overrun it with hordes of the undead, Fran’s baby daddy Stephen decides to defend their outpost and gets himself killed in the process. After zombifying Stephen leads his fellow undead to their hideout where sole survivors Peter and heavily pregnant Fran are waiting.

Peter insists Fran escape to the roof and leave via their helicopter while he stays behind and kills himself (understandable) but changes his mind last minute and punches his way through the advancing zombies like a boss before making his way to the chopper. And off Fran and Peter fly into a rather uncertain future.

The Awful Alternate Ending: Although this ending never made it to filming, George A. Romero originally intended to conclude his film with a scene in which Peter does indeed end up shooting himself in the head and Fran one ups him by committing suicide via running headfirst into a rotating helicopter blade. Gruesome.

Apparently, Romero decided this was a little too depressing even for a zombie apocalypse movie. As fun as watching someone’s head get eviscerated by a chopper blade sounds, it’s not like the original ending is all that upbeat.

How long is that helicopter going to hold out? And what about when Fran ends up going into labour? It’s just as bleak an ending – if a lot less gory – with the added ambiguity of not knowing what’ll become of Fran and Peter after they fly off into the distance.