10 Horror Movie Deaths That Could've Been WAY Better

8. Carter Burke - Aliens

It Chapter Two Pennywise Death
Fox

Weyland-Yutani rep Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) is one of the most detestable human villains in all of horror - nay, cinema - a conniving weasel with little care for the many people he gets killed in his quest to secure the Xenomorph eggs for profit.

He's a certifiable piece of s**t, and we as viewers therefore anticipate that we'll get to savour him suffering a horrible death by film's end. But that's sadly only half right.

Burke certainly gets his, but in a strange choice by filmmaker James Cameron, we're not allowed to witness it.

After unsuccessfully attempting to have Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and Newt (Carrie Henn) impregnated by a pair of facehuggers, all hell breaks loose, leading to Burke being cornered by a Xenomorph, yet the scene shifts away just as the Xenomorph attacks him.

C'mon, this ain't No Country for Old Men - give the people what they want! That Cameron, typically a master of doing precisely that, got shy with Burke's death is such a massive disappointment.

However, it's worth mentioning that a deleted scene fleshes Burke's demise out a little, where Ripley later finds him cocooned in the Queen's hive and impregnated with a Xenomorph embryo. When he asks Ripley for help, she understandably hands him a grenade and moves on.

Cameron apparently cut this from the movie because he realised that the timeframe would be off - when Ripley encounters Burke, he should still have a facehugger attached to him per the gestation cycle established in the original Alien.

All the same, it's certainly a more satisfying end for Burke than the totally off-screen death we ultimately got.

Contributor
Contributor

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.