10 Most Elaborate Movie Climaxes Ever

It takes a real master of visual storytelling to handle a climax with a lot of moving parts. They have to allow the audience to take in a sense of space, time the events in an order that feels legitimate and provide a reasonable sense of closure.

For moments such as this, you have to call Brian De Palma. Like his hero, Hitchcock, De Palma loved a good ending. Even at his worst, such as the recent flop Domino, he aspired to bring about an ending that thrilled.

Raising Cain, one of his many Hitchcock riffs, was released in 1992 to middling or downright risible criticism. A fan released a re-edit available and approved by De Palma that is now available on the Shout Factory release much closer to De Palma's initial script, and it's well-worth re-appraisal.

John Lithgow stars as a child psychologist with multiple personality disorder - one a serial killer, one a woman and one his evil father who performed experiments on him in his childhood. It's worth it for Lithgow's great turn alone, but the ending is one hell of a thrill.

While a baby is falling from the corridor of the second floor of a motel, a cop races to catch it as a truck with a sharp sundial is rolling backward toward his neck. This is, of course, all in slow-motion, and undone at the last second when the baby is caught and a stray bullet hits the sundial, sparing the officer.

It may not be De Palma's finest work, but it serves as one of many examples as what a master of the craft he can be. Or if you just want to see Lithgow in drag.