10 Movies That End In Utter Silence

7. The China Syndrome

During production of this fantastically well-timed nuclear disaster film - which released just 12 days before the real-life Three Mile Island accident - director James Bridges had enlisted veteran composer Michael Small to create an original score.

However, during editing, Bridges came to realise that much of the film was more eerily effective without a score, and so progressively dropped more and more of Small's work out of the film.

Ultimately, Bridges decided not to use any of Small's work at all or indeed any non-diegetic music whatsoever. This also carries through to the film's chilling ending, where whistleblower Jack Godell (Jack Lemmon) is shot dead by the police just as his fateful predictions about the nuclear power plant's instability are proven correct.

Rather than play a dramatic or foreboding piece of music through the credits - or even let the sinister hum of a reactor core play out, perhaps - the film's credits are dead silent, ensuring a pin-drop could be heard among stunned audiences.

There was posthumous justice for composer Smalls, though, whose score was eventually given a limited CD release in 2009 and sold out within 24 hours.