10 Movies That Totally Surprised You When They Ended

Monty Python and the Holy Grail ends abruptly in a wholly different manner, when just as the British knights mount up to reclaim Castle Aarrgh from the French, a group of modern-day police officers show up to arrest Arthur (Graham Chapman) and his cohorts for allegedly murdering an historian killed earlier in the film.

At that moment, one of the cops places their hand over the camera and prematurely ends the film, robbing the audience of the climax they expected to see.

In this case it's obviously played wildly for laughs, and though the Python crew did originally plan a more elaborate battle scene for their ending, they ultimately settled on this intentional anti-climax because it was both cheaper and funnier.

And all things considered, they're probably not wrong. If the cornerstone of comedy is the element of surprise, then this literal cop out ending was most certainly a job well done.

Though any straight-faced fantasy or action film that robbed the audience of a final battle would be jeered into irrelevance, it absolutely works for a surreal slice of absurdist comedy like this.