10 Movies Where An Actor Dies BEFORE Their Opening Credit!

8. Frank Vincent - Goodfellas

Goodfellas Billy Batts Frank Vincent
Warner Bros.

Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas has one of the all-time great openings, with that first minute or so perfectly setting the tone for what was to come from a movie that many say is the legendary director's finest hour.

That opening sees Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) driving along, when all of a sudden there's some rumbling from their trunk. Stopping to check out this racket, it's then that we realise these three are storing a supposedly dead body. The only thing is, this body isn't quite as dead as a our three lead characters were led to believe.

The poor soul who's been covered up and stuck in the trunk here is Frank Vincent's Billy Batts, and Billy is not long for this world as he's stabbed and shot multiple times as Henry, Jimmy and Tommy make sure to finish off the job at hand.

As Batts is finally killed off, that's when we get Ray Liotta's character uttering the iconic line of, "As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster" - and then the opening credits hit.

For Frank Vincent, he'd get some time to shine later on in Goodfellas, as we'd come to find out exactly what Billy Batts had done to get himself whacked.

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