25 Films That Intentionally Spoil Other Films

Edgar Wright’s action-comedy horror Hot Fuzz may be the perfect British film. It’s got regional accents, murders, a cult, a swan, and a model village, the script is loaded with sarcasm, satire, and callbacks, and it pays homage to pretty much the entire cinematic canon, from The Wicker Man (1973) to Bad Boys II (2003).

Simon Pegg plays Sergeant Nicholas Angel, a big city cop who is forcibly relocated to the country because his success is making the Met look bad. But the sleepy West Country village of Sandford is more than meets the eye, with grisly murders and a village-wide conspiracy pulsing beneath its surface. Thankfully, local plod and action movie aficionado Danny Butterman (Nick Forst) is on hand to ease Angel into country life.

This leads to one of the film’s most overt references, when Danny screens the Kathryn Bigelow heist actioner Point Break (1991) for his superior. Not content to just show us the picture’s climactic moments on his telly, however, the junior officer winds up mirroring Keanu Reeves’ character’s move in the finale of Hot Fuzz, screaming and discharging his gun into the air when he finds he can’t shoot his own father - one of the village’s murderous conspiracists - in the back.

And it’s a no-holds-barred, adrenaline-fuelled thrill-ride.