100 Most Jaw-Dropping Movie Moments

Team America: World Police (2004)

The Moment: Puppet sex. There's not much else needs to be said, really.

The Birds (1963)

The Moment: Jessica Tandy heads to her neighbour's house for help, only to find the birds have got there first and - in a gut-punching one, two, three of increasing close-ups - we see they've been busy pecking out the owner's eyes.

28 Weeks Later (2007)

The Moment: How deep is your survival instinct? Robert Carlyle ditches his wife in a heartbeat when the Infect gatecrash his countryside hidey-hole.

Pinocchio (1940)

The Moment: Before the studio became more sanitised, early Disney wasn't afraid to animate the horrors of its European fairytale sources - as this nightmarish sequence of Pinocchio sprouting donkey ears proves.

A History Of Violence (2005)

The Moment: Roleplay gets real, as Maria Bello finds herself wanting raw staircase sex following the revelation of hubby Viggo Mortensen's shady past.

There's Something About Mary (1998)

The Moment: Another thing to tick off your list of scenes you never thought you'd see: Cameron Diaz going on a date wearing Ben Stiller's sperm as hair gel.

Misery (1990)

The Moment: A scene that introduces a new pastime into common parlance. Well, we say 'pastime,' but only a loony like Kathy Bates' Annie Wilkes actually wants to practice hobbling.

The Public Enemy (1931)

The Moment: While the censors were breathing down William Wellman's neck for the gun-totin' glamour of his gangster flick, the director was busy creating a much more violent and disturbing sight, as James Cagney angrily slams a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face.

Toy Story (1995)

The Moment: If Pixar hadn't already won you over, the joyous finale, as Buzz accepts his toyhood while still getting to play at being the Space Ranger hero, did the trick. "This isn't flying, this is falling with style."

Network (1976)

The Moment: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" TV anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) strays off-script in a moment that looks more resonant with each passing year.

Shame (2011)

The Moment: Self-hating sex addict Michael Fassbender goes for a jog to escape the flat where his sister is shagging, and the camera keeps pace across several New York blocks in a perfect fusion of cinematography and character.

The Godfather Part II (1974)

The Moment: Young Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) stakes his claim to being the don by shooting rival Don Fanucci, as the towel he's used as a silencer catches fire.

Lost Highway (1997)

The Moment: Of all the mind-fucking shenanigans that David Lynch has put on film, the most unsettling might be the simplest, as Robert Blake's creepy Mystery Man proves to Bill Pullman he's in two places at once.

The Brood (1979)

The Moment: David Cronenberg was going through a divorce at the time, which probably explains why Oliver Reed discovers wife Samantha Eggar licking clean her new-born monster child.

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)

The Moment: Butch and Sundance - aka Newman and Redford - decided to go out blazing, but are saved by a freeze frame.

The Departed (2006)

The Moment: Already a 'woah' moment in Infernal Affairs , the sneaky elevator headshot is choreographed so well by Martin Scorsese that even those familiar with the original will have dropped jaws for a second time.

Anchorman (2004)

The Moment: Will Ferrell's comedy was always out-there in terms of surrealism, and then he got all of his Brat Pack mates (and Tim Robbins) together for an insane bloodbath of laughter.

The Prestige (2006)

The Moment: Did you guess the secret behind Christian Bale's magic trick? Good on you. Did you work out how Jackman did it? Did you heck.

Rififi (1955)

The Moment: Director Jules Dassin pulls off the perfect heist, as his Gallic gang is forced to conduct a robbery in silence in a wordless, half-hour set-piece.

Casino Royale (2006)

The Moment: The Daniel Craig naysayers were silenced about ten minutes into his 007 debut, as James Bond literally jumps into the modern era of action movies with a parkour-styled foot chase.

Se7en (1995)

The Moment: Detectives Mills and Somerset reckon they're chasing a serial killer using the Seven Deadly Sins as his M.O. When they find the Sloth victim, though, they realise that 'killer' is too reductive a label for this particular psycho.

Django (1966)

The Moment: What's in the coffin that gunslinger Django is carting around? An armed posse decides to find out, only to discover he's hiding a massive machine gun - and it's locked and loaded.

Freaks (1932)

The Moment: Prince Randian, aka 'The Living Torso,' isn't going to let the small matter of having no arms and legs get in the way of his rolling a cigarette.

My Neighbour Totoro (1988)

The Moment: Forest spirit Totoro waits at the bus stop. The bus arrives. It's a Catbus.

To Live And Die In L.A. (1985)

The Moment: Think all car chases are the same? William Friedkin bettered even his seminal pursuit in The French Connection by having William Petersen's Secret Service agent pursue his quarry the wrong way up the freeway, into incoming traffic.

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978)

The Moment: On-the-run Veronica Cartwright catches up with hero Donald Sutherland, only for him to let out an unearthly cry and point an accusing finger at the fugitive survivor. He's one of them.

Chinatown (1974)

The Moment: Jack Nicholson's P.I. Jake Gittes browbeats the truth out of Faye Dunaway's slippery femme fatale Evelyn Mulholland, only to wish he hadn't when her family secret - her daughter is her sister - is revealed.

The Mist (2007)

The Moment: That biggest of clichés - the cavalry arrives to save everybody - is up-ended as they arrive, agonisingly, moments too late.

Day Of The Dead (1985)

The Moment: Genre master George A. Romero sets the bar for the best-ever zombie kill, as bad guy Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato) is torn in half by the hungry undead. "Choke on 'em," he snarls with commendable cool.

The Deer Hunter (1978)

The Moment: Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken face hellish odds during an enforced game of Russian roulette.

The Elephant Man (1980)

The Moment: Disfigured John Merrick stands his ground against a mob of tormenters, sobbing "I'm not an animal" and proving it as John Hurt's emotional performance punches through the prosthetics.

Planet Of The Apes (1968)

The Moment: Yes, they've finally made a monkey out of Chuck Heston as he clocks the Statue of Liberty emerging from the shore and figures out the home he's trying to get back to is the same planet as the one he's trying to escape.

Kill List (2011)

The Moment: Troubled hitman Jay (Neil Maskell) takes a lump hammer to his weirdly compliant victim, the Librarian. We're all expecting the camera to cut away, so it's a hell of a shock when the hammer makes contact and bits of skull flap around under its force.

The 400 Blows (1959)

The Moment: The French New Wave is defined as Jean-Pierre Léaud’s Antoine Doinel, escaping from borstal, races for the shore - and then turns back hesitantly, Francois Truffaut capturing his adolescent confusion in a heart-stopping freeze-frame.

Black Swan (2010)

The Moment: Natalie Portman's crazed ballerina Nina Sayers completes her metamorphosis into the Black Swan as she sprouts feathers and wings on stage.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

The Moment: The T-1000 shows off its liquid metal design by walking through the bars of a prison door and changing cinema special effects forever.

The Phantom Of The Opera (1925)

The Moment: The film might be close to ninety years old, but Lon Chaney's expertise with prosthetics makes the reveal of the Phantom's ghoulish visage a nightmare that's impossible to forget.

Requiem For A Dream (2000)

The Moment: Aronofsky's addicts try to outdo each other in a downward spiral of degradation. Jennifer Connelly edges it with by sharing the stage at a sex show with a double-ended dildo and another equally luckless lady.

The Sixth Sense (1999)

The Moment: Oh, right, of course, because he sees dead people. Bruce Willis finally twigs why everybody's been acting so weird towards him.

Bambi (1942)

The Moment: Not so much a jaw-dropper as a lip-trembler, as numerous generations of kids learn that parents can die. Sob.

The Fisher King (1991)

The Moment: Terry Gilliam might be known for creating fantasy worlds but his loveliest, most delicate creation sees Grand Central Station transformed, momentarily, into the most romantic dance venue in cinema.

The Godfather (1972)

The Moment: Headstrong Sonny, clearly being groomed as the next leader of the Corleone clan, is ruthlessly dispatched in a tollbooth ambush, his body jerking like a ragdoll under the hail of bullets.

Do The Right Thing (1989)

The Moment: The combustible atmosphere in Bed-Stuy ignites as Mookie (Spike Lee) "does the right thing" - namely chucking a trash can through the window of Sal's Pizzeria to start a race riot.

The Artist (2011)

The Moment: Sound enters the life of silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) in a nightmarish dream sequence where everyday objects bang like klaxons but he remains mute.

Jurassic Park (1993)

The Moment: A game of two halves - Spielberg hints at a T-Rex's approach by showing ripples in a water glass, but then he shows the dino in all of its gobsmacking glory. Just because, at last, thanks to modern FX technology, he can.

Throne Of Blood (1957)

The Moment: Shakespeare was never like this in school. Toshiro Mifune's feudal lord, modelled on Macbeth, watches in horror as his opponents chuck spears at him until he's turned into a human pin cushion.

Fight Club (1999)

The Moment: If the first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club, what number is the rule that says, "Nobody tell Ed Norton that he's Tyler Durden?" The narrator finally figures out why he doesn't have a name.

Blade Runner (1982)

The Moment: What does the future look like? Ridley Scott convinces within seconds, as he unveils the industrialised beauty of the L.A. skyline circa 2019. Betcha it doesn't really look like that in seven years.

Goodfellas (1990)

The Moment: Muffled cries from the trunk. Frenzied stabs and shots to make sure he's dead. "Ever since I was little, I always wanted to be a gangster." That's how you begin a film.

The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

The Moment: The battle of Helm's Deep, so prolonged, fraught with peril and bursting with character development, it totally justifies its status as the trilogy's centrepiece.

The Shining (1980)

The Moment: Jack Torrance has been beavering away on his latest novel, but all work and no play make Jack a dull boy, right? Timid wife Wendy realises her hubby has gone gaga.

Carrie (1976)

The Moment: Yes, the final scene's more of a shocker, but the split-screen, neon-soaked 'disco of death' set-piece remains the event that you can't quite believe you're watching.

When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

The Moment: Who says Americans are prudes? Sally's (Meg Ryan) full-blown public faked orgasm becomes the dish of the day at a New York diner, as everybody wants what she's having.

Don't Look Now (1973)

The Moment: Donald Sutherland finally catches up with the red-coated apparition he's been chasing along Venice's canals. Is it the spirit of his late daughter? Nope: it's a midget serial killer. Uh-oh.

Psycho (1960)

The Moment: Yes, yes, the shower, we know. But no matter how well you know the film, the surreal reveal of emaciated Mrs Bates remains a masterful, audacious sting in the tail.

Bonnie And Clyde (1967)

The Moment: Everybody knew it was coming, but nobody expected this - Bonnie jolting like a rag-doll, Clyde collapsing in super slo-mo, as cinema violence caught up with the atrocities reported on the evening news.

Once Upon A Time In The West (1968)

The Moment: A family is massacred by grizzled gunmen. Their leader orders the execution of the remaining child. As he emerges into the gleaming sunlight, we realise in horror that this cold-blooded killer is blue-eyed Western hero Henry Fonda.

Audition (1999)

The Moment: Successful auditionee Asami sits and waits for her suitor Shigeharu to call, as behind her a thing in a sack gurgles and writhes. Hang on a minute, isn't this supposed to be a romance?

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

The Moment: Private Pyle completes his metamorphosis into a killing machine in the loo, that reliable barometer of bad things happening in a Kubrick film. It's not quite how Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann thought it'd pan out, mind.

Les Diaboliques (1954)

The Moment: Fragile murderess Christina (Vera Clouzot) isn't the only one who is faint of heart when she discovers the corpse of her husband re-awakening in a bathtub.

The Matrix (1999)

The Moment: "We need guns. Lots of guns." Neo and Trinity take on the Matrix's lobby security in an orgy of stylised, slo-mo destruction.

Deliverance (1972)

The Moment: Four city slickers realise how out of their depth they are in the wild when their holiday degenerates into an ordeal at the hands of hillbilly rapists. "Squeal like a pig, boy."

Ghostbusters (1984)

The Moment: Ray Stantz seals Manhattan's fate by deciding Gozer the Destroyer's form - a giant marshmallow man. The most leftfield special effect ever.

Scanners (1980)

The Moment: "So, David Cronenberg, please tell us - what is a Scanner and what can it do?" The director replies, "It's easier if I show you."

Close Encounters Of the Third Kind (1977)

The Moment: The mothership descends - and it's not the wobbly plate on a wire that UFOs used to be but a monster of light and sound.

Braindead (1992)

The Moment: Remember your dad warning you not to mess about with lawnmowers? Zombie killer Lionel Cosgrove shows us why by wiping out an army of the undead with a Flymo.

United 93 (2006)

The Moment: Real-life horror revisited, as the passengers aboard the ill-fated airplane realise there's no turning back. "Let's roll."

Last Tango In Paris (1972)

The Moment: Method-man Marlon Brando finds a new use for his spread. Cue a thousand dinner party innuendos about passing the butter.

The Crying Game (1992)

The Moment: Femme fatale Jaye Davidson turns flasher in the movies' ultimate "chick with a dick" moment.

Inception (2010)

The Moment: Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) fights the militarised subconscious in a surreal, revolving hotel corridor.

The Third Man (1949)

The Moment: The zither starts to quither as Holly Martins finally gets proof that his buddy Harry Lime isn't dead, as star Orson Welles smirks from a shadowed doorway.

Fargo (1996)

The Moment: The Coens' commitment to faking their "based on a true story" tale extends to an ending you never, ever saw coming, as Peter Stormare's psycho does half of Marge Gunderson for her by feeding Steve Buscemi into a wood-chipper.

Saw (2004)

The Moment: Jigsaw plays possum. What better way to assess how your victims are doing than by hanging out in their cell for the entire film?

Monty Python's Life Of Brian (1979)

The Moment: The Pythons show the unshowable, and whistle the unwhistleable, as Brian and crucifixion chums decide to Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life .

Steamboat Bill, Jr (1928)

The Moment: An inch either side, and Buster Keaton would be flattened by the housefront collapsing towards him. Fortunately, he's standing in the exact spot where an open window lands.

Drive (2011)

The Moment: Ryan Gosling's Driver experiences the quickest mood swing in modern movies. One second, he's locked in a passionate snog with Carey Mulligan; the next he's stomping an assassin's head into mush.

Oldboy (2004)

The Moment: Hammer-time, as Dae-Su smashes his way along a corridor of minions in a stunning single-take.

L.A. Confidential (1997)

The Moment: Kevin Spacey's Jack Vincennes picks the wrong guy to confide in, but has the last laugh by using his dying words - "Rolo Tomassi" - to pass on the fake clue that will lead the good guys to the killer.

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

The Moment: Gene Kelly never expected this, as Malcolm McDowell's droog appropriates Singin' In The Rain as the soundtrack to a gang-rape.

Being John Malkovich (1999)

The Moment: John Malkovich discovers what happens when he enters the portal into his own head. Meta-Malkovich weirdness ensues.

The Wild Bunch (1969)

The Moment: The end of one era - the old West - signals the beginning of another - the squib-bursting Hollywood bloodbath as Peckinpah's bunch goes bananas with a machine gun.

The Exorcist (1973)

The Moment: Linda Blair masturbates with a crucifix, snarls profanities and then twists her head around 180 degrees. How much proof do you need that the girl's possessed?

Avatar (2009)

The Moment: James Cameron's 3D epic has more spectacular scenes but none showcase the medium's possibilities so much as the enchanting night-time encounter amidst woodsprites so tangible you want to reach out and touch them.

King Kong (1933)

The Moment: The giant ape kidnaps the girl and carries her up the Empire State Building to swat flyers. It hardly matters if you're watching the stop-motion original or Peter Jackson's CGI makeover, the fact that somebody thought of doing this at all astounds.

An American Werewolf In London (1981)

The Moment: Breaking with horror film tradition, David Naughton's transformation into a lycanthrope is shown in all its full, bone-breaking agony in a brightly lit lounge.

Irreversible (2002)

The Moment: As if being disoriented by the back-to-front chronology, deafened by the cacophonous din of the soundtrack and made nauseous by the spinning camerawork wasn't bad enough, just look at what Albert Dupontel's Pierre is doing to that bloke's head with a fire extinguisher.

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

The Moment: T.E. Lawrence waits and waits, as the shimmering mirage in the mid-distance gradually reveals itself to be Omar Sharif arriving across the desert towards him.

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

The Moment: Mr Blonde shuffles over in time to Stuck In The Middle With You to slice off the ear of kidnapped cop Marvin, in a scene even the camera doesn't want to watch.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

The Moment: What's Quentin Tarantino got against people called Marvin? This one's with friends, apparently safe, until Vincent Vega waves a gun towards the backseat and - BLAM! - Marvin's face comes off.

The Dark Knight (2008)

The Moment: Heath Ledger's Joker shows Gotham City's assembled criminals his party trick, involving a pencil and a hapless goon's face. We've seen worse - but never in a 12-certificate.

The Usual Suspects (1995)

The Moment: The plot unravels like so much Verbal diarrhoea as Agent Kujan realises he's been told a load of porky-pies based on names and places on bulletin boards and coffee mugs.

Children Of Men (2006)

The Moment: Alfonso Cuaron reinvents the single take by shooting an action sequence from inside a car. It's so nonchalant that you'll be too busy reacting to the shock death of a major character first time around to register just how jaw-dropping this is.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

The Moment: The shock and aww-shit of the Normandy landings is replayed with trembling, terrifying realism, for an immersive baptism of fire unlike anything else in combat cinema.

There Will Be Blood (2007)

The Moment: In a film ricocheting from risk to risk, Paul Thomas Anderson saves the best for last - an apparently low-key ending that suddenly explodes into OTT, operatic excess as Daniel Plainview starts slurping milkshake.

Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)

The Moment: Getting to the golden idol was difficult enough, but when Indiana Jones switches it for a bag of sand he discovers just how fiendish the traps in this place are.

The Thing (1982)

The Moment: Antarctic base doctor Copper attempts to revive Norris with a defibrillator. At which Norris' chest opens and bites off the doc's arms. Proof that The Thing has a (sick) sense of humour.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

The Moment: Stanley Kubrick achieves the impossible in the blink of an eye, fast-forwarding from the dawn of man to the space age in a match-cut from bone to spaceship.

Alien (1979)

The Moment: John Hurt-by-name, Hurt-by-nature ordered the wrong takeaway, as facehugger becomes chestburster. One of the few scenes on this list where you can see the cast's jaws drop, too.

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

The Moment: The ultimate Oedipal nightmare, as Darth Vader reveals his paternity to shell-shocked son Luke. Never mind the revelation, the same thirty seconds also see the hero lose his hand and throw him to almost certain death.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

The Moment: The war movie goes Wagnerian as helicopters assault a Vietcong village to the strains of Ride Of The Valkyries... and all Robert Duvall fancied going surfing.