Richard III (1995, US/UK)

This modernistic British adaptation of the Shakespearean play was set in a fictional, fascistic Britain some time in the late 1930s. (See also Laurence Olivier's original British version of the film, Richard III (1955)).

Richard III (Ian McKellan) died a fiery death in the film's conclusion, located in an abandoned industrial site, in the ruins of the Battersea Power Station. He refused to be captured when cornered, and told his rival Henry, Earl of Richmond (Dominic West) as he lifted his right gloved hand as if to wave:

Let us to't pell-mell; if not to heaven, then hand-in-hand to hell.

[Note: In Shakespeare's play, the line located in Act V, Scene 3, was delivered before battle, not immediately before Richard's death.]

Then, with a triumphant grin on his face, he fell backwards into the blazing inferno to his death.

Falling into an Inferno

His demise was accompanied by the unusually-cheerful song I'm Sitting On The Top Of The World (Ray Henderson, Joe Young and Sam Lewis).

Se7en (1995)

Director David Fincher's crime thriller ended with a unforgettable, nail-biting, concluding climax.

Maniacal serial killer John Doe (Kevin Spacey) led arrogant, hotshot replacement Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt) and retiring veteran Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) to a remote desert area, promising to reveal the last two bodies and give his confession.

There, another sick and gruesome crime and souvenir - "her pretty head" in a bloody box was delivered by a van. It proved to ultimately demonstrate one of the last two of the Seven Deadly Sins (gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy, and wrath).

Doe began to confess to Mills that he represented the sin of Envy - it was his intense feeling about Mills and his wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow):

"When I said I admired you, I meant what I said....You’ve made quite a life for yourself, detective. You should be very proud....I wish I could have lived like you did...Do you hear me, detective? I’m trying to tell you how much I admire you and your pretty wife...Tracy...It's disturbing how easily a member of the press can purchase information from the men in your precinct... I visited your home this morning - after you'd left. I tried to play husband. I tried to taste the life of a simple man."

Doe implied that the box (never seen) contained the severed head of Mills' pregnant wife Tracy: "It didn't work out so I took a souvenir - (pause) her pretty head"; Mills was confused and asked Somerset: "What's he talking about?"; Somerset asked for Mills' gun: "Give me your gun...put the gun down"; Mills asked innocently: "I saw you with a box. What was in the box?" as he kept being commanded to put his gun down

Doe explained how this was his 6th sick and most gruesome murder, involving ENVY, and that it included a souvenir:

"Because I envy your normal life, it seems that ENVY is my sin."

Se7en (1995)

The last of the Seven Deadly Sins - Wrath - was luridly demonstrated by anguished and angered Lt. Mills (Brad Pitt) who was bound to seek vengeance, and kept asking about the contents of the cardboard box. Mills pointed his gun at John Doe's (Kevin Spacey) head and accused him of lying about how his wife's head was in the box. His partner Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) begged him not to shoot, and kept ordering him to put away his gun, but to no effect:

"That's what he wants. He wants you to shoot him."

Doe kept pressing and urged Mills: "Become vengeance, David...Become WRATH," and then he added a devastating detail:

"She begged for her life, Detective. She begged for her life and for the life of the baby inside of her."

Somerset ordered Doe to shut up - and even tried to silence him by slapping him; by the pained expression on Mills' face, Doe realized Mills was unaware of the pregnancy; he turned to Somerset, and mentioned with some pleasure: "Oh, he didn't know"; for naught, Somerset again demanded Mills' gun: "If you kill him, he will win," but Mills went ahead and executed Doe.

The film ended with Somerset quoting from Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls:

'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part.

Species (1995)

There were three remarkable death (or killing) scenes in director Roger Donaldson's science-fiction thriller by a deadly half-human, half-alien seductress:

• Sil (Natasha Henstridge), aka S1L, a pretty nymphomaniacal, predatory alien who wished to reproduce

She insatiably stalked suitable mates in Los Angeles, in order to become impregnated and reproduce her own kind - unleashing alien spawn. When aroused or threatened, the murderous creature would often turn into her alien self - a scaly, bipedal tentacled, reptilian creature.

(First Victim)
Her first target was a man she met at an LA night club who she told: "I've got a party to go to and no one to take me." She stripped for him and approached as he commented: "Very nice," but then she abruptly sensed that he was a non-suitable mate - with diabetes - and changed her mind. She asked: "Can you drive me back?" She rejected his advances when he insisted on sex ("You knew what we came here for...It's too late, babe, you're not leaving"), but to satisfy him, she offered him a kiss of death - and punctured the back of his skull with her deadly tongue.

(Second Victim)
In a hottub, she impatiently demanded to be seduced, as the male victim tried to slow her down ("Take it easy, just relax, there's plenty of time"). When officers arrived at the front door, she pulled him back into the tub: "Don't go, please, I want a baby," forced him underwater, transformed into the alien, stuck her lethal tongue down his throat, and left him drowned in the bloody spa (after unsuccessful copulation) before fleeing.

Sil's Third Victim in Hotel Room

(Third Victim)
As a brunette, Sil easily tempted English anthropologist Dr. Stephen Arden (Alfred Molina) to make love to her in his hotel room. After being instantly impregnated after intercourse, she smiled in awe and wonder as she felt the baby already rapidly developing inside of her. She thanked the unwitting father by promptly killing him, Black Widow-style - to his shocked horror.

Strange Days (1995)

In the violent conclusion to Kathryn Bigelow's cyberpunk, dystopian tech-noir thriller, everything converged an hour before the dawn of the New Millennium at the downtown LA Bonaventura Hotel.

The film's backstory was that the public revelation of the covered-up murder of 27 year-old outspoken militant black rapper Jeriko One (Glen Plummer) (not due to gangbanger-related violence as originally blamed) would ignite a catastrophic race riot, if the truth came out. It was revealed that there had been a "hard-line" death-squad conspiracy - two rogue LA cops ("two loose-cannon cops") had killed him in cold blood.

The film's protagonist Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes), peddler of illegal virtual reality "clips," planned to trade the "lightning bolt from God" tape showing Jeriko's murder, in exchange for ex-girlfriend and aspiring singer Faith Justin (Juliette Lewis). Lenny viewed a tape, thinking it was another rape/strangulation tape of Faith's murder, but then realized it was an erotic-asphyxiation sex scene between Faith and her secret lover - Lenny's own best friend and PI Max Peltier (Tom Sizemore).

The wily, long-haired, and menacing ex-cop had betrayed Lenny. Max was the main villain behind the film's many murders. He quipped: "The world's gonna end in ten minutes, anyway."

When Max set up Lenny to take the fall for various murders (the murder of Gant and Iris), the two fought to the death in the hotel room and onto its balcony, high above the revelers.

Max precariously hung onto Lenny's tie until Lenny cut off the tie with the knife stuck in his back - sending Max hurtling to his death on the street below.

To Die For (1995)

In the conclusion of director Gus Van Sant's dark comedy, ruthless, manipulative and icy blonde WWEN-TV weathercaster Suzanne Stone Maretto (Nicole Kidman) was killed off-screen.

The murderer was a "Hollywood producer" (David Cronenberg in a cameo, credited as "Man at the Lake") who was hired by father Joe Maretto (Dan Hedaya) (with Mafia connections), to seek revenge for her plotting to successfully kill her husband Larry Maretto (Matt Dillon).

Sociopathic Suzanne had seduced a student named Jimmy Emmett (Joaquin Phoenix) to commit the deadly deed.

Although Suzanne was brought to trial and there was taped evidence of a confession, she walked free when police were accused of wire-tapping and entrapment.

The hitman led Suzanne to the surface of a frozen pond - she was later seen dead in a lingering closeup under the ice of a frozen pond where she was deposited after the murder.

In an ironic scene immediately before the credits, Larry's sister Janice (Illeana Douglas) practiced her ice skating on the frozen lake (above the location of the frozen body and literally 'dancing on her grave') to the tune of Donovan's "The Season of the Witch."

Twelve Monkeys (1995) (aka 12 Monkeys)

Director Terry Gilliam's science fiction film featured plot twists, time-travel paradoxes, and unusual efforts to thwart a devastating plague.

Having successfully enlisted the help of psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe), she and delusional, time-traveling prison convict James Cole (Bruce Willis) (from the year 2035) donned disguises, and were planning to fly together to a dream vacation destination - the Florida Keys. He glued on a mustache, wore a wig and a tropical-designed shirt, and she wore a blonde wig.

At the Philadelphia airport late in the year of 1996, they both realized that red-haired, pony-tailed bio-terrorist and "apocalyptic nut" Dr. Peters (David Morse) had just taken a sticker-covered carry-on suitcase through security in front of them that contained live samples of a deadly doomsday virus. Peters had already unleashed the virus by opening one of the vials at a security checkpoint.

In the film's climactic ending (filmed in slow-motion), when gun-brandishing Cole pursued the madman through security (after Dr. Railly yelled out: "There he is! That man! He's carrying a deadly virus. Stop him! Somebody, please stop him!"), Cole was fatally gunned down from behind by airport police; madman Peters got away and boarded his plane to San Francisco - with the goal of infecting the world one city at a time.

The film's main plot twist was revealed to clearly explain the reason for Cole's repeated dreams and memories; during Cole's sad, long drawn-out death after being shot in the Philadelphia airport by security guards, he was mourned over by grieving Dr. Railly; as she mourned above him, she scanned the many bystanders surrounding them, and knowingly noticed young Cole nearby when their eyes made contact; it was Cole as a young boy witnessing the shooting (and his own death) in the far future; his attempts to prevent the future led to his death in the future.