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The Top 5 Movie Opening Scenes: Blade, Dawn of the Dead, More

June 4, 2020 | Posted by Bryan Kristopowitz
Blade Image Credit: New Line Cinema

The Top 5 Movie Opening Scenes

I think the title of this week’s Top 5 is pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it? It’s a list dealing with what I think are the Top 5 movie opening scenes. Obviously, I haven’t seen every movie ever made, so my Top 5 are likely going to be different from yours. But then that’s the beauty of the internets and movie love, isn’t it?

Absolutely.

And so, without any further what have you, here are my Top 5 Movie Opening Scenes.

Honorable Mentions

Nemesis: This is the classic low budget sci-fi action flick from director Albert Pyun that was released in 1992. This sequence is just non-stop, insane action that I’m still amazed to this day Pyun and company were able to get on camera. Olivier Gruner made himself a full on modern action star in this movie.

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday: A lone woman finds herself being chased through the woods by machete wielding monster Jason Voorhees. Unbeknownst to Jason and the audience, the lone woman is actually an FBI agent and she’s leading Jason into an ambush where he gets shot repeatedly by shotguns and automatic weapons and is then blown the fuck up. That is how you start the ninth movie in a legendary horror franchise. It’s still brilliant to this day.

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!: Sgt. Frank Drebin, Detective Lieutenant, Police Squad, beats up America’s enemies singlehandedly while “on vacation” in Beirut. The funniest bits? When Drebin finds out that the Ayatollah has a Mohawk and when he rubs off Mikhail Gorbachev’s forehead birthmark. The whole thing is ridiculous and sets the tone for the comedy gold to follow.

Punisher: War Zone: What starts out as a big hooha mob dinner party that, in a way, we’ve all seen a million times before, turns into a full on, ass kicking, holy fuck bloodbath featuring Ray Stevenson as the Punisher. When the Punisher flips on the flare, walks across the dinner table and cuts off the top mob guy’s head and then breaks the mob guy’s wife’s neck, you know that this movie, and the Punisher, aren’t fucking around.

BladeDVD

5-Blade : I don’t know about any of you, but I was not prepared at all for the supreme awesomeness that is, was, and always will be the opening sequence in Blade. At first, it seems like we’re going to see some poor dipshit get destroyed by the various vampires in the secret club in a meat packing plant that he willingly went into because Traci Lords was hot and the dipshit was, well, a dipshit. The whole “blood rain” thing didn’t look good at all. And then Wesley Snipes showed up, decked out in his trenchcoat and sunglasses and sword and started flying around the goddamn room, slicing and blasting vampires to dust. I wasn’t prepared for any of that. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I sat in the theater in total awe of what I was seeing. Easily one of the best comic book movie main character intros ever.

Ninja3BRD

4- Ninja III: The Domination: When it comes to ninja movies, no one has been able to top the opening sequence in Ninja III: The Domination. It starts out with a ninja assassin taking out some rich guy, his wife/girlfriend, and some security guards on a golf course in Arizona. Someone calls the cops, the cops show up, and the ninja takes them out. Then more cops show up, and the ninja takes them out, too. There’s a helicopter involved in this, too. The ninja takes out all of them. The ninja is eventually overrun and shot down by the left over cops, setting the eventual “possession” plot of the movie into motion, but, my God, that whole thing lasted well over ten minutes. Why hasn’t anyone tried to top this in the ninja movie world?

DawnoftheDead1978DVD

3- Dawn of the Dead (1978): The opening scene of Dawn of the Dead takes place in a local TV news studio. It’s absolute chaos, as none of the behind the scenes workers seem to know what to do (should the station keep running the rescue station list? Should we all stay at the station? What the hell are we all doing here?), and the interview being conducted is a total shit show. The host is arguing with his scientist guest because he doesn’t believe what he’s hearing (and he’s running a talk show, you gotta keep people watching, so why not yell and scream and whatnot?) and the scientist loves being a condescending prick. The sequence lasts about six minutes and tells you exactly what the movie is all about and, in a way, what the entire “Romero zombie movie universe” is all about: people failing to get along in the face of shocking adversity.

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2- Cobra: The opening sequence in Cobra is still, to this day, one of the most unnerving things I’ve ever seen. It starts out ominously with a guy on a motorcycle riding into the parking lot of a supermarket somewhere in Los Angeles. After parking in a handicap spot, he walks into the supermarket, takes out a shotgun and starts shooting up the place. Customers and employees flee, and the ones who are unable to flee become the motorcycle guy’s hostages. The police show up but they don’t enter the building because they would rather try to negotiate with the hostage taker. The hostage taker then shoots a customer in the back. And that’s when Marion Cobretti, the Cobra, shows up to enter the building and take out the bad guy because that’s what Cobra does. Cobra does the job no one else wants to do. The sequence ends with Cobra neutralizing the hostage taker but not before uttering three classic lines (“Hey dirtbag. You’re a lousy shot. I don’t like lousy shots. You wasted the kid for nothing. Now it’s time I waste you,” after being told by the hostage taker he’s going to blow the supermarket up “Go ahead. I don’t shop here,” and “You’re the disease and I’m the cure.”). Stallone was never more badass.

TheCollectionDVD

1- The Collection: This is the sequel to the 2009 horror flick The Collector, a movie that I was totally unaware of until about two weeks before it came out. I was shocked that The Collector, which was decent but nothing special, got a sequel or even warranted one. What the hell would the sequel even be about? I asked myself all of these questions in the theatre while watching the opening sequence unfold. A bunch of hip and edgy young people show up at some sort of rave, living their lives and whatnot, completely unaware that the Collector, the bad guy, was waiting in the rafters about to unleash an insane weapon on the ravers in the building (it’s some sort of wheat thresher type device). After killing around fifty or so people, some of the survivors escape to a different part of the building, thinking they’re going to escape via some sort of elevator. Nope. The Collector seals off the elevator and activates a crushing mechanism that causes the ceiling to come down on the people inside, flattening them all like pancakes. If you saw all of that and didn’t immediately exclaim “Holy fucking shit!” you clearly weren’t paying attention. Will the upcoming third movie, The Collected, try to outdo The Collection?

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