By Jordan

How fondly one remembers a film is dependent almost entirely on it’s denouement and the manner in which it concludes, but whether one even bothers to spend the two hours watching it in the first place relies heavily on it’s opening scene…

A film needs to grab it’s audience’s attention immediately, either gently leading them into it’s imagined world or shocking them into attentiveness. In one way or another, these films do exactly that.

I hope you enjoy, and even agree with my picks; assuming my introduction grabbed you enough to keep reading…

For Eddie’s list click here

10. From Dusk ‘till Dawn (1996)

Whats happening?

The Gecko Brothers (George Clooney at his smooth-talking best and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino), fugitives after a bloody bank robbery, are holding petrified shoppers hostage in a rural gas station before the local sheriff casually meanders in…

Whys it good?

Michael Parks. This was the first and remains the best use of Parks in the Tarantino/Rodriguez partnership, with his scene-stealing presence and mesmerizing speech stealing the hearts of all grungy cult film fans. Add in Clooney shooting his ER reputation down in flames and wildcard in everyone’s favorite video store clerk in his best acting role and you have one of the greatest opening scenes of all time.

9. The Wild Bunch (1969)

Whats happening?

The wild west is beginning to tame, with the prohibition era looming the train-tracks no longer dominating industry. Enter the Wild Bunch: a gang of aging outlaws whose plan to rob a bank in broad daylight is about to instigate an unprecedented bloodbath (which would go on to be topped in the film’s final act).

Whys it good?

Everyone can die. No exception. That may not necessarily sound good but what Peckinpah achieved in starting his classic Western all guns blazing was the expectation that anything goes, no-one is safe and taboos are sure to be broken. Of course this mentality does prevail in all his films…

8. Halloween (1978)

Whats happening?

It’s Halloween in 1963, and 6 year-old Michael Myers has decided to murder his sister.

Whys it good?

Michael Myers would go on to be one of the most enigmatic villains of all time; a shadow, silently waiting with his blade in hand to fell unsuspecting suburban teenage babysitters, and what makes his first appearance so darn interesting is that we see the world through his perverse young eyes, heading upstairs and stabbing his sister to death before calmly being taken away by the police.

Just writing about Halloween makes me want to watch it ASAP.

7. Scream (1996)

Whats happening?

Casey (Drew Barrymore) is home alone, isolated with the night having well and truly set in, when she receives an unexpected phone-call from a very talkative psychopath…

Whys it good?

In a terrifying, surprising (Drew’s dead already???) and utterly uncompromising manner, the absolutely icon opening to the first Scream movie proved to the world that Wes Craven was back, and again taking no prisoners.

6. Night of the Living Dead (1975)

Whats happening?

Barbara and her Brother Johnny have traveled to the countryside to visit the gravestone of their father, where Barbara notice a strange man stumbling towards them and Johnny sees this as a perfect opportunity for some taunting:

Whys it good?

“They’re coming to get you, Barbara, there’s one of them now! Says Johnny shortly before he becomes legendary film-maker George A. Romero’s first ever zombie victim. A death such as this in broad daylight and in an unprecedented manner helped ensure Night of the Living Dead as a horror, and in fact cinema, classic.

5. 28 Days Later (2002)

Whats happening?

After a chaotic raid on a laboratory holding dozens of caged chimpanzees, we witness shocking instances of rage and then cut to silence. The empty streets of a deserted London, and a lone figure in hospital drapes confused while walking around them.

Whys it good?

The image of The Big Ben and Parliament House surrounded by eerie nothing is an unforgettable one, capturing the viewers gaze and imagination, before the music begins to crescendo and our apparently sole survivor of a mysterious disaster has a brutal encounter with those he stumbles upon.

4. Apocalypse Now (1979)

Whats happening?

A hallucinogenic, drug and alcohol fueled vision of a blurred room with a disorientated soldier overlapping a napalm attack on the Vietnam jungle backed by the hallucinogenic, drug and alcohol fueled lyrics of The Doors.

Whys it good?

The End by The Doors is one of the strangest, greatest alternative rock tunes of all time, and when combined with Martin Sheen’s reckless, dazed performance and the sight of America destroying a country many argue they had no right to be in it creates the essential curtain opening into a suitably uncompromising experience.

3. Magnolia (1999)

Whats happening?

A narrator tells of stories about chance and coincidence, each laced with black humor and irony, while Aimee Mann’s melancholic version of One plays in the background.

Whys it good?

Similarly themed circumstances traversing through time, sweeping camera movement, rapid editing and an Aimee Mann song; this opening scene is good enough to hold the attention of any viewer for 3 hours in itself, but through also introducing each of our broken, world-weary characters it instead perfectly introduces one of the finest films of the past 20 years.

2. Watchmen (2009)

Whats happening?

A man, later revealed to be masked crime-fighter The Comedian, fights a home invader who in a balletic fashion easily defeats him, leading to the above image…

The camera zooms in on the striking yellow of The Comedian’s badge, transitioning into a simply stunning opening credits sequence which ingeniously rewrites the good and bad of American history.

Whys it good?

Zach Snyder faced a monumental challenge in translating the mammoth tome of Watchmen to the screen, and it’s fair to say that most thought he’d be unable to pull it off. Straight away though, we lay witness to the perfect casting decision made in Jeffrey Dean Morgan and the incredible production values and our tensions cease, and the phenomenal way in which he introduces an unfamiliar audience with a vastly different Western world then instigates an unbridled optimism.

When it comes to how much can be accomplished in the editing room, the times they are a changing indeed.

1. Blue Velvet (1986)

Whats happening?

A sunny view of a peaceful All-American town turns dark when an elderly man has a heart-attack and the camera starts burrowing into the ground uncovering the critters that call the darkness home. It’s not nearly as traumatizing as it sounds, possibly because it takes a moment to realize exactly what just happened in all the dreamlike splendor, but it’s David Lynch, so you know it’s only gonna get weirder…

Whys it good?

It represents the underlining theme, or “idea” as he would say, in Lynch’s hugely controversial masterpiece wonderfully, with the audience literally being taken below the earth into the realm of it’s ugly inhabitants, while an idealistic world continues in the sunshine above.