Looking for Mr Goodbar - made Steven King's wife race for the bathroom, was seriously disturbing and weirdly beautiful. John Frankenheimer's criminally underrated FRENCH CONNECTION II: ends with the climax of the film, then straight to black.
The ending at the Statue of Liberty in Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942), which he reworked once or twice in later films. The bad guy, Norman Lloyd, shows up in TNG: The Chase as one of Picard's old professors.
I forgot to mention one of my favorite films, The Truman Show The last shot is one of the most hilarious yet thoughtful moments in the film. It touches both on the short attention span of modern culture, and also the ease at which the audience will move onto the next big thing once something or some celebrity no longer has their attention. "Where's the TV Guide?" Brilliant. And a little twisted, like the rest of the film...
THE EXORCIST The Before I Started Fucking With All My Old Movies version, with the priest eschewing the steps.
Planet of the Apes is the first ending that came to mind. Also, the ending of The Third Man, where the girl walks past Joseph Cotten without even looking at him. And, oh, the final sequence of Dr. Strangelove, with "We'll Meet Again" playing over a montage of mushroom clouds.
BENEATH The Planet of the Apes has the alltime greatest movie ending. And re: The Omega Man...not only the final shot, but the rest of humanity can only be saved by his blood. Damn I love that movie. edit: Throw in Soylent Green's ending, and GD Heston..you the man!!
Also an evocative image . . . although apparently not as memorable. (I'd forgotten about that, too.) Another good one: The Abominable Dr. Phibes, in which he replaces his own blood with embalming fluid while "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" plays ironically on the soundtrack. Also: the ending of Polanski's Fearless Vampire Killers, as a horse-drawn sleigh makes its way across a snowy Transyvanian landscape, carrying the curse of the vampire to the world beyond . . . .
How the hell has no one mentioned...? "Hey Doc you better back up, we don't have road to get up to 88." "Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads." and one my favourite endings to a movie- "Nice shooting son, what's your name?" "Murphy."
There's the rumor about the 'real' final scene of X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes... Spoiler: film "I CAN STILL SEE!!!"
While it is a bit more than the last shot, the ending of The Adventures Of Baron Munchhausen is possibly my favorite ending to a movie. There is also the end of Repo Man where the credits roll down instead of up.
Can't believe I forgot this one: the ending of The Time Travelers (1964): [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-YLczxeyGU[/yt] The opening credits of THX 1138 do the same thing.
Well it's lucky they fished the bottle of serum Neville rescued out of the fountain really But yeah, if for no other reason than those three films I love Heston.
Except there's a fade from Norman's face to the car, so it sort of is nonetheless... Here's one of my favorites... a free cookie to the first person to name it!
That's from Zodiac, a favorite of mine. That guy (Jimmi Simpson) in the pic went to my high school (Hackettstown, NJ) too. I knew him when he wasn't a celebrity!
^Fantastic film. Still one of my favorite of the last ten years. The last shots of "Contact" and "Ran" are pretty damned great.
Just thinking of music tied with the shot, the ending to Full Metal Jacket is quite memorable and sums up the themes of the movie quite well. However, I tend to disagree with the premise since there are great movies without memorable endings and bad movies with memorable endings (and everything in between).