The 10 most brutal kills inflicted by Arnold Schwarzenegger
As befitting his status as one of cinema’s all-time greatest action heroes, Arnold Schwarzenegger has left an untold trail of devastation in his wake while gaining that reputation.
The hulking and thick-accented Austrian racked up a sky-high body count while playing average American everymen with names like John Kruger, Adam Gibson, Ray Owens, and Gordon Brewer, always finding time for a one-liner in the aftermath of committing murder.
It became second nature for Schwarzenegger to mow down reams of faceless enemies with various forms of firearms, but his most brutal acts of cinematic savagery came when he didn’t have a gun to hand.
He’s used some seriously unique and inventive methods with which to eradicate the lives of others, but nothing can touch the following ten in terms of their sheer barbarity.
10 brutal Arnold Schwarzenegger kills:
10. “Iced that guy” (Last Action Hero, John McTiernan, 1993)
Although it’s played entirely for laughs in Die Hard director John McTiernan’s unfairly-maligned blockbuster that did meta-comedy way before it was cool, the science behind a henchman being murdered by an errant ice cream cone makes it a harrowing way to die.
What makes it worse is that the person impaled by the high-speed wafer in the unfairly maligned blockbuster was Al Leong, the goon extraordinaire who appeared in such action classics as Big Trouble in Little China, Lethal Weapon, and Die Hard. It’s all caused by Schwarzenegger’s Jack Slater and his pinpoint aim, but the optics are stomach-churning.
The main ingredients in a cone are pretty much flour and granulated sugar, and yet it was launched with such force and velocity that it gained enough speed to embed itself directly into the back of a human skull, yielding instantaneous death upon impact. It’s the stuff of nightmares and enough to swear anyone off dessert forever.
9. “I lied” (Commando, Mark L. Lester, 1985)
David Patrick Kelly’s Sully got exactly what he deserved on account of being a snivelling little weasel, but the fact he operated under the assumption Schwarzenegger’s John Matrix was a man of his word makes his death a brutal one in the cheese-laded action movie favourite.
His diminutive dimensions mean he’s got even further to fall than a regular-sized person, too, and those jagged rocks looming ominously below would ensure that scratching and scraping would follow his body bouncing into the turf.
Nowhere near the last person to be killed despite Matrix’s assertions otherwise, the last thing going through Sully’s head before it became a pulpy mess would be his disappointment at being lied to, making his demise even worse.
8. “That hit the spot” (The Running Man, Paul Michael Glaser, 1987)
If there’s one way to nonchalantly send a vainglorious, self-satisfied, and egotistical television personality to their death, then strapping them into a rocket-powered sledge and propelling them through a billboard bearing their own face in a Stephen King adaptation is a hell of a way to go about it.
Richard Dawson’s Damon Killian gets a little too confident in the belief Schwarzenegger’s Ben Richards will never make it out of the titular gameshow alive, which comes back to bite him after he gets given a taste of his own medicine.
Instead of his life flashing before his eyes, the villainous Killian would instead be left immobilised as his own smug-looking face hurtles closer and closer into view, which is almost as ignominious as the subsequent fireball that reduced him to smouldering and charred remains.
7. “Screw you” (Total Recall, Paul Verhoeven, 1990)
Regardless of whether he had four or five kids, the duplicitous nature of Mel Johnson Jr’s Benny saw him deservedly come out on the losing side when he tried to engage in a contest of figurative dick-measuring with Schwarzenegger’s Douglas Quaid in Paul Verhoeven‘s Total Recall.
Sure, Benny might be feeling pretty comfortable and sure of himself within a massive drilling machine capable of boring holes through the very core of Mars, but he failed to account for the sheer majestic power of the hero’s bulging biceps.
Schwarzenegger’s drill is significantly smaller, but it still makes mincemeat of Benny’s innards when he drives it through the exterior of his mode of transport, turning his internal organs into a fine paste in the process.
6. “You’re fired” (True Lies, James Cameron, 1994)
The most purely entertaining film of James Cameron‘s career, True Lies played in a reality so heightened that it was remarkable nobody took the time to stop and wink at the camera, which is intended as the highest possible compliment for the bombastic classic.
Having commandeered a fighter jet to rescue his daughter from the clutches of a terrorist as one does, a little manoeuvring ends with Art Malik’s Salim Abu Aziz dangling precariously from the edge of a missile.
As if being trapped with nowhere left to run while attached to live ammunition wasn’t enough, Schwarzenegger’s Harry Tasker gleefully fires the Malik-assisted missile at an enemy helicopter to explode them in a blaze of twisted metal and body parts, which inevitably involves a lengthy descent to the ground below for additional carnage.
5. “Let off some steam, Bennett” (Commando, Mark L. Lester, 1985)
There’s only one way to deal with an Australian bad guy with a porn star moustache and a chainmail vest – which is obviously using brute strength to throw a pipe through their entire body.
Spending more than a second thinking about the physics makes uncomfortable reading for Vernon Wells’ Bennett, even if it’s supposed to be enjoyed as the gloriously over-the-top death scene that it is.
With the pipe almost welding him onto the wall, how was his body removed? Was part of his torso still caught in the middle of the pipe like the last Pringle left in the can, or was it pulled out to cause the offending area to spill out onto the floor in the aftermath? Either way, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
4. “See you at the party, Richter” (Total Recall, Paul Verhoeven, 1990)
What’s worse than freefalling hundreds of feet to splatter at the bottom of a Martian mineshaft in a sci-fi movie? As Michael Ironside’s Richter was forced to discover, doing exactly that, except with no arms.
Having been a thorn in the side of Douglas Quaid since the beginning, the circumstances of his death add insult to injury by forcibly separating him from 50% of his limbs and then allowing him to disappear into the distance, with salt being rubbed into the wound by the realisation he wouldn’t be going to the party after all.
There are many memorable practical effects peppered throughout Total Recall, but the sound design deserves just as much credit, with Richter’s DIY arm removal creating a sonorously squelchy crunch.
3. “Nice night for a walk” (The Terminator, James Cameron, 1984)
Making fun of a naked Austrian man who looks like a kilt sock stuffed full of golf balls is a silly move, regardless of the circumstances, and one that resulted in a punch through the chest cavity in The Terminator.
It’s not simply enough for the futuristic cyborg to plunge its fist directly into the warm and gooey innards of its victim, though, because said victim then has to be lifted clean into the air while letting out howls of anguish, as if it wasn’t brutal enough.
Bonus points go to Bill Paxton, who was already on his way to becoming the first person to ever be killed on-screen by a Terminator, Xenomorph, and Predator, even if he gets off lightly after being tossed backwards and presumably killed on impact.
2. Third time’s the charm (Conan the Barbarian, John Milius, 1982)
Movies tend to make decapitation a fairly straightforward process, which, more often than not, requires only one swift stroke of a blade to remove a head cleanly from its shoulders.
In terrible news for James Earl Jones’ Thulsa Doom, then, it took Schwarzenegger’s title hero three attempts to complete his mission of claiming the head of his nemesis, with geysers of blood being sprayed everywhere in the meantime.
The first cut clearly severs an artery based on the claret send cascading across the screen, the second doesn’t quite finish the job, but the third sends Thulsa Doom’s lifeless body on its merry way, while Conan holds onto the head that’s wearing a very pained expression indeed.
1. “He had to split” (The Running Man, Paul Michael Glaser, 1987)
It may not be the most memorable or iconic of kills credited to Schwarzenegger on-screen, but in terms of its sheer brutality, it’s hard to look beyond The Running Man dispatching of Gus Rethwisch’s Buzzsaw in terms that’ll make anyone cross their legs and wince, and not just those watching the movie’s in-house TV show.
Although the camera cuts away – to show the grimaces of the gathered masses, in fairness – the implication and upwards trajectory of the blood splatter makes it perfectly clear that this poor unfortunate fellow has taken a chainsaw to the nether regions and is being cleaved upwards from there.
Even thinking about it sends shivers down the spine, and it’s within reason to assume the actor’s Ben Richards carried on all the way through to the crown of Buzzsaw’s head, otherwise, his “he had to split” quip makes decidedly less sense.
