A ripping good ending.

I hate easy, painless deaths. Not for myself and most people, mind you. But for villains in the movies. Nothing annoys me more than watching a movie where there is a vindictive, sadistic villain who performs unspeakable crimes against the hero and anyone else who comes across his path. Then during the denouement, he is killed by the hero by any number of plot devices and and dies instantly without ever suffering for more than a second. Why do they do that? A villain should know that he's about to die. It should be slow and painful and he should be fully aware that the hero has won and all his evil is being punished and there is no escape from his (or her) fate. An example of a good death is in the Elmore Leonard film 52 Pick-up (1986) when the evil character played by John Glover is locked in a car which he knows is soon to explode. He is terrified and unable to escape the vehicle. Boom. Great death. Another classic horrifying death is in my favorite Alfred Hitchcock film Saboteur (1942). In this case our villain, Fry, played by Norman Lloyd has slipped while trying to kill our hero Robert Cummings and is is dangling from the top of the Statue of Liberty. Our noble hero is foolishly trying to rescue him by tightly grasping his jacket sleeve. But he can see and so can our villain that the stitches are slowly ripping apart and soon Fry will be falling to his death to the viewers delight and the horror of tourists below. Now that's how villains should meet their death, terrified and fully aware. I felt the need to write this post today after watching a new film in which the despicable hero had an annoying instant death. What was the film? Sorry, that would be a spoiler.