Beyond Atlantis, with its final scene of all the characters seeming to spontaneously lose their minds and start laughing, joins a select group of movies featured on the show whose very final seconds contains some completely random, bizarre thing that defies all explanation.
Others that come to mind:
Danger Death Ray: A baffling editing error where the shot is supposed to be Bart Fargo’s watch landing in the water after he tosses it, but the person’s hand that lightly drops it in is just left in the final version.
The Deadly Bees: The goofy smiling guy who leaves the riffers wondering “Is there a credit for Guy at the End?” Apparently he’s actually one of the cops from the opening scene who’s now arrived too late after everything was wrapped up, but that’s not clear at all from the way the scene is presented.
Horrors of Spider Island: The film just randomly cuts to black in the middle of a conversation. Tom has the perfect reaction: “So you want to end your movie that way, huh? All right, up yours. We’re out of here.”
I’ve mentioned it before but there’s a martial arts film called Firefist of Incredible Dragon that is my favourite terrible movie and which has a truly bizarre ending. At the very end a man and woman are walking away from the bad guy and the cave her sister is buried in before she turns and reaches out in distress. The film then freezes as kung fu films often do - except it isn’t a freeze-frame as the snow around her is still falling and the mist is rolling across. It’s like a Police Squad ending gag and really quite surreal as they hold this for a little bit before actually freezing. Then it fades to a beating heart that e x p l o d e s and the film freezes on that for another 30 or so seconds while the music swells before a final red screen that simply says “end.”
Attack of the Giant Leeches doesn’t have a bizarre ending as much as no ending at all. Not even Crow can figure it out. Everyone just leaves the closing shot of the lake - the epitome of all anti-climaxes.
Riffed or unriffed, it’s the most insane movie ending ever.
Here’s what happens at the end of The Apple:
God, in a white tuxedo and in the guise of Mr Topps, (the nemesis of Satan On Earth Mr. Boogaloo), parks his solid gold Rolls-Royce in the sky and walks down to lead all the hippies back up into heaven.
And this isn’t really a spoiler, because nothing… NOTHING… can prepare you for that ending.
How about The Alien Dead, where the reporter and a woman seem to escape from the hillbilly zombies in a boat.
They’re both unconscious as they float by the sheriff, who has no interest in the boat at all.
Final shot: the zombies are still there, setting up a sequel where (I suppose), the zombies take over the town but are defeated by themselves.
The Incredible Melting Man: Steve kills a bunch of people for some reason and then melts into a puddle that gets cleaned up and tossed into a barrel.
Dark Star: After blowing up numerous unstable stars a bomb fails to detach and the ship, Dark Star, is destroyed. Remaining crew member grabs a piece of wreckage and surfs towards a nearby planet.
The Turning pissed me off, because it just… stopped. Like they were missing the last 15 minutes of the movie stopped.
I was ESPECIALLY disappointed, because I loved the original source novel The Turn of the Screw SO MUCH… and the rest of the film was just fine and serviceable, but the lack of ending just… KILLED it for me.