5 Famous Movies That Almost Had Crazy Dark Endings

5 Get Out Almost Ended On A Realistically Depressing Note

Oscar-winning horror hit Get Out ends with our hero Chris battling his girlfriend Rose and her family to escape their literal cottage industry of racist brain transplants. They've been luring black people in to auction off their bodies to their rich friends. As Chris pins Rose down, the flashing red and blue lights of a police car appear.

While we expect that things are about to go full Night Of The Living Dead, the driver turns out not to be the bigoted cop we saw earlier, but rather Chris' TSA buddy Rod!

But it almost ended with ...

That fake-out with the squad car? It nearly wasn't a fake-out. The original ending found Chris being arrested.

Then, in the film's final moments, Rod would visit Chris, who's now in jail. But he's at peace with it all because he put an end to the evil body-snatching schemes, which apparently left behind no evidence whatsoever.

Then he's walked back to his cell before the credits roll.

Yikes. While this ending would have been perhaps more thematically true -- making a broader point about the unjust mass incarceration of black citizens in America -- it's a bummer of a way to end a thriller. Plus, Get Out was a fantasy, pulling in real-world themes but expressing them in genre tropes, meaning that it could end with a righteously happy ending, even if reality can't.

4 Deadpool Almost Tried To Kill Baby Hitler

Perhaps in a Machiavellian scheme hatched by the best boys and key grips of the world, all comic book movies now have scenes during and after their credits. Sometimes these are fun jokes. Sometimes they're teasers for the next movie. In the case of Deadpool 2, it was a time-travelling murder spree. After repairing Cable's flux capacitor doohickey, Deadpool travels back in time to save his girlfriend, meet Wolverine, and murder Ryan Reynolds before he can make Green Lantern -- though sadly too late to put a stop to National Lampoon's Van Wilder.

But it almost ended with ...

The "Super Duper Cut" home video release of the movie includes one additional scene in that credits montage. Deadpool creeps into an old-timey nursery ...

... and hovers above a bassinet occupied by one "A. Hitler."

Yup, the movie almost ended with an attempted baby murder -- the baby was Hitler, but still. Even the writers who crammed as many dick jokes and decapitations into two hours as possible thought that this was "a line we can't cross," adding that the scene was "kind of weird to watch." So the scene was removed from the theatrical version, but included for the enjoyment of the soulless heathens who watch movies at home.

If you didn't grow up in the 1980s, you might not know what the hell Mac And Me is. After the wild success of E.T., Hollywood decided to make another alien movie, only this time about a small boy befriending an extraterrestrial who looks like Yoda's meth-addicted brother-in-law.

The film featured an extended musical number at a McDonald's -- even more unrealistic than the magical alien creature is the glaring lack of stomach cramps and anal leakage.

At the end, Mac is reunited with his disturbingly genital-less family, whose nude exploits soon attract the attention of the local authorities.

This prompts a shootout, and consequently an explosion which injures our young wheelchair-bound hero, Eric.

Luckily, Mac has the ability to raise the dead. Yup, this was a glorified commercial to sell salted garbage food to children that concluded with aliens necromancing a kid.

But it almost ended with ...

If you thought that ending was dark, buckle up. Recently, Toronto film festival programmer Peter Kuplowsky obtained a rare Japanese copy of Mac And Me. It turns out that foreign markets were treated to an unsanitized ending in which Eric isn't merely injured in a fire, but straight up shot by a cop.

Eric takes off and is gunned down by one of the officers. Who's hungry for a Filet-O-Fish, huh?

Sadly, someone who witnessed this unbridled insanity suggested that it was perhaps a tad intense for a children's movie, so the U.S. version was modified (though apparently Japanese kids were expected to suck it up).

2 Beetlejuice Could Have Had Lydia Burn To Death

The classic Tim Burton romp Beetlejuice went through a lot of weird-ass drafts before arriving at the final version, some involving the titular ghoul as an evil pop singer with a demon dong. Surprisingly, the filmmakers still nearly stumbled into some depressingly ridiculous ideas. Take the ending. In the movie, the ghostly Maitlands patch things up with the Deetz family, and help raise their formerly gothy daughter Lydia.

But it almost ended with ...

Originally, the ending was less of Lydia acing science tests and dancing and more dying horribly in a fire. According to producer Larry Wilson, the end found Winona Ryder's character burning to death, thus allowing her to hang out with the Maitlands for all eternity. Most insanely, this was supposed to be a happy ending. Thankfully, some friends suggested that having a teen achieving peace through a violent death might not be the best message to send.

In another scripted ending, Lydia is alive and hanging out with the Maitlands, but oddly, instead of sharing the house, her parents have moved back to New York City. It turns out that this is originally how they shot the scene, too, with Lydia's folks not upstairs, but rather lounging in a swank penthouse away from the horrors of ghosts and the even worse horrors of puberty.

While the idea of journeying inside the brain of a Hollywood actor frankly sounds like a Human Centipede-esque nightmare, writer Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze turned that premise into comic gold with the beloved Being John Malkovich. The movie ends with puppeteer Craig (John Cusack) being tricked into leaving Malkovich so a parade of senior citizens can enter as planned -- either out of some sort of mystical bid for immortality or because they're all super-big fans of Rounders.

But it almost ended with ...

If you thought the movie was out there, the finished product is a sip of Diet Coke compared to the Tony-Montana-sized pile of cocaine that is the first draft. For starters, we see Craig's former boss palling around with his boss, Mr. Flemmer. They're upset that Craig has disrupted their plans to enter Malkovich, and Flemmer reveals that he's ... the Devil?

This isn't a lie, this guy is literally Satan. The Prince of Darkness then helps a rival puppeteer challenge Craig to a puppeteering contest, and if he loses, he has to leave Malkovich for good. Satan succeeds and they take over Malkovich's body. So the movie ends with the Lucifer-controlled Malkovich enslaving the audience, who proclaim "Hail Malkovich, king of the damned."

Eventually, all of humanity is ruled by the Unholy Malkovich, who roams the streets just generally being a jerk. We also learn that there is a small group of rebels fighting back against Malkovich, including Craig's wife Lotte. The movie is minutes away from ending when she reveals that she's in love with her pet monkey.

Then, the very last shot pulls back to reveal that everyone was a puppet. It was essentially Stoned In A Dorm Room: The Movie.

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For more, check out 6 Mind-Blowing Alternate Endings That Change Everything and 6 Insane Twist Movie Endings You Never Got To See.

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