Jim Morrison intones that phrase more than sings it, opens the song with it: "This is the end--" As the three guitar notes ascend, the jungle silently explodes in vicious red, and then Morrison finishes the line: "--beautiful friend." It's hypnotic, awful, and compelling simultaneously. Other than the distorted chopper blades, it's the first sound you hear in Apocalypse: Now, a dead rock star singing, "This is the end."

As Willard returns down the Mekong 2.5 hours later, the film closes with Col. Kurtz's hoarse whisper in his mind: "the horror, the horror."

No film I've ever seen has been more perfectly bookended with sounds.