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4 hours ago
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Thanks to the unprecedented critical and commercial success of The Substance, horror is having a rare moment of recognition. In fact, you’d be willing to bet that some of Hollywood’s biggest names are currently throwing themselves at all sorts of elevated horror projects just to get in on the action. However, if they are, it might be worth double checking what their character’s name is. Because if it happens to be David, those poor saps will be lucky to make it past the first act.
Every now and again a study will fall into our inboxes, bankrolled by an unlikely source, that sheds some light on an area of film so esoteric that nobody has given it a moment’s thought until now. With that in mind, it is my pleasure to announce that Funeral Guide – a price comparison engine for end-of-life ceremonies – has commissioned a study to see which names are most likely to be killed off early in horror movies. This was achieved by combing through IMDb’s top 100 horrors, and seeing which characters didn’t make it to the end credits. As such, actors are not advised to star in anything where their character is called David, Holly or Dick, because these names are practically a death sentence.
We’ll begin with David. Dylan Moran’s character in Shaun of the Dead is called David, and you will remember that he ends up being torn apart by zombies midway through the film, as punishment for being so insufferable. Similarly, in The Lost Boys Kiefer Sutherland plays David, and he winds up fatally impaled on a decorative set of antlers.
If anything, Hollys fare even worse. There is a Holly in The Descent who never really stood a chance, given that she was a newcomer to the group of friends who form the main cast. When she died (throat bitten out by a monster, for those of you keeping score), it was always a matter of when and not if. Even worse, Hollys are so doomed that a dead Holly didn’t even make it into Psycho. To see her death, you actually have to watch the 1990 telefilm Psycho prequel Psycho IV: The Beginning, because she has the rare honour of being the first person who Norman Bates kills while dressed as his dead mother. Also at this point you might be wondering why this survey included Psycho IV: The Beginning as one of the highest rated horror movies on IMDb, to which I say: “Shh you’re overthinking it.”
Then there are Dicks, such as Dick Baxter in The Fog (a fisherman who gets killed by some fog) and Dick Hallorann from The Shining (makes a long and complicated cross-country journey and gets murdered almost immediately upon arrival). This is basically common sense at this point, but don’t be called Dick.
While this is all very interesting, it’s also worth pointing out that being a horror David, Dick or Holly isn’t necessarily as bad as it sounds. The main character in An American Werewolf in London is called David, for instance. Does he die? Sure he does, but only right at the very end of the film, after getting a ton of screen time. And in 1984’s The Devil’s Gift – a movie weirdly similar to this year’s The Monkey – the main character is called David and he only might die, after the demon-possessed monkey doll blows up his house while he’s still inside. But do we see him die? No, and that has to count for something.
Meanwhile, there’s a Holly in Smile, who survives the film (but only after the monster took her form to freak out another character in a nutso jump-scare), so that’s worth clinging on to. Sadly, however, there are few if any surviving horror Dicks. The study also points out that priests whose credited character name begins with the word Father are also unlikely to survive to the end of a horror movie, but that’s hardly surprising. Bumping off priests is horror’s bread and butter, and quite frankly any actor who takes on a role like this and is thinking otherwise deserves everything they get.
But film-makers, this is all in your hands. All it would take is for you to make a horror movie where there’s a David, a Dick and a Holly, and they don’t get stabbed by antlers or have their throats bitten off by monsters or are blown up by a monkey or eaten by some fog, and suddenly the trend is reversed. The power is in your hands.
