Beautiful Blonde Actresses Die Horribly

Beautiful blonde actresses don't always have more fun, as Fay Wray did in "King Kong." Of course, Ms. Wray survived her abduction by an amorous gorilla. Many of the sultry blondes we know and love met gruesome fates...some, over and over again. Here is a tribute to some of my favorite blonde actresses and their fatal performances.

Janet Leigh: Knifed in the shower by Norman Bates. She was nude and vulnerable. Perhaps "Psycho" was a morality tale as Ms. Leigh's character had just stolen a lot of cash from her employer.

Taaffe O'Connel: In 1981's "Galaxy of Terror," Ms. O'Connel portrays space-babe Dameia. She'll be stripped, slimed, and brutally raped by a giant maggot. Oh what a fate...the film almost received an X rating as the censors detected that Dameia actually enjoyed the experience.  Wait...there's more. As a sultry nurse in white in 1980's "New Year's Evil," she is a frisky angel-in-white. When she decides to have pre-marital sex with the slasher...she is knifed several times...hence her nifty white uniformis stained blood red.

P.J. Soles: A good friend of Laurie Strode in "Halloween," she probably should have picked her friends better. Michael Myers will off her on Halloween night in that classic. The unfortunate beauty would be strangled by a telephone cord (the days before cell phones).

Kristi Angus: The sultry bikini babe in 2006's "Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep," is grabbed by a giant squid, pulled overboard, and eaten by that beast. So sad. However, as Adrienne in "Jason X," she is a med student on board a spaceship, who will die one of the most memorable deaths in horror film history. She will have her head frozen as Jason dips it into a vat of liquid nitrogen, and then shattered when Jason slams it against the floor. No longer a pretty face.

Barbara Crampton: Oh so many horrible deaths by this scream-queen. In "Re-Animator," she is strangled by the severed arm of a corpse. In "Chopping Mall," she has her head blown off by the mall-security-system-run-amok. It was such a beautiful head, too.

Vanessa Angel: Okay...she did have it coming, but she was such a sultry character, we are still sad. The laboratory produced Saber-tooth tiger rips her to shreds in 2002's "Sabretooth."

Why do blondes die so horribly in these horror films? Actually, brunettes die just as horribly, and that will be the subject for a future blog posting. What are some of your favorite ill-fated blonde actresses/characters. Please let me know by comment or tweet to me @cjzisi.