Damsel in distress getting killed

I may not remember correctly, but in the Lovecraft inspired Dagon, the heroine Barbara (Raquel Merono): as I recall, is sliced by Uxia and then dangled over a pit as a sacrifice to Dagon. Just as it looks like we will see the last minute rescue cliché, things go very badly for Barbara. This is also unique in that Barbara isn’t just some damsel in the body count, but the main romantic interest.The film is also notable for featuring Macarena Gomez as possibly the sexiest serving of calamari ever to appear on film.

She really wasn’t the heroine–she was the heroine’s younger sister, so though she was a damsel in distress, she was one who barely had 6 lines in the whole movie.

The one I thought of was the Four Musketeers, from back in the '70s. Constance (played by Raquel Welsh) is killed by Milady DeWinter. As I recall it, the heros were fighting their way to her, and arrived just barely not in time to save her. But I haven’t seen the movie in years (possibly decades) so I may be remembering it wrong.

Are the spoiler boxes necessary? I have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen in, say, Ronin even if I hadn’t seen it, based on the title of the thread, no?

Strange that there would be mention of Goldfinger and not mention of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which Blofeld just drives by and shoots her at the end of the movie.

Another one: El Mariachi.

The Host has several examples of rescues (by ordinary people) that go wrong.

When a mutant sea creature comes on shore, grabs a little girl, her entire quirky family goes to rescue her even though authorities are convinced she must be dead. There is a huge, climactic showdown – even the army runs away – but the family, including the captive girl who is protecting the younger boy, (and one homeless guy) stand their ground, fighting and defeating the monster. The family even pulls the girl out of the monsters mouth. But after all of this, the whole point of the movie is to rescue her), she was smothered in the monster’s gullet (or otherwise succumbed to injuries.)

King Lear
<trite and inaccurate summary>

… lots of play…

The villain (Edmund), having won the battle, orders that the damsel (Cordelia) be put to death along with Lear (her father).

The hero (Edgar) appears, fights Edmund and kills him.

Despite Edgar’s victory (and Edmund’s deathbed reprieve) Lear appears on stage with Cordelia’s lifeless body.

</trite and inaccurate summary>

In the very first week of the TV show Batman the Riddler’s moll, played by Jill St. John, disguised herself as Robin and gained entrance to the Bat Cave. To escape Batman, she started climbing up the Bat nuclear reactor. As Batman was trying to save her, she slipped and fell in.

I think that may have been the one and only time someone actually died on the show.

Well, in the Ronin example, the situation doesn’t arise until much later in the movie, involving some characters who aren’t introduced in the first half, and some characters from the opening who have now switched sides.

If you count the 1966 Batman movie, those henchmen were dehydrated and the powders were mixed together. I don’t think they ever recovered from that.

This is slightly different…

Since she’s committing suicide by locking herself in that elevator cage - he tries to save her from it but fails.

Bat Nuclear Reactor? Jesus Christ, wouldn’t the Bat Electric Meter Shunt be a little more practical?

Spiderman’s a good one.

How about the anime movie Metropolis?

I know, I know, it’s still bad science, and I’m being a colossal nitpicker, but…

It always seemed obvious to me that Superman was going back in time, not the earth.
For some reason, most people seem to think that’s he’s turning earth back in time (from orbit?) and that turns back time, which makes even less sense!

Several of the women in both The Poseidon Adventure and the recent remake Poseidon, including a cute one and some with actual dialogue, snuff it.

Slight nitpick: the dehydrated henchmen’s powders weren’t mixed together, it was that of the UN diplomats (Who did recover. Mostly.).

The henchmen’s fate was a little more grisly…after sneaking their powder-vials into the Batcave, the Penguin rehydrates them to attack Batman.

Unfortunately, instead of regular water, he accidently used heavy water (from said Bat Atomic-Pile) to rehydrate them. When they got into the brawl, they vaporized when Batman & Robin laid a hand on 'em.

So, yeah…Adam West’s Batman killed about half a dozen people, on camera.

I don’t think you’re going to find many instances of damsels killed during or just prior to rescues because that runs counter to the whole dramatic point of the rescue. In real life, damsels get killed all the time. Most entertainment are designed to give us all a little relief from grim reality, so the damsel tends to get rescued a lot so we can enjoy the vicarious pleasure of seeing the damsel rescued.

There IS a species of damsel who gets killed regularly, they’re what I’d call “red shirt” damsels and they occur most often in horror movies and in cop shows where the perp is a serial killer.

In horror movies, the red shirt damsel is generally a not-so-well developed character who undergoes whatever horrible experience(s) the horror movie offers so the audience will be horrified as the (hopefully) well-developed character of the female lead finds herself increasingly likely to undergo said horrible experience, whether it’s being eaten by a giant snake/spider/whatever or being put in the pit with the pendulum.

In cop shows with serial killers, there’s almost always a damsel, generally a not well developed character, killed early on by the serial killer so as to establish the urgency of the problem when the main damsel is captured by the serial killer.

I have seen some cop shows, such as CSI or LawnOrder, where the serial killer offs several red shirt damsels prior to capturing the main damsel, and I’m pretty sure that in one or two cases rescue was imminent just before the second or third red shirt damsel was killed, but I can’t remember offhand which episodes they’d be. There have been so many of them and they’ve been such a blur.

The problem for red shirt damsels in horror movies and cop shows with regard to the OP’s scenario is that rescue is rarely imminent for them – their dramatic purpose is to establish how horrible the main damsel’s fate will be if she isn’t rescued, and there’s no need to mount a dramatic rescue attempt to do that.

The most doomed damsel both in terms of certainty of death and its horrificness, is any damsel who gets involved in a story where the bad guys or the protagonist and the bad guy have a homosexual or quasi-homosexual relationship.

Examples would include Funny Games, Everybody Loves Sunshine, and as already mentioned in this thread, The Hitcher. In all three cases, the damsels, and they’re the main damsels, get involved with guys (not romantically in the case of Funny Games, but still) who have some kind of gay thing going on and wind up beaten, raped and/or horifically killed by the bad guys, because even though she’s the main damsel, she’s kind of a third wheel, the real story is about the two guys. (OK, in Funny Games the real story is the meta-story, but the principle still stands.)

Now, there’s a kind of evolving branch of the slasher flick which consists of little more than torturing the damsel. I’m talking about films like Hostel II and Captivity and I Know Who Killed Me. I’m not sure what the dynamic there is in dramatic terms – I’m not sure one has evolved yet. But I seem to recall that one of the damsels in Hostel II ALMOST makes an escape, so she may fill your bill if escapes count as well as rescue. I’m somewhat hampered in this because I haven’t actually seen any of them.

Also, if damsels refusing rescue fills the bill, I think there’s a Christian epic or two from way back when where a Christian slavegirl damsel refuses rescue from certain death in the arena in order to be burned alive/eaten by lions, etc. with her Christian buddies. I’m thinking “Sign of the Cross” might be one of them.

Hey! My “would you stay or go?” Poseidon thread still exists :slight_smile: I guess that movie(s) counts if by attempted rescue we include CPR.

Since I see this thread is still alive can someone spoil Dragon Slayer and explain to me why the princess runs into the cave to get eaten by dragons. I’m sure it’s because she beleieves she must because of some curse or law or tradition hooey; but is she doing this as a hero or a nut? Meaning, was she supposed to die because something really bad was really going to happen if she didn’t sacrifice herself. Or was she just misguided, and probably so stupid that she deserves to be dragon food?

Sure. If (and I think I have the essentials down) I recall correctly:

[spoiler]It’s partly heroism and partly guilty. The locals sacrifice damsels to the dragons to appease them, damsels are selected by a lottery that includes every virgin of age in the kingdom, including members of the royal family. Many commoners believe the lottery is rigged so that royals are never selected, since royals are never selected. Turns out it WAS rigged. Shortly after the king is confronted with this, his daughter is selected by the lottery.

She believes in the lottery and sacrifices herself on behalf of her kingdom, deliberately, but you gotta believe there was some guilt in there.[/spoiler]

One minor point: The daughter replaced every tile in the bag with hundreds of tiles that had her name on it. So she deliberately made herself be the next sacrifice.

Theres a well-known movie called “pet semetary” spelled something like that. It’s gruesome and the girl dies eventually. I can tell you no further details unless you want me to ruin the plot. Great movie. Stephen King wrote the book as the original for the piece of art.