Charleston Blue
It would be really helpful if people mention the movie the character is from and the circumstances rather than just posting names.
“Come Back Charleston Blue” with Godfrey Cambridge. Haven’t seen it in a long time. I can’t vouch for the technicals.
Victoria Regina Phibes, deceased wife of The Abominable Dr. Phibes, is the motive for all the anti-hero’s actions, and is present throughout that 1971 UK horror film (as an embalmed corpse, shown at the end).
If the topic is ‘corpses present in the story and important in it,’ then all the plots in which the mystery of an off-camera death is solved should be disallowed–allowing those would inflate the list to thousands of movies.
I would guess that any finished list of movies-with-corpses-important-to-the-plot would lean heavily towards the camp, cult, and horror genres (and their overlaps). We humans tend to be a bit squeamish about corpses, and don’t tend to make or patronize ‘serious’ films in which they are major on-screen elements.
The late Dr. Abner Ravenwood’s earlier archeological research (to say nothing of his charming, spunky daughter Marion) is pretty important in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Sir Charles Baskerville in the Hound of the Same Name is dead before the story begins. Many TV and movie versions, of course, show his final moments, so I don’t know if that counts.
See post 57.
I don’t remember if he was shown alive in the movie, but otherwise I submit
Grand Theft Parsons
Based on one of the best real-life stories involving body snatching…
But I believe he is dead for the entirety of the sequel, Weekend At Bernie’s 2.
We are never shown him in the sequels because he was never in them and had nothing to do with them. Purely marketing to get people to go see the movies. Whereas with Topper, they were in the sequels/tv series, just always as ghosts.