Slashers Prefer Blondes

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    "Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints."
    —Alfred Hitchcock

    We all know there are a large amount of tropes revolving around characters who happen to be blonde. But what about when you have the Dumb Blonde, Evil Blonde, Innocent Blonde, or Lovable Blonde in a slasher movie setting. It's almost inevitable that the blonde is going to get it. There may be a number of reasons for this but you're almost guaranteed to have a blonde getting killed off in contrast to a raven-haired Final Girl. Whether she's the Final Girl's best friend or the Alpha Bitch, her chances of survival aren't high. And God help the blonde if her best friend is Jamie Lee Curtis. This may be unintentional by the filmmakers but the blondes tend to get really elaborate deaths. As for blond males, their death rates in horror films can be attributed to a combination of other tropes.

    If a blonde character is the one to defeat the evil she must be a Power Blonde. Although not every Power Blonde, is up against a murder.

    Note that this trope only applies to horror films. It doesn't count if a blonde character happens to die in another genre. As a death trope, be aware of Spoilers!

    Examples of Slashers Prefer Blondes include:

    Played Straight

    Film - Live Action

    • The original teen slasher film Halloween has both blonde Judith (in the opening) and Laurie's wild friend Lynda get offed. In the sequels, none of the blonde characters survive apart from Molly in H20.
    • Tina from A Nightmare on Elm Street. The first of Freddy's victims in the movie.
    • Helen from I Know What You Did Last Summer. Gets a really elaborate chase scene as well.
    • Invoked unknowingly (maybe) by Rose McGowan for Scream where she dyed her brown hair blonde in order to contrast with brunette Neve Campbell. Strangely, this is one trope the film doesn't lampshade. Drew Barrymore also wore a blonde wig for her part in the film.
      • Other blondes who get offed in the sequels include CC from 2, Christine and Sarah from 3, and Kirby from 4.
    • Mitchy from Terror Train.
    • Wendy from the original Prom Night, one of the instances in which the Alpha Bitch gets offed.
    • Played straight in the film adaptation of The Ruins, where blonde Stacy dies and brunette Amy survives. In the book, Amy was killed off first and Stacy was the last to die by killing herself.
    • Played straight in Psycho where the fair-haired Marion is killed off halfway into the film. Her blonde sister survives though.
    • Sam from Devils Prey, just after subverting Asshole Victim.
    • Alice from Friday the 13 th is one of the rare subversions and one of the few Final Girls that are blonde. She gets killed off in the sequel but the Final Girl of that film is also blonde.
    • A delayed subversion comes in Hitcher In The Dark where Mark kidnaps a hot blonde teenage girl. Then he dyes her hair brown while she's asleep...
    • The studio tried to enforce this for Leprechaun when they wanted Jennifer Aniston to bleach her hair blonde. The director refused.
    • Clear in Final Destination. In the sequel, she has blonde hair and gets killed.
    • In Brigham City the serial killer targets redheads. He's asked at the end why he killed a blonde. He replied that she was a redhead... when he was done with her.
    • Peeping Tom, an originator of the Slasher Film offs a blonde prostitute in the first ten minutes.
    • The Cabin in the Woods: At the beginning of the movie, Jules shows off her brand-new blonde dye job. She's the first to die when the slasher zombies show up.

    Live Action TV

    • The Charmed episode "Chick Flick", which is an indecisive parody of horror films, features a scene from an original slasher "My Axe Husband" where the killer is, indeed, chasing a blonde victim.
    • Serial killer Howard Epps from Bones targeted young, attractive blonde women exclusively. His other victims were targeted to send a message, for 'necessity', or in the case of Brennan, exclusively for the reason that she defied his normal MO: a strong, smart, self-assured brunette who he was unable to kill. None of the blondes he personally attacked survived.

    Video Games

    • Silent Hill 2: James (pulled into the town because of guilt, has various horrible things happen to him, and can end the game Driven to Suicide), Maria (a...something that looks a lot like James' late wife and constantly being killed by Pyramid Head), and Eddie (goes homicidally insane and is killed by James) are all blonde.

    Lampshade Hangings

    Live-Action TV

    • Joss Whedon stated that he created Buffy the Vampire Slayer to exist as an inversion of the helpless blonde who always gets killed in horror movies. As such, Buffy's appearance was tweaked in the second season so that she would look like a Valley Girl and make the inversion even more pronounced.
      • The series began with Darla being a subversion as it looked like she was going to get killed, but instead she turned out to be a vampire who killed the boy she was with.
    • In the episode of All Grown Up! "Curse of Reptar" that acts as an Affectionate Parody of horror films, Angelica (blonde) says "it's always the blonde girl with the perfectly bouncy hair that stays home and gets killed".
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