5 Amazing Ax Deaths in Honor of (T)ax Day
Dylan Gallagher
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What do you get when you take away the “T” from Tax Day? An egregious excuse for another list, this time celebrating legendary on-screen ax deaths!
When it comes to slasher movie weapons, there are plenty of flicks that cast their nets into weirder waters (see: the bizarrely pimped-out tire iron from Sorority Row), but there’s a reason filmmakers always circle back to the more classic hardware. The ax may not be as sleek, sexy, or exciting as other tools of destruction, but – as the below deaths show – it definitely gets the job done.
Here are a few ax-centric moments to read about while the IRS hacks away at your earnings!
Kelly in You’re Next (2011)
Any horror fan worth their salt knew Kelly was in for an untimely ending the moment she reached for the valium – anxiety doesn’t mix well with deadly games of cat-and-mouse. Sure enough, Kelly bolts at the first sign of danger – committing the cardinal sin of isolating herself from the core group – and finds herself getting punched through a pane of glass faster than you can sing “All my life, I’ve been looking for the ma-a-gic.” After she crawls around on broken glass for a bit, a dude in a sheep mask (which seems like an important detail, somehow) delivers the coup de grace by swinging an ax into her head, golf-style. Fore!
Marcie in Friday the 13th (1980)
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I liked Marcie. It takes a lot of chutzpah to jump on Kevin’s bacon, doink for 15 luxurious seconds, and then slink off without a word, but I guess that’s Marcie for you! Sadly, her sexual agency doesn’t translate to ordinary agency, so when she finds herself caught in the shadow of a raised ax, her only course of action is to let out one of the best bad screams ever caught on film before having her face cleaved in half. In that sense, her loss is our gain.
Kimberly in Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)
For an otherwise average series, the Wrong Turn films have done an excellent job of distracting viewers from the more damning questions (e.g., where do all of these impervious mountain mutants supposedly keep coming from?) with some meaty red herrings. I won’t claim to know how a hillbilly’s dull hatchet manages to slice this social butterfly in half, but the real question is: Who cares? Get a load of those entrails!
Brett in Stage Fright aka Deliria (1987)
Peter, the theater troupe’s resident dose of machismo, lives up to the expectations of his archetype and runs into an obvious trap with guns a-blazing – or, rather, with an ax a-swinging. Mistaking the bound and masked Brett for the film’s antagonistic owl (you read that correctly), Peter ax-identally hacks Sybil’s BFF to pieces. Whoops! To make matters worse, this mishap sets off a chain reaction of grisly deaths including Sybil’s and Peter’s himself. Triple whoops!
Lou in Prom Night (1980)
When school punk Lou decides to humiliate prom king Nick by stealing his crown, karmic retribution quickly takes its course. Mistaking him for Nick, the murderer – buzzkill that he is – swipes Lou’s head clean off his shoulders and sends it rolling out onto the catwalk in front of the entire school. Suffice it to say, prom queen Jamie Lee Curtis’ night is ruined. We, on the other hand, are just relieved that the protracted dance sequences are over.
