Yes, now that I have your attention, I didn’t mean to mislead that I was writing about a natural disaster. Perhaps I should be, but it’s about those actors whose role is, well, to play a dead body at the beginning of a movie or television show. When the detectives are called in, there is the body – lying in a pool of blood in the kitchen, or sitting in an armchair in the living room, a large knife sticking out of his or her chest. Someone slumped over a steering wheel, riddled with bullet holes. Even the award-winning movie, “Conclave”, opens with the deceased pope lying in his bed in the Apostolic palace. Natural causes, of course, but still . . . . . an actor whose contributions to the film won’t be nominated for an Oscar.
These are the roles that people must, of necessity, play. I can just imagine the disappointment actors feel when their agents contact them. “It’s limited, because you’re the victim. We’ll see you lying in the back garden, and then on the table for the autopsy. Not much dialogue.” The make-up would take the time. You need to have that bluish/grayish tint, and your torso will be cut open and then stitched back together again. Later on, when your obituary is printed, you hope that’s not the picture your family has chosen to use. “This was Bill, who played a number of recurring corpses on Major Crimes and NCIS. He was renowned for his ability to lie perfectly still on the coroner’s table.” If the body’s been dismembered, as often happens, I’m assuming they don’t actually use real people. Similarly, when they pull a body from the lake, I rather hope it’s not an actor that could hold their breath for a long time.
Of course, not all corpses are dead in the opening scene. In many murder mysteries, you can spot who’s sure to die. If they are dead at the beginning, it’s not a pretty sight. The body is found among the garbage cans on a city street. Or washes ashore at some isolated spot on the Hudson River. In many of these dramas, you can pick out the victim early on, if they’re not already dead. The celebrity that treats everyone like dirt. The business tycoon who orders everyone about and is thoroughly obnoxious. The drug dealer skimming from their supplier. The person that has two separate families, to whom they’re dividing their time and lying to both. Sometimes, there’s a build-up, particularly if you’re in a quaint, English village. The nasty rich uncle that informs his relatives of his intention to change his will, disinheriting anyone that anticipated a pile of loot. Yes, he’s a goner. It’s just a matter of how and when. The village shrew that stands in the way of everybody and every initiative, and who often sits on every governing board. The long-lost son or daughter that returns to avenge a wrong from decades before. Then, we find out something about the victim and their history. Everything they’ve been trying to keep secret is out in the open as they’re loading them into the back of a patrol car.
I always like to hear the question, “did he/she have any enemies?” as the investigation begins. “Anyone that would wish them dead?” That pretty much goes without saying. There’s at least one. And yet, the response is most often, “no”. He was well-liked. Sometimes, though, like the village shrew or the crazy lord of the manor, you have your pick of possible perpetrators. He or she had a flare for pissing people off.
I have to give the British a nod for coming up with the most inventive ways to kill off the unwanted. They go well beyond the typical gunshots, poisonings, stabbings, strangulations, and whacking over the head with the proverbial “blunt object”. A couple were what I call the “liquid death”. One man was pushed into a vat of ale and drowned at a brewery’s grand opening. Another was pushed under a mill’s paddlewheel and floated briskly out the sluiceway to discovery. Still another was immobilized and placed on a conveyor belt, going through meat cooker. He came out quite dead and way, way too pink. One victim was found under a swarm of bees. In a twist on the old stabbing routine, a young techie died when a large knife was dropped on him from a drone. Why he just stood there, looking at it in amazed horror, rather than running indoors, I don’t know. I guess that would have derailed the story line. “Death In Paradise” tends to favor bodies floating alone in rowboats or fishing boats. They also use a number of gunshot decoys. The fake gunshot that everyone thought was the fatal one turned out not to be, thereby confusing the time of death. In one interesting twist, the killer used a pillow to silence the actual kill shot, and later used a gunshot sound effect to give himself an alibi. Very clever, indeed, but the inspector figured it out. Even located the pillow with the hole through the middle.
There was a man in one Midsomer episode that was lured to an old, abandoned barn, way out in the middle of nowhere. He fell through the loft floorboards that had been tampered with to his death on rather sharp blades of farm equipment. In another, a period movie is being filmed, and of course, someone tampers with the guillotine, removing the safety latch. Yes, you can see where that’s going. Which brings me to the next essential element. There is always someone on hand to scream hysterically as they come across the body. This is particularly effective if there’s a gathering going on – a party in a manor house, or a village festival. You’d think by now that these English towns would stop holding these events, because there is invariably a death – someone found under a craft table, or, in one memorable episode, the victim was shot while in a dunking booth. She came up, well, dead. Possibly one of the most gruesome murders was of an antique collector who was stuffed into a large, medieval instrument of torture – a fully enclosed suit of armour where you spring a latch that releases spikes into the chamber. That poor guy became a human pincushion.
There are, of course, a number deaths by falling off a cliff, or a balcony. In one memorable episode of “The Closer”, the young technician is out with a couple of detectives that are moonlighting by serving summons for a shady lawyer. Shortly after they’ve served one, the recipient plunges to his death – across the front of the technician’s car. And in one memorable episode of “Death in Paradise”, a bride plummets off a balcony to her death, complete with bridal gown as the nuptials are about to begin. Others have been pushed off cliffs, or sometimes off the turrets of old estates. One hapless victim went outside because he thought he heard a noise, only to have a massive stone gargoyle topple off the roof onto him.
There have been, over the years, a nice assortment of people strangled or poisoned. Occasionally, the victim is riding a bike, felled by a wire strung across the road. More often, it’s a scarf, a belt, or a necktie. Sr. Boniface has regularly been seen firing up her Bunsen burners to discover what the poison was, and how the poison was administered. Some interesting methods – poison applied to lipstick, to perfume, or to the adhesive on a licked envelope. In one case, a bee sting from a bee sequestered in the victim’s shirt. He was highly, lethally allergic. She’s confronted too by poisonous plants – in one baking show episode, poison berries are applied by the murderer to the top of a cake.
You may have seen this too, as I have, what I call “death by projectile”. The victim is pelted by an overactive tennis ball machine or from a baseball pitching machine. Once, in a Midsomer village, and let’s be honest, they have an inordinate number of bizarre murders, a wealthy, unpleasant victim was tied down in his yard and some catapult device rigged up by his wife flung wine bottles at him. He was, as I recall, more horrified by the losses of expensive wines than he was about his own impending doom. And in truth it was a terrible waste of good wine. And in another, a victim was tied down in a miniature village, looking for all the world like a dead Gulliver. In yet another, victims were killed and affixed to sculptures in a woodland sculpture park on an estate. One featured a witness to a crime, who was literally killed “by chocolate”. He was knocked out and placed under a large machine dispensing molten chocolate. They didn’t find him until the next morning, and the chocolate had hardened. So, yes, they had to break him open.
As I may have written before, some poor victims bring it upon themselves. They are out walking at night in a dark area where killings have been taking place. A dark country road, or a back alley. What are they thinking? Someone receives a text saying essentially, “Meet me in the woods, in the clearing, at midnight. Come alone.” And they do. When next we see them, they’re walking through the woods, entering the clearing and looking around suspiciously. We hear the telltale cracking of twigs, and the victim calls out, “Is anyone there?” No, no. Just you and the killer. In the next scene, the police are wrapping the clearing in crime scene tape, and removing the body that’s tied to a tree. Nothing I can do – I told them, out loud even, to ignore the text.
The obituaries of these gallant victim-actors will write themselves. Their film and television credits include: “Many memorable roles on ‘Law and Order’, including: Body at the bottom of the stairs; Body slumped on a park bench; Body shot in the parking garage; Body in the dumpster; and his personal favorite, Body washed up on the beach.” I do feel badly, though perhaps I shouldn’t, for all the actors that have had to take on the roles of corpses. Particularly when they’re already dead at the beginning, and their big scene is on a cold, metal table at the morgue. You know the ones – found by two children when their soccer ball bounces away into an alley. I hope those actors are paid well, but you never know. What is the pay scale for “limited dialogue” and “no deep breathing”?
Perhaps they should be considered for some kind of award. “And the Emmy for best corpse in a supporting role goes to . . . . . “
I'm Thinking...No! 