10 Horror Movie Characters Who Died Painful Deaths

Everybody hurts sometimes. For these 10 horror movie characters, it hurt a lot more.

Green Inferno
Open Road Pictures

Ever since the slasher movie and video nasty boom of the 1970s and '80s, horror movies have tended to trade in violent death. While horror doesn't need blood or gore to be successful or legitimate, the two do tend to go hand in hand. With Freddy Krueger slaughtering sleeping teens wholesale, and Jason Voorhees stomping about chopping up horny camp counsellors, the horror movie industry is one practically built on blood and scares.

Of course, with blood inevitably comes a lot of pain. While the likes of Freddy, Jason and Michael tend to favour a mercifully quick death for their victims, this isn't always the case. Sometimes, characters suffer. Sometimes, they suffer a lot. Especially during the early 2000s', when the torture porn industry - see the Saw and Hostel franchises - was at the height of its popularity.

Here we take a look at ten of the most painful horror movie deaths ever recorded - cherry-picking characters from long-running franchises, grisly one-offs and famous slasher movies. What these poor unfortunate souls do have in common? Their suffering was legendary.

10. Timothy - Saw III

Green Inferno
Lionsgate

When it comes to death traps from the Saw franchise, it's hard to pick just one. This is a series which began with a guy chopping off his own foot with a blunt hacksaw, after all. Over the course of nine movies, Jigsaw and his many imitators have turned violent, painful death into its own industry.

One of the most memorable of the series' deathtraps popped up in Saw III - a tricksy little contraption, known as 'The Rack.' Resembling a metal crucifix, the Rack consists of rotating cylindrical contraptions, each fitted to a particular area of the human body. With the unlucky participant bolted inside, the Rack would twist and contort, breaking the arms and legs - one by one - until finally snapping the victim's neck.

Timothy Young (Mpho Koaho) is unlucky to experience the Rack firsthand, being kidnapped by 'Jigsaw' after committing hit-and-run. One by one, Timothy's limbs are wrenched to breaking point and snapped like twigs before, finally, mercifully, his head goes too, twisting like a bottle cap.

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A film critic and professional writer of over ten years, Joel Harley has a deep and abiding love of all things horror, Batman and Nicolas Cage. He can be found writing online and in print, all over the Internet and in especially good bookstores.