2. Bela Lugosi
Confirmed Deaths: 36 We can qualify Lugosi's death count on being AT LEAST 36. It is hard to pinpoint exactly how many movies the Hungarian horror ham actually made since many of them were during his wilderness, near-poverty years, and a great many were silent films shot in his native country or in Eastern Europe. However, of the movies that were actually completed and widely released, Bela bought it on a huge number of occasions. One of the most famous stories surrounding Lugosi is his involvement with famously useless director Ed Wood in the twilight of his career. Sadly, early on during filming of the supremely awful Plan 9 From Outer Space, Lugosi passed on for real.
Famous Examples Lugosi and Boris Karloff were rivals through much of their early careers, and ended up working together a great many times. As such, Lugosi's character was more often than not murdered by Karloff's in a greatly entertaining number of guises and methods. As is usually the case with horrors, Lugosi tended to meet his end by being shot or falling to his death quite often, though he did display a penchant for being burned alive too. Also, the image of a fast-flowing tide sweeping Frankenstein and The Wolfman to their deaths as they stage a badly co-ordinated punch-up is particularly hard to forget.
Most Memorable Death Scene One of the finest Lugosi-Karloff team-ups is 1935's The Raven, where Lugosi plays an unhinged surgeon who incubates a murderous obsession with the works of Edgar Allen Poe. Upon Boris' discovery of the surgeons madness, a struggle ensues after which the madman is thrown into a replica of Poe's famous shrinking room and crushed to death. Positively skin-crawlingly horrible.