#a glorious tragedy onscreen and off

[1296-very-good-year]

The writing quality drop, the rushed pacing, character assassinations across the board... But hey, if Season 2's story did one thing right, it was to make this scene hit all the harder:

I'll always love you Arcane Season 1. Pouring one out for THESE characters. And for all the writers they laid off.

[nemotakeit]

It always mega bothers me too, when people theorize that Clancy or the Torchbearer will die. Blurryface/Nico is an avatar of Tyler's inner demons, so it would completely go against the message of TOP's songs, if he won in the end!

tw// depression & suicide

Yes exactly, I think people sometimes get lost in the epic spectacle of it all and forget that this story is at its core an allegory of battling your mental illness. Tyler and Josh have always been staunch advocates of promoting life over death and have clearly expressed their hatred toward the glorification of suicide. If this was any other story, one of them dying could just be a possible but tragic cliché but we're talking about fighting depression, anxiety, suicidal tendencies etc here. Deaths have already appeared TOO MUCH onscreen, look at all those desecrated bodies of the glorious gones. Ending it with one of the boys' characters' death on top of that would dangerously defeat the whole purpose of the hopeful message they're trying to convey - it's simply too bleak!!

Like I said in another post, I'm fine with the idea of Clancy's (or Torch's) sacrifice AS LONG AS he "comes back to life" and not just. die for shock value. But personally I think a more probable direction this story will take is Tyler/Clancy finally saving himself at the end unlike the other times Josh/Torchbearer saved him because this story is about "a balance between being saved by a friend, and saving yourself" as quoted from the band.

I highly doubt they're going to give the story a clear-cut closure happily ever after style, but they certainly won't kill off one of the protagonists for tragedy's sake either. “It’s not a problem to solve, it’s a tension to manage.” And they'll manage the tension well for the clique to find glimmers of hope in it. Not mourn for another neon gravestone.

so STOP SAYING THEY'RE GONNA DIE PEOPLE

[brianwilly]

Game of Thrones did the thing that a couple of shows do where...it likes feminism.  It understood that feminism is important.  It wanted to be feminist.  It was cognizant of the fact that its setting was brazenly and intentionally misogynistic, and so it was even more important for its independent narrative to empower its female characters instead of mindlessly reinforcing the toxic beliefs of its own fictional world.  The whole point of the story, after all, was “this society is toxic, can our heroes survive it?” and so the narrative was voluntarily self-critical.

And so it knew to give us badass assassin Arya.  It knew to give us stalwart knight Brienne.  It gave us the pirate queen and the dragon queen and the Sansa getting revenge after revenge upon all the men who’d wronged her, and far more besides, and it talked big about breaking chains and how much men fucked things up and how great it would be if only women were in charge and et cetera et cetera.  And it’s, in fact, all actually really good that it had those things.  And because there were so very many moving parts of this story, it was super easy to look at those certain moving parts and think, yeah, they’ve done it!  They done good!

And it’s easy to forget and forgive -- to want to forget and forgive -- all the dead prostitutes that were on this show and the rapes used as motivation and fridgings and objectifications and the...y’know, whatever the hell Dorne was and Lady Stoneheart who? It’s easy to forget that this show actually played its hand a long time ago in regards to, like, what its relationship with feminism was going to be, and then kept playing the same hand again and again, to disappointing results.

Game of Thrones likes feminism.  It wanted to be feminist.  But its relationship with feminism was still predicated on some of the same old narratives and the same old storytelling trends that have disempowered female characters in the past, and so any progressive ideas it might have about women in its setting were nonetheless going to be constrained by those old fetters. As a result, its portrayal of women varied anywhere from glorious to admirable to predictable to downright cringeworthy.

New ideas require new vessels, new stories, in which to house them.  And for Game of Thrones, the ultimate story that it wanted to tell -- the ultimate driving force and thesis statement around which it was basing its entire journey and narrative -- was unfortunately a very old one, and one very familiar to the genre.

“Powerful women are scary.”

(Yes, I’m obviously making Yet Another Daenerys Essay On The Internet here)

So we have this character, this girl really, a slave girl who was sold and abused, and then she overcomes that abuse to gain power, she gains dragons, and she uses that power to fight slavery.  She fights slavery really well, like, she’s super hella good at it.  Her command of dragons is the most overt portrayal of “superpowers” in this world; she is the single most powerful person in this story, more powerful than any other character and the contest is not close.

But then...something really bad happens and oops, she gets really emotional about it and then she’s not fighting slavery anymore...she’s kinda doing the opposite!  This girl who was once a hero and a liberator of slaves instead becomes an out-of-control scary Mad Queen who kills a ton of innocent people and has to be taken down by our true heroes for the good of the world.

That’s the theme.  That’s the takeaway here.  That’s how it all ends, with one of the most primitive, archaic propaganda ever spread by writers, that women with power are frightening, they are crazy, they will use that power for ill.  Women with power are witches.  They are Amazons.  They will lop off our manhoods and make slaves of us.  They seduce our rightful kings and send our kingdoms to ruin.   They cannot control their emotions. They get hot flashes and start wars.  They turn into Dark Phoenixes and eat suns.  They are robot revolutionaries who will end humanity.  Powerful women are scary.

And let me emphasize that the theme here is not, in fact, that all power corrupts, because the whole Mad Queen concept for Daenerys actually ends up failing one of the more fundamental litmus tests available when it comes to representation of any kind: “would this story still happen if Dany was a man?” And the fact is that it would not.   And indeed we know this for a fact because “protagonist starts out virtuous, gains power in spite of the hardships set against him, gets corrupted by that power, and ends up being the bad guy” didn’t happen, and doesn’t happen, to the guys in the very same story that we’re examining.  It doesn’t happen to Jon Snow, Dany’s closest and most intentional narrative parallel.  It doesn’t happen to Bran Stark, a character whose entire journey is about how he embroils himself in wild dark winter magic beyond anyone’s understanding and loses his humanity in the process.  In fact, the only other character who ever got hinted of going “dark” because of the power that they’re obtaining is Arya, the girl who spent seven seasons training to fight, to become powerful, to circumvent the gender role she was saddled with in this world...and then being told at the end of her story, “Whoa hey slow down be careful there, you wouldn’t wanna get all emotional and become a bad person now wouldja?” by a man.

(meanwhile Sansa’s just sitting off in the side pouting or whatever ‘cuz her main arc this season was to, like, be annoyed at people really hard I guess)

‘Cuz that’s the danger with the girls and not the boys, ain’t it?  Arya and Jon are both great at killing people, but there is no Dark Jon story while we have to take extra special care to watch for Arya’s precious fragile humanity.  Dany has the power of dragons while Bran has the power of the old gods, but we will not find Dark Lord Bran, Soulless Scourge of Westeros, onscreen no matter how much sense it should make. “Power corrupts” is literally not a trend that afflicts male heroes on the same level that it afflicts female heroes.

Oh sure, there are corrupt male characters everywhere, tyrants and warlords and mafia bosses and drug dealers and so forth all over your TVs, and not even necessarily portrayed as outright villains; anti-heroes are nothing new.  But we’re talking about the hero hero here; the Harry Potters, the Luke Skywalkers, the Peter Parkers.  The Jon Snows.   They interact with corruptive power, yes; it’s an important aspect of their journeys.  But the key here being that male heroes would overcome that corruption and come through the other side better off for it.  They get to come away even more admirable for the power that they have in a way that is generally not afforded towards female heroes.

There are exceptions, of course; no trends are absolutely absolute one way or the other. For instance, the closest male parallel you’d find for the “being powerful is dangerous and will corrupt your noble heroic intentions” trope in popular media would be the character of Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequel trilogy...ie, a preexisting character from a preexisting story where he was conceived as the villainous foil for the heroes.  Like, Anakin being a poor but kindhearted slave who eventually becomes seduced by the dark side certainly matches Dany’s arc, but it wasn’t the character’s original story and role.  And even then?...notice how Anakin as Vader the Dark Lord gets treated with the veneer of being “badass” and “cool” by the masses.  A male character with too much power -- even if it’s dark power, even if it’s corruptive -- has the range to be seen as something appealingly formidable, and not just as an obstacle that has to be dealt with or a cautionary tale to be pitied.

And in one of the few times that this trope was played completely straight, completely unironically with a male hero -- I’m thinking specifically of Hal Jordan the Green Lantern, of “Ryan Reynolds played him in the movie” fame -- the fans went berserk.  They could not let it go.  The fact that this character would go mad with power because a tragedy happened in his life was completely unacceptable, the story gained notoriety as a bad decision by clueless writers, and today the story in question has been retconned -- retroactively erased from continuity -- so that the character can be made heroic and virtuous again.  That’s how big a deal it was when a male hero with the tiniest bit of a fan following goes off the deep end.

To be clear, I’m not here to quibble over whether the story of Dany turning evil was good or bad, because we all know that’s going to be the de facto defense for this situation: “But she had to go mad!  It was for the sake of the story!“ as if the writers simply had no choice, they were helpless to the whims of the all-powerful Story God which dictates everything they write, and the most prominent female character of their series simply had to go bonkers and murder a bajillion babies and then get killed by her boyfriend or else the story just wouldn’t be good, y’know?  Ultimately though, that’s not what I’m arguing here, because it doesn’t actually matter.  There have been shitty stories about powerful women being bad.  There have been impressive stories about powerful women being bad.  Either way, the fact that people can’t seem to stop telling stories about powerful women being bad is a problem in and of itself.  Daenarys’ descent into Final Boss-dom could’ve been the most riveting, breathtaking, masterfully-written pieces of art ever and it’d still be just another instance of a female hero being unable to handle her power in a big long list of instances of this shitty trope.  The trope itself doesn’t become unshitty just because you write it well.

It all ultimately boils down to the very different ways that men and women -- that male heroes and female heroes -- continue to be portrayed in stories, and particularly in genre media.  In TV, we got Dany, and then we also have Dolores Abernathy in Westworld who was a gentle android that was abused and victimized for her entire existence, who shakes off the shackles of her programming to lead her race in revolution against their abusers...and then promptly becomes a ruthless maniac who ends up lobotomizing the love of her life and ends the season by voluntarily keeping a male android around to check her cruel impulses.  Comic book characters like Jean Grey and Wanda Maximoff are two of the most powerful people in their universe but are always, in-universe, made to feel guilty about their power and, non-diegetically, writers are always finding ways to disempower them because obviously they can’t be trusted with that much power and entire multiple sagas have been written about just how bad an idea it is for them to be so powerful because it’ll totally drive them crazy and cause them to kill everyone, obviously.  Meanwhile, a male comic character like Dr. Strange -- who can canonically destroy a planet by speaking Latin really hard -- or Black Bolt -- who can destroy a planet by speaking anything really hard -- will be just sitting there, two feet on the side, enjoying some tea and running the world or whatever because a male character having untold uninhibited power at his disposal is just accepted and laudable and gets him on those listicles where he fights Goku and stuff.

In my finite perspective, the sort of female heroes who have gained...not universal esteem, perhaps, but at least general benign acceptance amongst the genre community are characters who just don’t deal with all that stuff.  I’m thinking of recent superheroes like Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, certainly, but also of surprise breakout hits like Stranger Things’ Eleven (so far) or even more niche characters like Sailor Moon or She-Ra.  The fact that these characters wield massive power is simply accepted as an unequivocal good thing, their power makes them powerful and impressive and that’s the end of the story, thanks for asking.  And when they deal with the inevitable tragedy that shakes their worldview to the core, or the inevitable villain trying to twist them into darkness, they tend to overcome that temptation and come out the other side even stronger than when they started.  In other words?...characters like these are being allowed the exact same sorts of narrative luxuries that are usually only afforded towards male heroes.

The thing about these characters, though, is that they tend to be...well, a little bit too heroic, right?  A lil’ bit too goody-two-shoes?  A bit too stalwart, a bit too incorruptible?  And that’s fine, there’s certainly nothing wrong with a traditionally-heroic white knight of a hero.  But what I might like to see, as the next step going forward, is for female heroes to be allowed a bit more range than just that, so that they’re not just innocent children or literal princesses or shining demigods clad in primary colors.  Let’s have an all-powerful female hero be...well, the easiest way to say it is let’s see her allowed to be bitchier.  Less straightlaced.  Let’s not put an ultimatum on her power, like “Oh sure you can be powerful, but only if you’re super duper nice about it.” Let us have a ruthless woman, but not one ruled by ruthlessness.  Let us have a hero who naturally makes enemies and not friends, who has to work hard to gain allies because her personality doesn’t sparkle and gleam.  Let her have the righteous anger of a lifelong slave, and let that anger be her salvation instead of her downfall.

In other words, let us have Daenerys Targaryen.  And let us put her in a new story instead of an old one.

[krokodile]

movies watched in 2017:

the neon demon - a rewatch, and i loved being able to not have to try and figure out the story and just enjoy the movie with all its glorious beauty.  it’s throwback horror done flawlessly, while still being totally unique and impressively creative. 

roman - i love angela bettis as an actress, but less so as a director.  still, i don’t think this is meant to be the next great american classic (...wait, is lucky mckee actually canadian?)  i think it’s more of an experiment, and a successful one.  it held my interest and kept me guessing, and that’s enough.  editing could’ve cleaned up some things with picture and sound but maybe the roughness was intentional.

into the forest - such garbage.  emotionally manipulative dreck.  and make sure you shoehorn your anti-abortion message in there somewhere.  i always thought evan rachel wood would grow up to be a great actress, but whatever potential she had I’ve never seen fulfilled. 

arrival - remember how they remade the day the earth stood still a while back and it was utterly moronic?  THIS IS THE MOVIE THEY SHOULD HAVE MADE.  the sheer beauty of amy adams interacting with the creatures left tears in my eyes many times, and despite being equally heavy with the message, it left plenty of time and space for interesting, well-drawn characters.  throw in some fucking impressive storytelling and amy adams being her usual luminous self and there’s just nothing to not love in here.

the girl on the train - disappointing.  maybe my hopes were too high after seeing how great the gone girl adaptation was, but this story just didn’t work as well in a visual medium.  emily blunt tried her hardest, but this was the weakest performance i’ve seen from her to date.  

the 9th life of louis drax - i hated every single character so much, i couldn’t get invested in the story.  and even if i had, the resolution was glaringly obvious from the first voiceover.  oliver platt was the only tolerable performance. 

get out - i was expecting to like this movie, but i wasn’t prepared for HOW MUCH i liked it.  the 99% on rotten tomatoes made me expect a “message” film, and the more critics love those the more boring i tend to find them, but i was still pretty optimistic.  holy shit though, best movie i’ve seen in a LONG time.  people have already talked about what’s so great about it, far more eloquently than i could, but it’s pretty close to perfect.  and the performances are going to go down as some of the most immediately remembered and recognized in the horror genre.  a lot of the film’s success comes from daniel kaluuya’s utterly brilliant performance - he’s the easiest horror protagonist to love and root for since sharni vinson in you’re next. 

we’re the millers - not really my taste in comedy, but i got a few laughs out of it.

nocturnal animals - i hate that i didn’t like this movie, because i so wanted to.  and the frustrating thing is, i can pinpoint exactly what went wrong for me.  the screenplay is fantastic; it looks gorgeous (i love how the “book” segments actually LOOK just ever so slightly fake); amy adams knocks it out of the park and the supporting cast is terrific.  my problem is jake gyllenhaal.  and i don’t think he’s a bad actor; i like him just fine.  but he was a terrible fit for this role.  (and tbh i didn’t need the flashbacks to his and amy adams’s relationship.  the movie would’ve worked just as well without them and they derailed the narrative quite a bit.)  all his screaming and crying and raging just seemed incredibly calculated, and i don’t think it was intentional.  he was just out of his depth here.  i’m also not sure why the opening sequence went as long as it did.  and no i’m not whining that i had to look at naked obese ladies.  but it just felt like someone trying to be david lynch and came off very pretentious student film.  i also think it could’ve been half the length and still accomplished what it set out to do.  but really i can let go of everything but jake gyllenhaal’s performance. 

i know there’s been some controversy about the violence against women portrayed in this film, but i’ve noticed that people by and large have no problem with extreme violence against women being portrayed as long as there’s no nudity; the fact that we saw their bodies nude (and that tableau was absolutely beautiful, by the way; that got the most genuine emotional reaction from me out of the entire film.  so softly devastating; especially since isla fisher and ellie bamber had used their few minutes onscreen to get me to completely fall in love with them) is what people find horrific and unacceptable.  the sexual violence, nearly all of which took place offscreen, was not used for shock value or as a cheap device to give a picture “depth” or “tragedy.”  i can only assume i’m not the only audience member whose guts just ripped in half in sorrow seeing mother and child laid out like that.  i actually think it was one of the best done moments in the film.  i understand not wanting to see that, but to call it unnecessary or exploitative seems to me like the point has been greatly missed.  (it also involves totally not understanding the film’s structure and jake gyllenhaal’s character but i won’t go into that.)

i am not a serial killer - pretty good little movie.  i usually hate it when things go supernatural, but this was one of the rare occasions where the movie was no worse for it.  mostly some parts lagged for me; otherwise no complaints.

psycho - a partial rewatch since jenna was watching it.  still a terrific movie.  and it was fun picking out all the little things bates motel has referenced over the years. 

[itsiotrecords-blog]

http://ift.tt/2roTiFs

Murder they wrote – and mostly, the celebs played out the murder onscreen or tried to appear murderous in their sports’ professions, or hell, even sang about slashing and clobbering and all things bloody and gory. But sometimes, the blood spilled into their real lives – and many either ended up dead or became murderers themselves. Whether it was the fame or the adulation that turned them into stone-cold killers, or just obsessive love that got them killed instead, what we usually see onscreen in movies became real life for many of them. And these celebrities were not murdered by strangers but by their loved ones, their better halves, or rather their worse halves. And if these celebs killed, they killed their partners too – and sometimes also their children. Why do people do this, why do they kill the ones they swore to love and protect all their lives? Psychiatrists and mental health experts may have fancy terms for this deranged behavior, but for the world in general – these are the famous people who flipped and slipped up bad – and either killed their spouses or got killed instead. Their stories are tragic and sad and became fodder for the media as well as for the general public – examples of how not to live your life. These are 15 celebrities who murdered their partners, and some who got murdered themselves and left behind a legacy of pain, betrayal, and tragedy.

#1 Chris Benoit: Murdered His Wife, His Son & Then Offed Himself Chris Benoit was a professional wrestler with a 22-year-old career behind him, and many considered him one of the greats. He held 22 championships between WWF/WWE, WCW, NJPW, and ECW. He was a two-time world champion, having been a one-time WCW World Heavyweight Champion, and a one-time World Heavyweight Champion in WWE and was even set to win a third world championship – that is the day he died. When he did not show up for the match and all calls went unanswered, the police were asked to do a welfare check on him. And the authorities discovered the dead and bound body of Benoit’s wife Nancy, the body of their seven-year-old son Daniel, and finally Chris’ body. Nancy had been bound, wrapped in a towel and asphyxiated while Daniel too had been strangled, though toxicology revealed that they both had been drugged as well. And then two days later, Chris Benoit used a weight machine to break his own neck. No suicide note was ever found – though many theories of this murder-suicide popped up: steroid abuse, brain damage, and a failing marriage. Benoit’s brain scan later showed his brain to be equal to that of an 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient, a result of a lifetime of concussions and injury! A sad legacy for a bright star…

#2 Oscar Pistorius: Once Hailed A Hero, Now Just A Murderer Who hasn’t heard of Oscar Pistorius? The world praised his good looks and his zeal – and everyone found him heroic when this double-amputee competed against and won in the non-disabled sprinter category in the World Championships in athletics and also became the first double amputee to participate in the Olympics. To top it all off, he was in a loving relationship with model Reeva Steenkamp and all seemed glorious in his life. Till one dark day, or rather one loving day that turned very, very dark for Reeva – Oscar Pistorius shot her four times, on Valentine’s Day in 2013 at their Pretoria residence. His line of defense? He mistook her for an intruder. However, there were some messages from Reeva on Oscar’s phone in which she wrote that his anger scared her. Oscar was first found not guilty and sentenced to a reduced five-year sentence of culpable homicide, however in 2016, the sentence was appealed by the prosecution and he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to six years imprisonment.

#3 Sid Vicious: The Punk Rocker Who Lived Up To His Stage Name, Or Did He? Sid Vicious (John Simon Ritchie) was the bassist of the punk rock group Sex Pistols and like most musicians, he was hooked on drugs as well. Nancy Spungen was a sometime stripper, sometime prostitute and full-time groupie who followed band members around and soon entered into a relationship with Sid – and that was the beginning of the end of Sid and Nancy. Frankly, Nancy was no angel – rather a troubled, schizophrenic drug addict prone to violent outbursts for which the press had dubbed her Nauseating Nancy. Young, restless and always high, Sid and Nancy were the couple from hell and one day , it all turned deadly. Sid woke up after a drug stupor to find Nancy dead under the bathroom sink – with a single stab wound to the abdomen. Sid confessed, recanted, said he didn’t do it but was finally arrested for her murder. Four months later he made bail and celebrated with a party – only he never lived to see the morning and OD’d on heroin. Many claimed theirs was a suicide pact while others believe that a drug dealer named Michael had murdered Nancy and stolen money while Sid was out cold. The truth died with Sid and Nancy though.

#4 OJ Simpson: Did He Or Didn’t He? The Trial of the Century: the OJ Simpson case was when he was accused of stabbing his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman to death, just outside her home. Frankly, OJ and Nicole had always had a high-strung relationship full of fights, violence, and assault – and even having two kids did not simmer down things. They got married, divorced, and were planning to reconcile when Nicole’s life ended. For reasons no one ever understood, OJ was acquitted of the murders but later found liable in the wrongful death of Goldman, and of battery against Nicole. OJ never could bounce back from what happened – multiple lawsuits took away most of his money and money-making rights, and then he was arrested for robbery and sentenced to prison, where he still remains. He may have escaped his murder charge, but life has been justifiably tough for him – and many believe that he did indeed do it.

#5 Brynn Hartman: When Drugs Make You Kill Your Husband And Orphan The Kids Phil Hartman was an Emmy Award-winning actor and screenwriter and an all-around funny guy from Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons. In 1987, Phil married aspiring actress Brynn Omdahl, and the couple went on to have two children and plenty of fights over Brynn’s non-launching career, Phil’s success, and Brynn’s alcohol and narcotics problems. Phil had been supportive but her multiple stints in rehab and relapses had forced him to give her an ultimatum – one more slip up and it was all over. In 1998, Phil and Brynn again exchanged heated words over her drug usage. Brynn was enraged and, high on drugs and booze, shot a sleeping Phil at around three in the morning. She went to a friend’s house and confessed and they both drove back to check on Phil. The friend called 911 but by the time the police arrived, Brynn had locked herself in the bedroom and shot herself with the same gun – leaving both their kids orphaned in one drug-fueled rage.

#6 Paul Snider: You’re Leaving? Let Me Kill You First Paul Snider was a sleazy scumbag who somehow managed to make pretty girl Dorothy Stratten fall in love with him. He got nude pictures of the young woman and then sent them to Playboy. Dorothy became Playmate of the Month and they got married. Frankly, this could have been an X-rated happily ever after story except that Dorothy Stratten’s newfound fame and movie role put her in touch with director Peter Bogdanovich, with whom she began an affair. She was named Playmate of The Year and had just finished shooting a movie with Ingrid Bergman (directed by Peter), They All Laughed. Estranged from Paul, she filed for divorce but that was the last straw. Paul armed himself with a 12-gauge Mossberg shotgun, raped her, killed her, and then sexually abused her corpse – after which he offed himself with the same shotgun. Dorothy was just 20.

#7 Earl Hayes: From Music To Jealousy-Fueled Madness Earl Hayes was a budding rapper and was married to beautiful, if cheating, spouse, dancer Stephanie Moseley, since 2008. The couple had a tumultuous on-and-off relationship, and Earl was particularly crushed by an affair that Stephanie had with singer Trey Songz some two years back. The couple had decided to reconcile recently but it was apparent that Earl was having a very tough time trying to forgive and forget Stephanie’s affair. At the time of the alleged murder-suicide, Earl was Facetiming with boxer Floyd Mayweather and swearing about how he wanted to kill his wife. Reportedly Floyd begged him not to do anything violent but in a fit of rage, Earl went and shot his wife who was in the bathtub at the time. He then later spoke to Floyd again and then went on to kill himself with the same gun. At the time, Earl was facing a budding career and Stephanie was the star of the faux-reality VH1 series Hit The Floor. None of them could even reach the heights of stardom they wanted to, and their deaths only made them infamous…

#8 Robert Blake: When All Is Not Bonnie & Well Robert Blake, born Michael James Gubitosi, was an actor who first appeared in movies starting back in 1939 and he carried on all the way till 1997. Known for being a child actor and then a character actor, he was also the lead star in the TV series Baretta where he played Detective Anthony Vincenzo “Tony” Baretta. All his life though, Robert Blake was plagued with one problem after another and the moment he got success, he went on a violent binge or into depression. After divorcing his first wife, Robert entered into a relationship with Bonnie Lee Blakely who was known for exploiting older men and was also in a relationship with Marlon Brando’s son, Christian. After Bonnie gave birth to a daughter that paternity tests proved was Blake’s, they married but Blake never entirely trusted her. In 2001, Blake took Bonnie out for a dinner and when she was sitting in the car, waiting for him, she was shot in the head. Robert was tried for her murder but extenuating circumstances got him a not guilty verdict from the jury. Later he was sued by Bonnie’s three other children (from other fathers) and held responsible for her death – and ordered to pay them $30 million, upon which he declared himself bankrupt…

#9 Michael Jace: From Reel Life Cop To Real Life Convict Michael Jace is an American actor and probably best known for his work as Los Angeles police officer Julien Lowe in the FX drama The Shield. He even played Michael Jordan for a TV movie, and also co-starred with Russell Crowe in State of Play. He and his wife April Jace had been married for almost eleven years and had two young sons together when one fateful day, May 19, 2014, Michael shot and killed his wife. He then called the police and reported the domestic disturbance, confessing to having shot her. The police arrived to find April Jace, an American masters track and field athlete, dead of multiple gunshot wounds. Later it was speculated the Michael Jace, known to be a loving husband and a devoted father, was under considerable financial strain and had exchanged some words with April shortly before shooting her. He also believed that she was having an affair and wanted a divorce. He was sentenced to over 40 years in prison while their children went to stay with relatives. Apparently, just before he shot her in front of their kids, Michael taunted her, “You like to run so much. Why don’t you run to heaven?”

#10 Russell Neal: A Has-Been Success Now In A Mental Facility Once upon a time in the 90s, Russell Neal was part of the up and coming R&B group Hi-Five and was known to have quite a way with the ladies. Somewhere down the line, his head got too big for his shoes, and he left the band, and he slowly joined the ranks of the has-beens and the wannabes. Even then, he was able to snag lively and vivacious 24-year-old Catherine Martinez who was a fitness trainer, an aspiring model, and was even training to be a female boxer. Wooed by his charm, his popularity (which had waned considerably by that time), and even his money – Catherine had two sons with him. Russell was flat broke and not as popular as he would like to believe so Catherine became the breadwinner for the family. And then she was also put through domestic abuse. Finally, Catherine had enough and planned to leave Russell. Suddenly, she disappears. A few days later Russell strolls into the Houston Police Station and tells them that his wife needs medical attention after a domestic fight they had. Police storm the apartment where they find Catherine dead, and she had been dead for quite a few days, her body beaten and bashed in beyond recognition. Heartbreakingly, their two kids were also locked up in the same apartment. Until now, Russell Neal has not stood trial for his crime, claiming insanity as a defense plea. Maybe it runs in the family, for his younger brother Ronald Neal is also facing 80 years in prison for killing his wife, shooting her and letting her bleed out in front of the children as well.

#11 Claudine Longet: When Anger & Jealousy Mix With Stupidity & Negligence 18-year-old Claudine Longet wanted to be famous ever so bad. And luck was with her when she was en route Las Vegas to become a showgirl and was detained by a flat tire. Someone stopped to help her and it was love at first sight – for Claudine was dazzled by the famous Andy Williams and probably saw him as her ticket to fame, while Andy fell in love with this 18-year-old beauty. And so came marriage, money, three kids and a nominally successful career too. In the 1970s, the marriage between Claudine and Andy unraveled but by that time Claudine had enough friends in high places who in turn introduced her to champion skier, the filthy rich Vladimir “Spider” Sabich. The two hit it off and began a somewhat turbulent relationship that ended in a shocker in 1976. She called the police over to the house she shared with Sabich and her three kids, explaining that he was teaching her how to fire a gun when it went off – killing him. Though Spider was clearly shot in the back, police mistakes and an ineffectual court let her go scot free – which she celebrated with a holiday with her defense lawyer Ron Austin. There was such a public outcry that she maintained a low profile ever since, married Ron Austin, and was never really seen or heard from again…

#12 Rae Carruth: Ordered A Hit & Helped The Hitman Kill His Pregnant Girlfriend Once a popular football star, Rae became yet another in the list of has-beens when he injured his knee and began to wane as a football player, after his very first season. Sure he could have made a comeback, and definitely still had decent innings in football too, but the fact that he spent his time accumulating a harem of women took its toll. Love’em and leave’em was is motto – especially since he had a penchant for getting them pregnant. A girlfriend bore him a son whom he rarely visited, and then yet another girlfriend got his baby aborted – since Rae used to “joke” about killing them if they didn’t do so. One day, he took the joke too far. Cherica Adams was a “real estate agent,” actually a stripper in a gentleman’s club, who unfortunately fell in love with Rae and got pregnant with his baby. She wouldn’t abort it and didn’t findhis “killing” joke funny so Rae proved himself right. He hired a hitman, Michael Kennedy, to shoot her while she was eight-months pregnant with his child, and then blocked her car long enough to ensure she was shot right. Cherica died but not after writing her witness statement blaming Rae, and giving birth to her little boy – who remained brain damaged due to a lack of oxygen. Rae ran and was arrested when the police found him hiding in the boot of his car – with candy bar wrappers and two bottles filled with his piss.

#13 Gig Young: When Love & Life Go Astray Mention Gig Young now and you’ll only get confusion, but four decades ago Gig Young was a swashbuckling actor known for his good looks and roles and even won an Academy Award in 1969-70. So obviously this was one man Hollywood and fans adored. But the 1970s were the start of the end for Gig Young, for this man, originally named Byron E. Barr, was heading down the very slippery slope of alcoholism. Roles were few and far between and all his marriages had crumbled to dust. So Gig Young married Australian actress Kim Schmidt in 1978, and then ended the marriage just three weeks later, but took a rather violent way to end it instead. His alcoholism and his love for guns produced a deadly love child – murder-suicide. He shot his wife of barely three weeks in the head and then put another slug through the roof of his mouth and is buried in the Barr family plot – an ignominious end to one who had many accolades and fans.

#14 Sahel Kazemi: Loving Me Is Good, Leaving Me Is Not So the thing about affairs is that they often backfire, and sometimes with tragic results. Steve McNair, the NFL Quarterback the world so loved was mostly a nice guy, except that he loved to get into other women’s pants even while he was married to his wife Mechelle and had two sons with her. He had also fathered two other children via two other women and finally ending up having an affair with 20-year-old Sahel “Jenny” Kazemi. Sahel was possibly not very secure about their relationship, and one day, when Steve had joined her in the condo he had rented for them after putting his kids to bed, Sahel shot him from three feet away while he slept. And then she lay down beside him and shot herself too. Sahel didn’t just kill Steve, she also orphaned his four children who will now never see their father again.

#15 Spade Cooley: The “Gentleman” Who Killed His Wife In A Boozed Up Blaze Of Passion So sure, not many of us know of Spade Cooley now but back in the day, and we mean the good ole’ days of the 40s and the 50s, Spade was one cool western swinging musician, fiddler, singer, and actor. He came on TV, did concerts and shows and even did a few movies, and while Bob Wills was the Western swing king, Cooley had his own fan following too – especially because he looked a little like his friend, Roy Rogers. By the 60s Cooley-mania had waned a bit so he did what any man in a midlife crisis does: married a pretty young thing in her 20s, Ella Mae Evans, and then had three kids with her too. Cooley drank like a fish and finally, Ella had had enough so she asked for a divorce. Meanwhile, Cooley got to know that his wife had managed to sneak in an affair with Roy Rogers and that blew his top. In 1961, sloshed and high on drugs, Spade went to Ella’s house and proceeded to beat her to death, while she was naked in the shower, and in front of their 14-year-old daughter – after which he put out a cigarette on her breast to see if she was dead. He was arrested and jailed, and released three months early in 1969 to perform at a special concert for the police, where he got a standing ovation and then went backstage, only to keel over and die. Fittingly ironic, as many would say.

Source: TheRichest