Dumb Award

Question: what is the most stupid thing characters in movies say? My nomination for dumb award varies in actual dialogue, but always comes to pretty much the same thing. The words used are usually along the lines of “let’s split up”, or, “you search upstairs, I’ll take the basement”, or, “I think I heard something in the barn, let’s check it out”.

And the same thing it always come to is a grisly death for at least one of the parties concerned, usually the only sensible one who was actually pleading with the others to run far, far away. Let’s not split up. Let’s search the house together. And sod the barn, I’m locking the front door and calling the police. That’s what non morons would actually do, but no…

Close cousins to let’s split up syndrome are “stay there” – and they don’t – moments later being decapitated with a machete. Or the non verbal pushing through a fire door onto a flight of stairs and deciding it’s a good idea to run up towards the roof from where there is no escape, rather than down towards the exit. Do they think they are going to sprout wings along the way, or what? If they’re lucky, there’s a swimming pool ten stories below for them to jump into (in real life you'd die trying that anyhow), if not, the man with the gun, the brain eating zombie, the chainsaw maniac, the crazy mother-in-law, has them cornered and bang to rights.

As for hunting Dracula, he’s asleep all day from dawn to dusk, so why do they always reach his castle just as the sun is going down, instead of arriving with the milkman at first light? Are vampire hunters the kind of people who can’t get up or do anything useful before 4pm, like teenagers and students?

When having to hunt down a serial killer in an old creepy graveyard, great idea turning up at midnight instead of at lunchtime, I don’t think. Same applies for mummies and zombies and if you suspect there is a werewolf on the loose, avoid the woods until the night of the full moon and then decide to go for a stroll. What could possibly go wrong? I mean, you have a single silver bullet in a one shot flintlock, so safe as houses, clearly.

On the Enterprise wearing a yellow shirt, why not volunteer to beam down to the planet below with Kirk and Spock. You’ve seen any number of your colleagues do the same thing, only to get killed and never come back, but boldly go anyway you dumb schmuck. Honestly, if these people weren’t all fictional, they’d really get on my nerves.

I only posed the original question because these are the sort of things that occur to me when, bored rigid by the TV and the fifty-seventh showing of Fantastic Four, my eyes have gone glassy and my brain has zoned out to make up its own entertainment. That said, if you can think of more deserving cases to receive the dumb award, do please share them.

Wait a minute! I thought I heard a menacing growl coming from the unlit cellar. Just going to check it out. Armed with a vase and a faulty torch…