Over the course of his multi-decade career, Kevin Bacon has played a wide variety of different roles, including those of both good moral character and bad, but one detail that serves as a common thread between many of them is the fact that he has died on screen quite a lot. He doesn't quite have Sean Bean's reputation for making early exits in projects, but he has built up his own special legacy.
With that in mind, I felt compelled to ask the beloved actor about his favorite cinematic deaths when I had the chance to speak with him this past summer during the Los Angeles press day for MaXXXine. In the new horror movie, his character meets a brutal end when he is locked inside of a sedan and the vehicle is cubed by a car crusher in a wrecking yard, but as he acknowledges in the video above, his history dying in genre films dates back to one of his earliest roles: Friday The 13th:
The weird thing about Friday the 13th is when people still ask for autograph pictures, that's the number one autograph that's me dead with an arrow [through my throat] and blood all over my mouth. I often wanna say, 'Do you have anything of me alive? It'd be nice to sign that.'
Friday The 13th was in 1980, with Kevin Bacon playing Camp Crystal Lake counselor Jack... but that wasn't actually his first time dying on screen. Mentioned among the titles in the interview, 1978's Animal House is the movie that has that particular distinction. Bacon's first film role was playing preppy Chip Diller in the classic fraternity comedy, and he meets a grisly, funny end during the film's third act when he is quite literally flattened as he is trampled by a panicked crowd.
Also among the notable Kevin Bacon deaths is the white water rafting thriller The River Wild from 1994. That particular kill is notable not because of the way Bacon's character dies, but because who is responsible: in the movie's big climax, he gets shot to death by Meryl Streep.
It was mentioning The River Wild that also triggered the actor's memory of another big death. Bacon makes a notable mid-movie exit in the 1996 crime thriller Sleepers and he recalled during the MaXXXine interview being loaded up with squibs and flailing around as he was riddled with bullets:
You know what's a really good one is Sleepers. The guys come and they shoot me seven times, and I remember 'cause it was seven squibs and so it's one of those A lot of squibs.
It's a special legacy, and if you want to watch the most recent contribution to it, the opportunity is open for you. A fun title to reflect on as we look back on the year of cinema from 2024 (you can read my three-and-a-half star CinemaBlend review), MaXXXine is now available for purchase on 4K UHD and Blu-ray if you're a physical media fan, and if you're looking for a digital option, you can stream it right now with a Max subscription.
