When it comes to cinema's scream queens, it's hard to call them lucky as they're relentlessly pursued over decades. Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode, for example, is still being hunted by Halloween's Michael Myers to this very day, while Scream's Sidney Prescott just faced the Ghostface slasher again in the franchise's fifth chapter. However, both women survived and are living to fight another day. In terms of being the unluckiest scream queen, though, one simply has to look back to 1997 and what happened to Sarah Michelle Gellar.
That year, the actor achieved a landmark feat when she died screaming in not just one but two popular modern slasher properties. Her first death came in October when she played Casey "Cici" Cooper in the second Scream film, which wasn't a long role but a most poignant one.
Seeing as the killer wanted to murder someone whose name was Casey, a trend from the first bloody movie with Drew Barrymore's character, Ghostface snuck into a sorority house on Sid's campus and attacked her when all the girls were out. The villain chased her upstairs, stabbed her in the back on a balcony and then threw her off it. It was a most brutal death as fans saw her mangled, broken body on the ground -- all to send a message to Sid.
At that time, Michelle Gellar wasn't a prominent face in cinema, but she was making waves as the title character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which premiered in March that year. It got rave reviews from critics and audiences, so with ratings that high, many were shocked to see one of TV's most popular faces die in such a gruesome manner.
The trend was repeated in November when she had more of a lead role as Helen in I Know What You Did Last Summer. In this slasher flick, Helen and her crew accidentally hit a guy with their vehicle near a North Carolina beach, all before dumping the body in the water and hiding the secret away. However, someone discovered their sin, and they ended up being hunted by a killer with a fisherman's coat and hook for a hand. He tracked Helen down to the 4th of July parade back in town, cornering her in her parents' clothing store. There, she fell a couple of stories out a window in the assault and limped away. She found her way to an alley, but as fireworks went off, she looked back to make sure the coast was clear.
It was an awful decision because the killer appeared in front and started maiming her with the hook in the shadows. What made this so unlucky was she was mere feet from the parade, but the band's music, loud explosions, lights dipping in and out all provided a shield for the slasher. This sequence just wasn't designed for her to live, and the tragedy compounded that 1997 wasn't Michelle Gellar's year to live on the big screen.