Femme Fatalities Message Board

One of my favorite scenarios is when the supercilious Secretary or PA of the villain gets what is coming to her...but sadly I find this quite rare in movies. It plays out wonderfully in some of our literature (especially in HeelsandBullets' wonderful Landon saga) but not so much in mainstream TV.

I just watched 'Boy Kills World' which was a case in point. This is an incredibly violent movie (with one or two good female kills) but the smarmy secretary of one of the Bad Girls escaped scot free. Most annoying. To my mind, the Bond movies are surprisingly good at this. One thinks of Helga Brandt, dumped in a piranha pool, or Naomi, blown away in a helicopter (Stromberg's secretary also gets dumped in a shark pool). Miranda Frost also counts up to a point, although she is a bit too much of a main character.

But generally, too many Assistants get away with it. One example in a fantasy movie that always rankles me is the fate of the beautiful Handmaiden to Queen Gedren in 'Red Sonja' who just runs off and we never see what happens to her.

Can anyone help me with some examples from movies/TV that might fit the bill? It is important they are only a minor character, not a main part, and that they are Secretaries or assistants in some way, not zako. Thanks for any thoughts!

The closest I can think of right now is Queenie in Monkey Man, who takes a metal tray to the back of the head and gets her thumb cut off postmortem. She does veer more into main character territory - she owns the brothel the villains are at - but she plays third banana to the two primary villains: Rana, the corrupt police chief (the one with the most screentime and the protagonist's personal nemesis) and Baba, the immoral spiritual guru (the overarching villain).

EDIT: Looking back at the movies I've seen this year, another arguable example is the press secretary in Civil War, who gets shot by the rebels while attempting to negotiate the president's surrender. The catch is even though the president is established as the bad guy, we don't see much of him, let alone him performing villainous acts. The rebels, although friendly to the protagonists, are more villainous on-screen - they kill the secretary while she's surrendering. They also kill another formally dressed woman while she's trying to surrender, who's implied to be the First Lady.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions. Civil War is a movie I need to watch anyway, so I will keep an eye out for the secretary. Ideally the kind of Secretary I'm talking about is not an innocent victim, she's working for the bad guys and enjoys it. It's so frustrating there aren't more examples!

Some people are also saying the woman in Civil War is a Secret Service agent, not the press secretary. I thought I heard her say she was the press secretary in the film, but that's something for me to check if I see it again.