Movie Characters Who Should Have Called the Cops

Ten films that would have been over in one phone call and a short statement.

Entries
10
Category
Film
Updated
  1. A candlestick, a rope, a lead pipe and a wrench laid out on a mansion dining table during a thunderstorm.

    10. Clue

    Jonathan Lynn · 1985

    Six blackmailed guests at a mansion would rather keep their secrets than involve the authorities, so the bodies pile up through a stormy night. Theaters released it with three different endings. All three would have been shorter with one phone call.

  2. A pickaxe lying in a smoking hole in a suburban lawn, a picket fence and a split-level house behind it.

    09. The 'Burbs

    Joe Dante · 1989

    Tom Hanks spends his vacation investigating the creepy neighbors, breaking into their basement and digging until he hits a gas line and the house explodes. The neighbors turned out to be murderers. He was right and still had to explain the crater.

  3. A blank disc in a clear jewel case resting on a gym locker-room bench beside a water bottle and a towel.

    08. Burn After Reading

    Joel and Ethan Coen · 2008

    Two gym employees find a disc of a fired CIA analyst's memoir and decide it is state secrets. They try blackmail, then the Russian embassy. Brad Pitt ends up in a closet with George Clooney's gun. Lost and found was right there at the front desk.

  4. A shovel and a pair of hiking boots by a freshly turned patch of earth on an autumn Vermont hillside.

    07. The Trouble with Harry

    Alfred Hitchcock · 1955

    Three Vermont neighbors each think they killed the man in the woods, so they bury him, dig him up, and bury him again over one day. He died of natural causes. Shirley MacLaine's film debut. An autopsy would have saved a lot of shovel work.

  5. A desert at night with five shovels stuck upright in fresh dirt, the glow of a Las Vegas skyline in the distance.

    06. Very Bad Things

    Peter Berg · 1998

    A Las Vegas bachelor party ends with a dead stripper, then a dead security guard, then both buried in the desert in pieces. Christian Slater plays the friend who talks everyone out of the phone call. Peter Berg's debut. Most guests just bring a toaster.

  6. A rusty fishing hook hanging on a dock post over dark water, a dented car bumper on the coastal road above.

    05. I Know What You Did Last Summer

    Jim Gillespie · 1997

    Four teens hit a man on a coastal road and drop him in the water instead of reporting it. A year later a fisherman with a hook disagrees with the decision. Kevin Williamson wrote it a year after Scream, in which, to be fair, calling the cops also did not help.

  7. A beach-house deck chair with sunglasses and a drink placed on its armrest, a party going on behind it at sunset.

    04. Weekend at Bernie's

    Ted Kotcheff · 1989

    Two junior insurance guys find their boss dead at his Hamptons beach house and, fearing blame, spend Labor Day weekend propping him up at parties. Nobody notices. The film is a comedy and also, quietly, the most damning portrait of the Hamptons ever made.

  8. A smeared office floor with a mop bucket and a revolver on a desk, a lone car's headlights in a dark Texas field through the window.

    03. Blood Simple

    Joel and Ethan Coen · 1984

    Ray finds his lover's husband shot in an office, assumes she did it, cleans up, and drives the body out to a field, where it turns out not to be a body yet. The Coens' first film. Nobody in it says one true thing to anyone else, including the police.

  9. An open suitcase of banknotes on the floor of a bright Edinburgh flat, a hacksaw and a garden shovel leaning by the door.

    02. Shallow Grave

    Danny Boyle · 1994

    Three smug Edinburgh flatmates find their new lodger dead beside a suitcase of cash, then dismember and bury him to keep it. Danny Boyle's debut, Ewan McGregor's breakout, a BAFTA for Outstanding British Film. The flat was nice. Not that nice.

  10. A canvas duffel bag spilling bundled hundred-dollar bills inside a snow-covered crashed small plane in a frozen forest.

    01. A Simple Plan

    Sam Raimi · 1998

    Two brothers and a friend find a crashed plane in the Minnesota snow holding $4.4 million in hundreds, and decide to keep it quiet. Four people die. Billy Bob Thornton got an Oscar nomination. Turning it in would have gotten them a nice photo in the paper.

Honorable mentions

  • An airport security badge lanyard on a police station counter next to a cold cup of coffee.

    Get Out

    Jordan Peele · 2017

    Rod Williams, a TSA officer, does exactly what this list asks. He takes his well-reasoned theory about the Armitages to the police, and the detectives laugh at him. He then handles it himself. Peele won the Oscar for the screenplay. Rod deserved a medal.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A portable cassette player with headphones resting on a tropical beach chair, a voodoo doll beside it.

    Weekend at Bernie's II

    Robert Klane · 1993

    Having learned nothing, the guys take the corpse to the Virgin Islands to find Bernie's embezzled millions, and a voodoo spell makes him dance whenever music plays. It holds 13 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. The first time was a mistake. This was a choice.

Every list.
On tap.

No newsletter. Point your AI at our public MCP server, or follow the RSS feed. New lists show up in both.

Get the MCP RSS