Body Counts:
Action vs. Horror
Aaron Locke
Why?
• Often, horror movies get a bad wrap
for being too violent.
• In reality, it is action movies that
actually have much higher death
tolls.
• Due to an extensive movie collection,
I decided to take this on.
How do you count bodies?
• What to count:
– A dead body
– A mortal hit
– Someone dies on screen
– A scene shown and then at the last second, cuts away.
• What not to count:
– Unspecified piles or strewn bodies UNLESS they are clear and
countable
– Animals
– Implied kills
Data Table
Movie Title Genre # of Deaths Running Time
(minutes)
House on Haunted Horror 30 93
Hill
My Bloody Valentine Horror 24 101
(2009)
Nightmare on Elm Horror 4 91
Street (1984)
The Omen (2006) Horror 8 110
Grindhouse: Death Horror 8 95
Proof
Underworld Action 58 121
King Kong Action 23 187
Troy Action 572 163
The Dark Knight Action 36 152
Pearl Harbor Action 153 183
Data Table (cont.)
Movie Title Genre # of Deaths Running Time
Silence of the Horror 8 118
Lambs
Friday the 13th Horror 14 97
(2009)
Sweeney Todd Horror 12 116
Snakes on a Plane Action 31 105
(2006)
Cloverfield Action 27 85
Histogram
1
Horror vs Action Movie Deaths
2
3
700
4
600
Number of Deaths
5
500
6
400
7
300
8
200
9
100
10
0
11
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
12
Type of Movie
13
14
Red indicates an action movie. Blue indicates a horror movie.
Action Movie Histogram
Deaths in Action Movies
Deaths in Action Movies
Action - Underworld
700
700
600 Action - King Kong
600
500
Deaths
500
400 Action - Troy
Deaths
300
400
200 Series1
300 Action - The Dark Knight
100
200
0
Action - Pearl Harbor
Cloverfield
Action -
Action -
Underworld
100
Action -
Pearl
Action -
Troy
0 Action - Snakes on a
1 2 3 4 5 6 Plane 7
Movie Movie Action - Cloverfield
Horror Movie Histogram
Deaths in Horror Movies
700
600
500
Deaths
400
Series1
300
200
100
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Movie
Stem & Leaf
Stem Leaf
10 0
0 4 8 8 8
11 0
1 2 4
12 0
2 3 4 7
13 0
3 0 1 6
14 0
4 0
15 3
5 8
16 0
6 0
17 0
7 0
... ...
8 0
57 3
9 0
Circle Graph
Horror Movies vs. Action Movies
Action Movie Deaths
Horror Movie Deaths
Number •
of
•
Movies
• • • • • •• • •• • •
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
Deaths
Dot Plot
Blue Dots represent deaths in Horror Movies
Red Dots represent deaths in Action Movies
**the data point from Troy was removed
Box Plot
700
600 median
500 q1
400
min
300
200 max
100 q3
0
a
Group Data Chart
Class Boundaries Frequency Relative Midpoint Cumulative
Frequency Frequency
1-99 13 .866 49.5 13
100-199 1 .066 149.5 14
200-299 0 0.0 249.5 14
300-399 0 0.0 349.5 14
400-499 0 0.0 449.5 14
500-599 1 .066 549.5 15
Measures of Center
FOR ALL DATA
1Q: 8
• Mode: 8
• Median: 24 3Q: 36
• Mean: 67.2 Max: 573
Min: 4
FOR HORROR MOVIES Range: 569
• Mode: 8
• Median: 10
• Mean: 13.5
FOR ACTION MOVIES
• Mode: None
• Median: 29
• Mean: 150
Dispersion
• Range: 568
• Standard Deviation: 144.36
• Outlier Analysis
– IQR = 28
– Fences = -34 and 78
– According to my outlier analysis, two
points [153, 572] are outliers.
Cheb/Empirical Rule
• The graphs show that the data does
not quite follow the rule:
– 75% is within 2 deviations
– 89% is within 3 standard
Z-Scores
1. 4 -.437
2. 8 -.410
3. 8 -.410
4. 8 -.410
5. 12 -.382
6. 14 -.368
7. 23 -.306
8. 24 -.299
9. 27 -.278
10. 30 -.257
11. 31 -.250
12. 36 -.216
13. 58 -.063
14. 153 .594
15. 572 3.496
• Throughout this project, the
graphs clearly demonstrated a
higher amount of deaths/body
count in movies classified as Distribution
“action”.
• Movies categorized as horror
had significantly less deaths.
• The data is right-skewed.
14
12
10
8
Series1
6
4
2
0
0-99 100- 200- 300- 400- 500-
199 299 399 499 599
To Conclude...
• Horror movies do, in fact, have less
deaths than action movies.
• Despite this truth being shown
throughout the data, is doesn’t prove
that horror movies are less violent.
• Yes, there are less deaths in horror
movies, but they are much different.