On the day of graduation, the two Ashleys (ASH-ley) go to their local tanning salon and in a very claustrophobic scene, they are both trapped in the machines as they malfunction. They are presented as two imaged obsessed popular girls, shown throughout to be unintelligent ‘bimbos’ with beauty as their only goal. However they all die one by one in the order they were destined to die in, the first two survivors to die are best friends Ashlyn Halperin (Yan-Kay Crystal Lowe) and Ashley Freund (Chelan Simmons). The film follows multiple young people celebrating graduation at a funfair, but they survive a roller coaster crash after Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has a premonition and cheats death. Catherine lets him know that working on her tan, “one click of the Button and she’s fried chicken.” He manages to save her from the tanning bed, however, the fire engulfs the gym leaving Catherine and her husband burnt to a crisp and covered in blood.įinal destination 3 (2006) by James Wong, is what people mention when you think of tanning bed deaths. In the climax of the film, the girlfriend is tied to a tanning bed bathed in pink light. The wife Catherine (Shari Shattuck) has come back from the dead through technology and possessed her hacker twin, to get Micheal to kill himself too. The gym owner Micheal (William Bumiller) is haunted by his wife’s suicide and feels guilty that he is now dating someone else. A woman is made to kill because she is not able to achieve the standards of beauty she is told she must.Īnother trashy film is Death Spa (1989) also known as Witch Bitch, where the machines in a cool LA gym malfunction, killing the patrons. We later find out that Rhonda was Valarie the entire time, and she was responsible for the deaths at the gym, she killed out of jealousy of the other women’s beauty, as she is disfigured having to wear a wig and long clothing to cover her scars. the machine malfunctions and she is set alight leading the audience to believe she is dead. The film opens with Rhonda’s twin sister Valarie (both played by Marcia Karr) who works as a model, going to the tanning salon after hearing she’s had a big career break the following day. In the slasher Killer Workout (1987) women are killed one by one in Rhonda gym. The story became part of the cultural psyche and made an appearance in many horror films and during the late 80s, two films used it as a method of death. This urban legend falls into the category of new technology being misused, such as the old woman drying her poodle off in a microwave, which shows anxiety and moral panic surrounding new technology. The story had many variations depending on location, such as a different social event where a woman would need to look beautiful, in some, she doesn’t die, but goes blind or has one of her arms amputated. After being taken to the hospital, she is told she has cooked her organs and they are beginning to rot. When she is having her wedding photos blood comes from her mouth and she faints. ![]() On her wedding day, there is a smell she cannot get rid of, even after washing and brushing her teeth, the rotten smell clings to her body. A day before her wedding, she books sessions at multiple salons to get past the daily limit and finishes the day with a beautiful tan. The story goes: a woman wants to get a glowing tan before her wedding day but leaves it too late. Sunbeds were mostly used by young women to get a healthy tan, but what if it is anything but? This is when indoor tanning beds became more available and more common, tanning beds could be found in gyms, hotels, and salons. ![]() The tanning bed death is only ever the fate of young women, what does that tell us about the representation and role of a woman during the late 80s, but also why did it pop up in horror during the early 2000s such as Final Destination 3? These films are morality tales against chasing beauty and vanity, and the woman in the pursuit becomes burnt, rotten, and abject.Įven though tanning technology has been around in some shape or form since 1920, the tanning bed urban legend only popped up in the summer of 1987. ![]() Urban legends are adaptable stories that pop up all over and act as a warning whilst also revealing the morals and values of the society that tells them. During the summer of 1987, a strange urban legend made its way across America, a story that said an unnamed young woman cooked herself in a tanning bed from overuse.
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