Murder 101 - How To Not Spectacularly Fail At Killing Snow White

Well, here goes my first post, and what better way to start than with the movie that started it all? I am, of course, referring to Disney's Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. It's a timeless tale of a beautiful princess finding unlikely friends while escaping from a wicked queen who wants her dead. But does the queen really want her dead all that much? I've noticed quite a few glaring holes in her plans which I will present in this post.

Meet Queen Grimhilde. Gosh, what a name. Gosh, what a face. Apparently she is the most beautiful woman in the land, so I'd hate to see her loyal subjects. Yeesh. Anyway, as you all probably know, Grimhilde likes to make sure she's still the most beautiful every day by checking with her magic mirror. I'm gonna go to a quick aside here and just make it known that this queen has a mirror that possesses an unknown, but probably infinite amount of wisdom. It can locate anyone you ask it to, it may even be able to provide information about the far reaches of the universe. But we'll never know, because the bitch who owns it just asks it to tell her how hot she is.

Ask me again. I dare ya, I double dare ya.

This guy probably just wanted to shake things up because he was bored out of his mind. So one day, he says Snow White, her stepdaugher, is the hottest girl in all the land. How do you like that, queen? Well, she doesn't, so she promptly sends Snow White out into the forest with the huntsman, instructing him to return with Snow White's heart in that apparently custom made heart container she's wielding up there.

There's your first mistake, lady. You want a job done, you're gonna want to do it yourself. Don't send a clearly apprehensive guy out to murder an innocent young woman, because this is likely to happen:

Look at him, crying like a baby. He's a compassionate human being, so it's no wonder he flakes out. But you know who else this guy is? Clearly a skilled hunter who can easily kill and dismember a wild animal, so it's no wonder he comes back with a pig's heart in the box. Why didn't the queen ask him to deliver her body? Then she could really be sure. It seems a little much to ask a guy to go out and murder someone, then spend a while tearing out their guts. It's just a shitty plan, and now Snow White has found refuge in a house inhabited by seven witnesses. 

No matter though, because the queen finds out the very next day, when she casually asks the mirror the same question she always does. But not only does he reveal that Snow White is alive, he divulges her location as well. What a dick. But still, this means it's your chance to shine, Grimhilde. Get out there and murder yourself some young girl. 

To the queen's credit, she does take things into her own hands, but it all seems to go downhill from there. Let's take a look at her spell book selection. 

Disguises. Yeah, that's the first one you want to go for when plotting a murder. Not the one right next to it labelled "Black Magic" and "Death". Personally I'd think that one would be the most effective. But what do I know, I'm not a sorceress. Well, if that's the way she wants to do it, disguising herself as a frail old woman is a good move. Lets her get up close and personal for a good old fashioned killing. But as for the actual murder, I think she needs a new spell book, or perhaps more common sense. Here's the spell she uses:

The Sleeping Death. You simply give the lady a poisoned apple, and she falls into a deep sleep, showing every sign of being a corpse. But wait, poisoned apple? That sounds pretty deadly by itself. Why do we need to cast a spell on it to make it less effective? I mean, look at the poison she dips that apple in:

Yikes, that's some nasty stuff. You could probably just go and pour some of that through Snow White's window and stroll back home. But no, the queen messes it up again. Even if she does eat the apple and falls asleep, she's still not going to be dead, just asleep. The mirror will tell you the same thing every day. I know that the queen assumes the dwarfs she's living with will find her and bury her alive, but we've seen before that leaving someone else to do the dirty work yields poor results. Besides, this spell has a freaking get-out clause. If Snow White receives first love's kiss, she wakes up and it's all fine again. In a fantastic oversight on the queen's part, she assumes that will never happen. But hey, maybe these dwarfs are really nice guys, maybe she's fallen in love already, and they're dirty men who like to kiss beautiful corpses. Not quite Disney material, but it's a distinct possibility. 

Well, the queen goes ahead with her ridiculous plan, and despite being warned by the dwarfs to not talk to anyone, Snow White falls hook, line and sinker, bites into the apple and falls under the spell. So I guess in a land of idiots, the idiotic sorceress is queen. Unfortunately she's rumbled by a group of particularly resourceful wild animals, the dwarfs come along to give chase, and Grimhilde ends up doing a quite excellent job of killing herself. 

Finally she gets her hands dirty, this would have been one of many good ways to dispatch the princess, but apparently this is only reserved for dwarfs. Grimhilde may have had the right frame of mind in the end, but she failed spectacularly before that. She let her prey escape by assuming an upstanding gentleman would just up and murder an innocent woman. She then chose probably the least effective spell in her arsenal to deal with it herself, before managing to kill herself in her first legitimate and potentially effective murder attempt. Not that rolling a boulder off a cliff with a stick is particularly refined, to say that's her best effort is more of an insult than anything. 

Next time just stick to more straightforward methods.