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“ | Once a Marine...always a Marine. | „ |
~ Howard while mocking Jackson. |
“ | Hell, this ain't even loaded. Pointing it and waving it around is usually enough to scare them straight. | „ |
~ Howard speaking of his shotgun. |
“ | You're scaring me, Pearl! | „ |
~ Howard, toward Pearl's paranoid behaviour. |
Howard Douglas is the secondary antagonist of the 2022 erotic slasher film X, and a minor character in its prequel film, Pearl. He is the husband of the main antagonist, Pearl, and a former soldier in WWII who helps feed Pearl's homicidal urges by kidnapping people for her to kill.
He was portrayed by Stephen Ure (who also played Grishnákh in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers), and Alistair Sewell while young.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Like Pearl, Howard was probably born in Texas in the 1890s. He had at least one sibling, a younger sister named Mitzy. While his family was wealthier than Pearl's, he enjoyed simple living and hard work, and as a young man started working as a farmhand on Powder Keg Farms, owned by Pearl's family. When he met Pearl, the two quickly fell in love, and they married around 1917.
Their married life was quickly cut short when the United States entered the First World War. While Howard's family was willing to pay a doctor to find him unfit for service, Howard refused to evade the draft in this way and joined the Army. He was deployed to France and saw combat there, traumatizing him. He made sure to write home to Pearl regularly.
Pearl[]
Howard is almost entirely absent from the movie. It was during - and partly because of - his absence that Pearl descended into madness and ultimately murdered four people. Upon the war's end and his return to Pearl's home, Howard was horrified to find that Pearl had killed her parents and posed them at the dinner table. It is unclear whether Howard ever learned that Pearl had also killed his sister Mitzy.
Later events[]
Howard presumably helped Pearl cover up the murder of her parents. They would live together on Powder Keg Farms, which Pearl had inherited, for the rest of their lives. This was interrupted only in the 1940s, when Howard went to serve in World War II.

By 1979, Pearl and Howard were in their eighties. Pearl in particular was seething with rage and resentment over her unfulfilled dreams and frustrated libido, leading her to begin killing again. It is unknown how long she was doing this before X, but Howard was a willing accomplice in her rapes and murders. He presumably helped Pearl abduct a young man whom she raped and killed shortly before X. A single line from Pearl - "You know I don't like blondes" - implies that Howard has helped her with other victims and that he is familiar with her "tastes." They operated a guesthouse on their farm, which they may have used to find victims.
X[]
Howard was responsible for making arrangements with Wayne for him and his film crew to stay in his guesthouse. While Howard did not know that his guests meant to shoot a porn film on their property, he was nonetheless unwelcoming and temperamental toward them, making it no secret that he neither liked nor trusted them. Despite this, he gave no obvious signs of being a threat.
After Pearl met Maxine and learned about the porn film by stalking her, Pearl and Howard met in their kitchen, presumably to discuss their plans for killing the film crew.
That night, as Pearl roamed the property looking for victims, Howard lured other members of the film crew into ambushes by pretending that Pearl was lost and asking for help. Howard first lured Lorraine into the basement to look for a flashlight before locking her in with the corpse of a prior victim. When she tried to break out, he smashed her fingers with the butt of his shotgun. He next went to Jackson, asking him for help and leading him to the swamp, where he shot him dead. Soon after, Howard met up with Pearl as she finished killing Bobby-Lynne. The two went to the guesthouse to look for Maxine, where they had sex for the first time in years, perhaps decades. They failed to find Maxine, who snuck out and fled to the house as the two had sex.
As Pearl and Howard returned to their house, Lorraine escaped with Maxine's help and ran outside. Howard promptly shot her in the face, fatally injuring her. Howard proposed that he and Pearl drag the corpse inside to make the crime look like self-defense, but as they did so Lorraine let out a death rattle. A startled Howard suffered a heart attack and died on the spot, much to Pearl's horror and grief.
Personality[]
Howard is the definition of an enabler. He loves Pearl to the point where he is willing to kidnap people for her to kill in order to make her happy. This is due to his heart condition which prevents him from making love to her out of fear that his heart might give out. At the same time, however, he is also very protective of Pearl, and doesn't seem to like it when young and handsome guys like Jackson walk around and entice her with their good looks. He is also shown to be slightly racist as he constantly treats Jackson like a lesser human and shows little trust or faith in him.
Howard lacks Pearl's bloodlust and sexual sadism, assisting her in her crimes for her sake rather than his own enjoyment. However, he shares some of her resentment toward young people and their sexuality, stemming from his shame at being unable to pleasure his wife.
Pearl shows that Howard was a much better person in his youth. He was a loving husband to Pearl and a patriot unwilling to use his family's wealth to escape military service, and he reacted with appropriate horror to discovering Pearl's murder of her parents, that by possibly caused his trauma to beyond, though he presumably helped cover it up afterward.
Gallery[]
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Douglas' Estate Others |